Why it is best to only keep one window open at a time

"Go check your hotmail account," the email read, "I sent a photo to it. It is of (insert name here of mutual acquaintance here). I'm so disgusted I might throw up. And I wasn't even married to the man."

It was morning and I was at work. I try to avoid checking my personal email when at work, unless I have a specific reason to check it, because I like to pretend to be professional like that.

I did not know exactly what the photo would show, but I knew that it was likely something that I did not want to see and that I would never be able to unsee it.

"Yuck," I typed in response, "I do not want to look at that picture. Especially not at work." And then I hit "send" and went about my business.

For about thirty seconds.

Which is when I noticed that there was still a message window open on my desktop. A "reply" message window. A "reply" message window that was replying to the email that I had just been reading.

"Uh oh," I said aloud. Because if the reply message window to my friend's email was still open.. that would mean that I had just replied to an email from someone else..

I immediately went to my "sent messages" folder, found out who I had sent the message to and began damage control.

"Oops, sorry about that. That email was not meant to go to you. But what you had sent me was great! Let's go with that. Thanks for everything you are doing and keep up the good work!"

You see, when sending a damage control email out, it is important to acknowledge your mistake and then entirely change the subject of the message in order to make it seem like your faux-pas was not the primary motivation for sending another email.