Ordinary Gweilo

This tale from Shaky reminds me of something similar that happened to me.

A while back my idiot boss (based in another Asian country) sent an email to all her staff in the region advising them of their bonuses. Thinking she was clever, she pasted the appropriate figure from an Excel spreadsheet into each email and then sent them out. I thought it looked odd and sure enough it was possible to open the whole spreadsheet and see everyone’s bonus figures.

I saved my boss from further embarassment by letting her know what she had done, and the IT people then swung into action (with uncharacteristic speed) to delete the offending emails before anyone else had a chance to see the figures.

In a similar vein, I have also been sent Excel spreadsheets with some cells hidden and ‘locked’ to prevent me seeing some confidential information, but they are pathetically easy to crack open.

Going back to Shaky’s story, it is extremely easy to select the wrong email group or person. I have seen several examples of this – a junior employee who had a similar name to a senior manager (in another country) was sent several emails not intended for him; my idiot boss sent a number of sensitive emails to “all staff” rather than “all managers”; and another email from another company that was mistakenly copied to a colleague of mine, hence revealing the other company’s strategy in a fairly bitter business dispute.