I Fucked Up

I fucked up at work. I cc'd in the wrong person to a confidential email. Both of their email addresses started with P, and I didn't notice until after I had sent it what I had done. All the details that should have gone to a senior exec went to the manager of a team in Sydney. 

SHIT!

I have never done that before. I really haven't.

I started writing out an explanatory email to send to the exec, when he replied with a question, seeming not noticing the wrong cc email, but replying to all.

SHIT!

So, in a split second decision, I edited and re-addressed the explanatory email and sent it to the team manager, and I replied to the exec with all instances of the incorrect email deleted from my reply email chain.

Then I waited.

Then the panic set in. 

What if the team manager replies despite my explanatory email?

What if the exec replies to a previous email and the team manager gets more confidential details? He would be bound to send a reply.

I should have just owned up, but once I had essentially committed fraud with the deletion of the incorrect email address in the chain of emails, I felt that option was taken away from me.

Grrrrr! I probably wouldn't get in too much trouble over the initial mistake, oh sure there would be words said, and if HR got wind of it, they would do their usual explosion of drama. But, these are smart people, if they work out my attempted cover up, well, that may not end well for me.

What was I thinking?

I stress over things like this, I know that.

I had a bad dream about it?

So, the next morning, I sent the exec another email, blah, blah, blah, once you have completed your review, please reply to this email with the outcomes. People often respond to instructions without thinking too much about it, especially if there was no whiff of error.

That was all I could do.

Let me just conclude by reiterating it was an email of the most confidential information.

Then the sweating set in. Too many variables could go wrong?

Then I was off for two days.