Forward Ho.

Have you ever clicked "reply" to a forward recounting personal information that you knew your friend wasn't supposed to share with you... and instead of replying to the person who forwarded you the email, replied to the sender who was then irate that his/her information was being forwarded on to random people?

I have definitely experienced the bad end of that stick with personal emails; for the first time in recent history, I have been the unintended victim of someone else's lack of attention to detail while clicking "forward" on an email in a work setting.

Working with insurance companies is, in general, a nightmare. The attorneys who choose to work for insurance companies (present company excluded, of course) have this insane OCD attention to detail that is unparalleled in any other profession. Every 't' must be crossed, and every 'i' dotted... and each step of every licensing and application process imagineable must be detailed and accounted for.

Generally, our company will be performing services for one of these insurance companies (we'll call them "ABC Insurance Company" or "ABC" for short). I have had the breathtakingly fascinating opportunity to create a series of attorney opinion letters that explain how we really are qualified and licensed to do what we say we can do--from every perspective imagineable. I have a pretty good working relationship with our "Relationship Manager" (Bob) who handles most of the wheeling and dealing between our company and ABC--we even engage in a bit of sarcastic banter from time to time. What I did not anticipate, however, is that my sarcastic banter would be unintentionally forwarded to the opposing party.

After I wrote a letter detailing what had been explained to ABC innumerable times, I was quite happy when Bob forwarded me a response from ABC stating the following:

"We can consider this issue closed. Thanks for working thru this process to make everyone comfortable with the licensing piece. Talk to you soon."

My happiness turned to panic-slash-frustration-slash-surprise-slash-disbelief, however, when I scrolled down to the bottom of the email and noticed my original text to Bob on the stream that was sent to ABC--

"If you EVER had ANY lingering doubts that we needed to be licensed as a TPA in order to perform the functions outlined in our contract with ABC, let this letter be your guide. I realize the letter is extremely repetitive, but ABC doesn't seem content with anything more efficient and less detailed."

Oops. I guess I won't be getting a job with ABC in the near future... it's a good thing they're only our biggest client.