Carfax the Wonder Dog

A while back, I received the following email, which I thought was funny enough to keep:

<quote>

Dear CARFAX Customer,

You may have recently received an email from "Carfax the Wonder Dog". Unfortunately, this email was not meant to be sent and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please delete the email.

If you have any questions, please contact us at carfaxhelp@carfax.com.

</quote>

as a programmer I know all too well how something like this can happen... it's late, you're tired, you've been staring at the code for days, you need to do a test of an email application so you write a stupid note and let it fly, realising only after it's gone that you had actually sent it to a real-life client of the company you work for.

I recently did something similar and accidentally sent a photo of some trees in my backyard to a client's customer, purporting to be from a "Test Hitchcock" and announcing that it was a resume for a potential job candidate for a ship's engineer's position. I immediately emailed him explaining my mistake, and a fairly funny exchange followed. I will excerpt part of it here. The customer is a salty sea dog of a boat captain, and replied with the usual good humour seemingly associated with such men:

<quote>

Hi <department head's name />,

When I got this, before I got the other one from the real Mr Hitchcock, I had started to write a letter say that I thought this guy looked to be out of his tree, but maybe if he had experience of Gardiner engines we should go out on a limb and give him a test on <yacht's name> in case Willie leaves and branches out into something else. I even had thought about having known Mr Hitchcock’s brother-in-law, Mr Ballcock the plumber who has the nickname Leaky – maybe you know Leaky Ballcock?

Anyway – now I know it was not a joke, I do not need to write any of that bollocks……..

Y’all have a good weekend,

Cheers, John

</quote>

LOL!!!! I replied again, inviting him to ask me about the time my friend Mark Murrell had me paged in a Chinese restaurant... that's a funny one to be posted at a later date...