Colleagues say that as managing director of broadcasting for Scottish Media Group, Bobby Hain must have been aware producers called him Mr Blobby. But when STV’s head of features, Agnes Wilkie, sent an e-mail to his personal assistant that suggested she agreed with the nickname, Hain was merciless. Wilkie was marched out of the television company’s headquarters and suspended on full pay. Last week she was sacked and the nerves of millions of office computer-users jangled in alarm.
There was no need to know Hain or even see his picture to sympathise with Wilkie’s predicament. She never intended her boss to read her message. She just took the same little risk that millions of us take every day and found herself in the trouble that arises when an e-mail meant for only one recipient escapes and causes embarrassment and professional difficulty for its originator.
Tales are legion of couples who have told their colleagues exactly what they intend to do to each other in bed when they only meant to tell each other. They are not just urban legends. It really can happen to anyone. Observers of the Hutton inquiry became familiar with the way computers archive messages sent in the heat of the moment, only to regurgitate them when their contents have become utterly humiliating.
Last week, the numbers of people hoist by their own e-mail mistakes were swollen. On Tuesday a Treasury press officer, Robbie Browse, inadvertently sent a bizarrely tasteless e-mail intended for a friend to every journalist on the Treasury press list. One journalist replied asking whether all the recipients would be invited to his leaving party.
We humans have long relished the gossip-spreading potential of technology. When we just had caves and paint we wrote slanderous allegations on the walls. After the Iron Age we used knives to carve “Jack luvs Jill” into trees. Caxton’s printing press got pamphleteers into trouble and the telephone enhanced the speed of gossip a millionfold. But nothing has approached the power of the internet — or its talent for inducing disastrous mistakes.
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Take the case of Trevor Luxton, a London bank clerk. He e-mailed friends with a tale that involved him simultaneously enjoying a beer, a curry, “West Ham on the box” and the attentions of his ex-mate’s girlfriend. Luxton boasted that he even fielded a phone call from his fiancée during this unique sensory feast.
Unfortunately for Luxton, his lurid tale became a web sensation. Recognising his career was in jeopardy (his fiancée wasn’t much impressed either) the banker insisted he had made the story up. To no avail; he was soon forced to resign.
In June 2003 an intern working in the office of a US senator fired off a brutal e-mail intended exclusively for his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. Using his boss’s computer in work time, he annihilated her character and described her as “a sad, sad person” who would be “miserable for the rest of your life” then signed himself “Your intellectual, moral, social and emotional superior”. He hit the send button and promptly distributed it to the world at large.
At least his insults were not professionally related. The new recruit to a law firm who thought she was writing to a friend was less fortunate. Having defined work as “doing nothing”, she proceeded to describe the details of her day as a mixture of lunch, “typing e-mails and bullshitting with people”. The next 24 hours were spent penning grovelling apologies to every senior partner after she discovered that she had forwarded her musings to the entire company.
A similar thing happened to a London-based friend of mine who messaged his closest colleagues begging them to confirm a lie that he had been ill the previous week when, actually, he was in Paris with his girlfriend. It might have worked if he had omitted the head of personnel from the distribution list.
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It seems so private when we are sitting at our own desk. The temptation to message a friend about that infuriating new manager, gorgeous colleague or drunken escapade is never far away. But the bad news is that the risk of exposure grows ever greater. These days, the same technology that has been used to track Al-Qaeda is now being offered to employers by at least one IT company as a means of monitoring e-mail. Though the system is designed to stamp out sexual harassment and bullying, civil liberties campaigners have already raised concerns about the wider use of the technology to pry into people’s everyday correspondence.
For now, though, the risk to most of us is from those misplaced e-mails. The slip between writing someone’s name in the body of the e-mail and putting it in the “send to” box takes seconds, but it can have lasting consequences.
Poor Wilkie did not make even such a basic mistake. Her message was intended for Hain’s assistant and she was the only recipient. There is controversy about how and why Hain read it at all. But he did, and it is not entirely surprising that he balked at the words “You poor wee thing, I feel sorry for you working for that big fat thing”.
That was ungenerous. But was it sufficient to justify sacking a highly creative and successful producer? STV is adamant. It said: “Scottish TV is a people business and we believe that everyone here deserves to be treated properly and with dignity by their colleagues. We operate sensible e-mail guidelines for all staff . . . Where employees act contrary to company policy, the company has a duty to take action.”
Last month STV announced 60 redundancies, creating more antagonisms in a newsroom already racked by tension. Not a good place for a rogue e-mail to do its work, though Wilkie’s trade union, the National Union of Journalists, thinks that in her case the reaction is wholly disproportionate.
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Paul Holleran, Scottish organiser at the NUJ says: “We hope STV will reinstate her. We hope they will see that Agnes is much too valuable as a programme maker to discard over any clash of egos.” As part of STV’s disciplinary procedure, she is appealing against her dismissal.
When he first took to the airwaves as a DJ for Aberdeen’s Northsound in 1981, Hain’s opening record was We’ve Only Just Begun by the Carpenters. Colleagues joke that three months ago his “Mr Blobby” nickname had only just begun to stick. Now it is indelible. Chalk it up as another victory for the power of rogue e-mail — and remember that if you want to gossip, insult or proposition, a private e-mail account can be a tremendous investment.