This is the most absurd thing that has ever happened to me and I still do not fully understand how it played out this way.
I work at a DFW-based logistics company. About 300 employees. Our CEO is one of those guys who sends Monday morning "motivation" emails with quotes like "Hustle beats talent when talent does not hustle" over stock photos of mountains. Every single Monday.
My coworker and I have an ongoing bit where we rewrite the CEO's emails in the most brutally honest version possible. It is our coping mechanism. We send them back and forth in a private chat.
Three weeks ago, I was working late. The CEO sent his Monday email early (Sunday night). I wrote my parody version and — you already know where this is going — I hit Reply All instead of forwarding to my coworker.
The email went to all 300+ employees.
My version included gems like:
- "Good morning team. I am writing this from my lake house to remind you that grinding 60 hours a week is the path to success. Not MY success — your success. My success came from inheriting the company from my father-in-law."
- "Remember: there is no I in team, but there is one in 'I gave myself a $400K bonus while freezing your raises for the second year.'"
- "Let us crush Q2 together. And by together I mean you do the work and I take the credit at the board meeting."
I realized what I had done approximately 4 seconds after hitting send. The recall function did not work because half the company uses phones. I sat in my car in the parking garage for 20 minutes considering fleeing the country.
Monday morning I walked in expecting to be escorted out. Instead, the VP of Operations pulled me into his office. He was laughing. He said "That email has been circulating on every floor. You said what everyone has been thinking for 3 years."
Turns out the CEO was already on thin ice with the board. Employee satisfaction surveys had been terrible. The email became Exhibit A in a board discussion about leadership. The CEO was asked to "transition out" two weeks later.
The new CEO — the former COO who everyone actually likes — called me into her office last week. She said my email, while "spectacularly unprofessional," demonstrated "a level of honesty and awareness about company culture that leadership needs." She offered me a role on the newly created employee experience team. With a raise.
I have no idea how I failed upward this hard. I live in fear that karma will correct this at any moment.
I work in HR at a DFW company and employee satisfaction emails are the scariest documents in corporate America. Your accidental email did what 3 years of anonymous surveys could not.