Article posted Wednesday, September 28, 2011 12:02pm

Dear Mary Pat,

I sent an email to a co-worker that I meant to send to someone else. Normally, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but in this case, the email was about the person I ending up sending the email to! I don’t know what to do. The email consisted of me venting my frustrations about this particular co-worker with how slow she is at picking things up, how unorganized and how it messes everyone else up as a result. Naturally, she was upset and hasn’t spoken to me in three days. Is there anyway to fix this?

Signed,

Don’t Hit Send

Dear Don’t Hit Send,

We’ve all been in situations like this. Who hasn’t tasted their own shoe leather before? Whether you are venting, gossiping or generally not being kind, more often than not, you get busted. You, unfortunately, really got busted. I mean what are the odds? Actually, some have said that the odds are as high as 33 percent. That means that a third of the time you send an email out, it might accidentally end up going to someone else. Some of us might have better odds than that, but the stats are working against you.

The only thing for you to do to salvage the working relationship with your co-worker is to address her face to face. Ask her if there is a good time for you to talk. Tell her that you are genuinely sorry and that you were in the wrong. You can tell her that it was immature of you to vent to somebody else. You can also take this time to say while you handled this in the wrong way, that you did have some legitimate concerns and wondered if maybe she would be willing to accept help from you. (i.e., offer to explain something to her that is giving her trouble, or give a suggestion on how better organization can help everyone else in the work place.) If you offer your help sincerely, she may take you up on it. There is a chance that she may still be upset and react defensively, however, an apology is still in order. Time should sort everything else out in the end.

Good luck,

Mary Pat