The first thing on my agenda was to work through all the emails that had built up over the 5 weeks I was off. The delete button was very useful, but *ahem* of course being a diligent employee it was used in moderation and reserved mainly for all the junk mail that got through my spam filter.
By about 10am I was on a roll - powering through my inbox. I am was a freaking email ninja and I sat there puffing my chest out and humming with complete self satisfaction.
As I signed off on yet another email and poised my cursor over the send button, it hit me what I was doing and more to the point, what I had been doing for Lord knows how long?
Holy Moses - I had been signing off my emails with a xxx Sonia. The same way I sign off on all my personal emails and comments on the blog.
I think I may have vomited in my mouth.
Absolutely horrified I urgently went through all the emails I had sent that morning to check which ones I had added this declaration of love too. Fortunately I only found five. FIVE!!! Five too many.
I did a quick recall on those emails and 3 were successfully retrieved but 2 made it all the way through.
You know those moments when your heart is racing and you feel giddy with stress. Yep I was having one of them. What if they didn't see the funny side? What if God forbid they actually thought I was coming on to them?
I didn't have to wait long for the first response to come through.
"Dear Sonia, I didn't know you felt that way about me but welcome back anyway."
OK so that wasn't too bad. Sort of. At least I could see a glimmer of humour in his reply.
Feeling slightly elevated with relief, I rang the other email recipient just to clarify I wasn't putting the moves on her either. When I was put through to her voicemail I had no choice but to leave her a garbled message that went along the lines of "Hi there, its Sonia here and I just wanted to let you know I am back from leave, very relaxed and ready to go and by the way I may have just blown some virtual kisses in an email but please disregard it and chock it up to me being perhaps a little too relaxed."
I don't think I took a breath in the whole message.
Awkward.
Thankfully I signed those emails with xxx and not a middle finger or anything, so once the mortification wore off I was able to laugh it off. But I'm still cringing on the inside.
I guess those clients of mine and I are on closer terms now. Much closer terms .... at least on my part!
Have you ever done this at work?
Even if you haven't - please lie so I feel better about myself.
