An errant email sent by an employee named Babette caused much confusion and a slowdown in the email system of the German parliament – a rare moment of amusing chaos in a country known for its clockwork efficiency.
According to a report from Reuters, the brouhaha started when an employee named Babette accidentally replied to ‘all’ on the email list with a reply to her colleague: “Please bring me a copy of the new directory.”
For several hours after that blooper, hundreds of workers responded to it with comments ranging from “please remove my name from your list” to “I’d like to take this opportunity to say hello to my mother”. As a result, the German parliament’s email system was hampered for several hours.
Volker Beck, a member of parliament for the Greens party, said: “One mistaken click and the parliament’s email system is turned into a new social network.”
Team bonding was another unexpected effect of the errant email as one anonymous worker wrote: “I think this is great. We should do this once a month. It’ll help us grow together.”
A spokeswoman for the Bundestag confirmed that there was a flood of emails resulting from the deviant email which led to the disruption of the email system for a brief period of time.
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