BEWARE THE BCC OPTION

Martha sat with her head in her hands, oh why had she sent that email?

What a stupid thing to have done, hadn't her mother always told her to write once and think twice before sending a letter. An email was even worse, instant stupidity shared with a multiple of random people all at once.

The email had begun as her resignation from the job that she’d hated since day one. She hated her boss, and she loathed the company in its entirety. Somewhere between the beginning and the end of the email, she’d gone off the rails, ranting about all the things that were wrong about the overall set up of the organization. She’d referenced certain people that she should not have even mentioned, and most certainly not by name.

She'd not addressed the email at the start of the project, so was pretty cavalier in what she wrote, but somehow towards the end of the writing, she must have pressed the link to all the people in a certain group set up in her address book and then she accidentally pressed send. So here she was, head in hands, now what was she going to do?

She sat for what seemed like an eternity wondering what to do. Finally deciding that there was only one thing to do, she'd have to get back into the offices, get to the sever room and somehow delete the email from the server, therefore deleting the email before people copied would get to read it. She only hoped that no one was conscientious enough to read work emails outside of working hours.

She got into her car and drove the short distance back to the office, parked and walked into the main lobby of the offices. There was Peter, the night security guard, reading his book.

“Hello Martha, working a night shift?”

“Yes, something like that, I just need to stop by the offices and pick something up,” she lied.

“Ok.”

Martha first went to her office on the 3rd floor, to register her entrance to her own office by waving her electronic pass and then took the elevator up to the 4th floor and walked down the corridor to the server room. It was dark in there, with just a few flashing lights visible to the outside. Now to get in and remove that over-zealous email. The door was of course locked, but luckily as the IT manager she had an all access pass. She waved her pass on the door and the small red/green light turned to green, whilst of course entering a notation on the computer software. She'd have to deal with that afterwards. She entered the server room and made her way over to the computer that held the sent data, she sat down and placing a flashlight on the desk began to log into the sent file drives. She navigated to that evening’s logs and saw her user login and the offending email, still fully lit, indicating no one had read it, as yet. She quickly used the software to hi-light the data and was about to press delete, when it suddenly dimmed. Oh crap, no, she almost shouted out loud to the empty room, how can she have got so close and not been in time to delete it? Did she want to know who had read it? Martha knew that by pressing the dimmed entry, it would then show which user login had read it. She pressed it and up came the user “p.brown”, Peter, the security guard! She felt some relief and wiped the cold sweat from her forehead. Thank god, just Peter! Ok, delete this email, clear the logs from the security software and then go and talk to Peter. Martha pressed the delete key and it disappeared forever lost from the main distribution hub. Suddenly she remembered, the tech guy had told her that if anyone opened it, the email formed a record on the receiving users account, and could still be accessed, replied or forwarded on at will. She cussed, thankful she remembered that little gem from training. She left the main access screen and logged into the screen with individual email accounts and access for each and every registered user. She spooled down to the ‘p.brown’ and pressed enter, his inbox and sub files appeared.

Peter had all the usual stuff we all keep for whatever reasons and then all the inter office crap about who took the last lined pad from the stationery office without reordering and who stole the ham sandwich left in the company fridge! She spooled up to the top of his inbox, found her email dimmed out, she pressed to enter the email body. The screen flickered and then it appeared, oh god no….it appeared that Peter had forwarded the email onto Jarod, head of HR, informing him that she’d stopped by this evening after sending this email. Of all the sneaky……! Martha quickly went back to the screen with all the user accounts and found the one labeled ‘j.small’ Jarod’s account, she pressed enter, got into that inbox, spooled to the top and quickly deleted the unread email. Phew….! Now back to Peter’s account, she had to delete that email before he could forward to anyone else. She got back in, spooled and deleted. Ok all good. Now to remove all evidence of her being in this room. She’d need to do that from her office. Martha turned off her flashlight, carefully pushing the chair back as it was and exiting the server room. She checked the door was locked and then made her way to her office on the 3rd floor. She waved her pass on that door for the second time this evening and this time went to her office, turned on the light and logged into the IT back access for the security software. She quickly navigated to her evening's trail and deleted all but the first access to the 3rd floor, so it appeared she’d been here the whole time in her own office. Done! She logged off, turned out the light and went back downstairs to where Peter was still sitting playing his computer game.

“All good Martha?” he asked as she went for the door to the car lot.

“Yes, thanks Peter, all is okay now, no harm done! Night, see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, I will be here until 8.30 am. I’ve a ton of email to read.”

Martha got home, utterly exhausted. She poured herself a large glass of wine and sat down to watch the late news.

Morning came and Martha got into the office at around 7.45 am. She went to the 3rd floor and waved her pass. It didn't work, it just kept flashing red. Typical, Martha thought, they always broke when you were in a rush. She tried again, but it would not unlock the door. Just as she was about to turn and go back downstairs to ask Peter for help, he appeared at her side.

“Martha, Daniel wants to see you in the boardroom now. Come with me please.”

“Errrr.. I can't get into my office.”

“You don't need to right now, Daniel is waiting.”

Martha followed Peter, glad it was early, and no one was in yet to see her being led, by Peter, to the boardroom.

“Come in Martha, please sit down,” instructed Daniel.

“Can't this wait, Daniel, I'm sort of busy and my security card has stopped working.”

“No, it can't Martha. Your card was disabled by HR last night after I was forwarded a copy of your email that you sent to a select few. You seem baffled Martha, did you think that you'd deleted all the copies?”

“I err…. What are you implying Daniel?”

“Basically, you came here last night, I'm guessing, entered the server room and deleted all the copies of your email. Then, I'm surmising, you deleted all your movements from the security software! Am I correct?”

“I ….. “ Martha gave up at this point and nodded her acceptance of events.

“Anyway, after reading your comments regarding this company, we have decided to terminate your contract immediately. You obviously have no desire to work here. Peter will help you pack your personal items and escort you out of the building. We will send on any money we owe you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Daniel. I'm just wondering how you saw the email, I honestly thought I'd got all the copies deleted.”

“One thing the tech trainer did not share, on my instruction, was an extra security layer. You cannot see any blind copies on the server without a higher clearance, a clearance that you do not have. Beware the bcc option Martha.”