The mass ‘oops’

Like me, you probably clip articles out of the newspaper and, as you tidy your desk, reread them with bafflement. Here’s one that got to me.

Under the heading “insurance,” the headline read “Aviva unit fires all its staff by mistake.” It turns out the investment arm of the U.K.’s second biggest insurance company had send an email message dismissing its entire 1,300 staff members worldwide, telling them they were to turn over company property and keep company secrets secret. The message did end graciously, relatively speaking, by concluding “I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and wish you all the best for the future.” The message was apparently intended for one employee and an apology was sent “fairly quickly” after the original message, according to a staff member.

“Fairly quickly” covers some flexible territory. Was it quick enough to avoid an elderly bond trader in Berlin grabbing at his heart and keeling over? Was it just in time to prevent an investment analyst in New York from smashing his computer on the floor? How many people got up from their desks and screamed at Aviva for its disloyalty after years of faithful service, and stormed out in disgust? The company had earlier announced that some 160 jobs were to be cut, and was just getting started. Just how quickly can you press an “unhurt” button after you’ve just hurt someone? There doesn’t even seem to be one on my computer.

But quite apart from that, even the one employee for whom the letter was not a mistake ended up being dismissed by email, reminded of his or her obligations of secrecy, and then kissed off with blatantly insincere thanks for a job not done well enough and best wishes for the future, so long as it did not involve Aviva. Doesn’t anybody have the courage to let people go in the old fashioned face-to-face way? Have they even stopped using George Clooney-like outplacement consultants? And have they forever abandoned the dividends to shareholders and executive bonuses as alternatives to staff addition and reduction at the drop of a hat?

It’s not as if this is the worst e-comm error I’ve read about. A couple of years ago, the University of California at San Diego sent an email to some 46,000 students saying they had been accepted at the university: it was supposed to have been sent to only 18,000 of them. Like Lucille Ball, they must have had to do some “s’plaining” to 28,000 angry would-be students, and some fancy footwork to keep all of the 18,000 they had wanted in the first place.

And that’s just an example of a “mass” email mistake. We’ve all read a delicious story or two about the arrogant prig who got his comeuppance by having an email he authored re-circulated. Like the Wall Street lawyer who demanded his recently bereaved secretary pay for cleaning the ketchup stains off his suit—until she forwarded his demand to everyone else in the firm suggesting a collection be taken up.

In a perverse way, I’m glad the Aviva fiasco happened. If I am sent an electronic bill with a warning that it should be paid immediately, surely I am now entitled to say: “Ah yes, but how do I know you are not from Aviva or UCalSanD? I shall await the retraction, correction or perhaps even the confirmation. I shall grant you a 48-hour reprieve, and then treat your letter as presumptively accurate.”

And even then, of course, the whole thing could be accurate from the get go, but turn out to be a fraud in the nature of some spam, pfish, worm or virus or other sort of deadly industrial contaminant. So really, there’s a case to be made here that one should ignore email completely. Which makes me ever so mad that Bell Canada, in the stated pursuit of the lofty goal of planetary stewardship, is now proposing to charge me $2.50 a month to send me my bill by mail.

Now hold on a minute here. The next item in my pile is my car insurance bill. And it’s in the name… “Aviva.” Maybe I don’t really have car insurance at all. Or maybe I do, but I’ve been billed by mistake. That one computer mis-press can allow me to believe anything I want to. Keep up the good work, Aviva!

David writes: In my column of May 9, I left the impression that local realtor Jim Wait stated to the Globe and Mail that local residents are “fickle.” Mr. Wait, who has indicated to me that he is generally not happy with the manner in which he was interviewed in the Globe, did not make that statement to the Globe and I apologize to him for suggesting otherwise.

David Simmonds’s writing is also available at www.grubstreet.ca.