I will be leaving Holland soon and sad that I am, so thought I will invite my colleagues to join me for a drink in a nearby pub (Breakaway). Since this was an "invitation" I happened to use Microsoft Outlook Meeting invitation.. and below is what happened when I sent the invitiation..
10/02/2009 evening 18:23 CET I send the invitaiton for 24/02/2009. I left for the day. I reach home and the phone starts beeping. I had an SMS from Ruud (a colleague of mine) "Nitin, your leaving drinks have been scheduled in the morning instead of evening." I realised the blunder I had done, I had selected 7:00 instead of 17:30. I knew I would be "grilled" the next day.
As soon as I entered the floor everybody was "oh we got your invitation" I opened my mailbox and it was filled with responses and here are few:
Ross: Is 07:00 in the morning not a bit early for drinks??
Ramon: Are you buying us a champagne breakfast at Breakaway?
Melvin: Is the Breakaway already open at 7 AM?
Nico: Thanks for the invitation but, I drop my kids to the school at that time, I hope it is 19:00 but you never know ;)
After going through the responses I sent an updated invitation with the correct timings and the responses were
Melvin: Much better
Chris: Thought you were starting a bit early in the day.
I thought it was over, but not yet. Wendy (another colleague of mine) remined me that I had missed to invite a few people. Now starts the hunt for the "button" to add invitees to the people and send the invitation to only them as I did not want to send it to everyone again. We had clicked some button and the typical Microsoft Yes and No buttons were waiting and then Wendy asked an expert in scheduling meetings what would happen next. The answer was it would go only to the additional people. So Wendy ran back to my desk and clicked Yes, little did she know that she had not asked about the correct action. So here it goes, the invitation went to everyone again.
For a moment I thought, never mind, as nobody was complaining as the start itself had created a funny topic of discussion on the floor. I thought it was over, but wait, it was not yet. Somehow, the time had got changed to 10:30 in the morning, damn Outlook.
Now I had to send another update. This time I added a PS: saying I was sorry for sending it again and again..
Here are few reponses I got,
Melvin to Ross: Ross, Nitin is planning to get us completely drunk, he started with 7 in the morning moved it to evening and now back to morning.
Melvin: Nitin, when you had come, you were always busy solving defects, now are you testing the exchange server??
Lex (in response): No, he wants to be a master spammer.
Jan-Ernst: Well Nitin, you keep reminding that you are leaving us. It's already so hard to say goodbye to you, all these invitations only make it harder ;)
At office here there is a nice practice that, when you are go to get something to drink for yourself from the vending machine (Tea/Coffee e.t.c) you ask others too. Since this episode of invitation whenever I ask to Melvin if he wants something to drink, the response has to start with pulling my leg, and it generally starts with,
Is this question for the leaving drinks?
No Nitin, I am getting ready for your all day drinks.
If pulling leg was literally done in this case, probably I would have grown by a inch or two at least :)
As I was writing this very blog, Wendy asks me "Where is today's update on the invitation?"
10/02/2009 evening 18:23 CET I send the invitaiton for 24/02/2009. I left for the day. I reach home and the phone starts beeping. I had an SMS from Ruud (a colleague of mine) "Nitin, your leaving drinks have been scheduled in the morning instead of evening." I realised the blunder I had done, I had selected 7:00 instead of 17:30. I knew I would be "grilled" the next day.
As soon as I entered the floor everybody was "oh we got your invitation" I opened my mailbox and it was filled with responses and here are few:
Ross: Is 07:00 in the morning not a bit early for drinks??
Ramon: Are you buying us a champagne breakfast at Breakaway?
Melvin: Is the Breakaway already open at 7 AM?
Nico: Thanks for the invitation but, I drop my kids to the school at that time, I hope it is 19:00 but you never know ;)
After going through the responses I sent an updated invitation with the correct timings and the responses were
Melvin: Much better
Chris: Thought you were starting a bit early in the day.
I thought it was over, but not yet. Wendy (another colleague of mine) remined me that I had missed to invite a few people. Now starts the hunt for the "button" to add invitees to the people and send the invitation to only them as I did not want to send it to everyone again. We had clicked some button and the typical Microsoft Yes and No buttons were waiting and then Wendy asked an expert in scheduling meetings what would happen next. The answer was it would go only to the additional people. So Wendy ran back to my desk and clicked Yes, little did she know that she had not asked about the correct action. So here it goes, the invitation went to everyone again.
For a moment I thought, never mind, as nobody was complaining as the start itself had created a funny topic of discussion on the floor. I thought it was over, but wait, it was not yet. Somehow, the time had got changed to 10:30 in the morning, damn Outlook.
Now I had to send another update. This time I added a PS: saying I was sorry for sending it again and again..
Here are few reponses I got,
Melvin to Ross: Ross, Nitin is planning to get us completely drunk, he started with 7 in the morning moved it to evening and now back to morning.
Melvin: Nitin, when you had come, you were always busy solving defects, now are you testing the exchange server??
Lex (in response): No, he wants to be a master spammer.
Jan-Ernst: Well Nitin, you keep reminding that you are leaving us. It's already so hard to say goodbye to you, all these invitations only make it harder ;)
At office here there is a nice practice that, when you are go to get something to drink for yourself from the vending machine (Tea/Coffee e.t.c) you ask others too. Since this episode of invitation whenever I ask to Melvin if he wants something to drink, the response has to start with pulling my leg, and it generally starts with,
Is this question for the leaving drinks?
No Nitin, I am getting ready for your all day drinks.
If pulling leg was literally done in this case, probably I would have grown by a inch or two at least :)
As I was writing this very blog, Wendy asks me "Where is today's update on the invitation?"
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3 comments:
Nitin, my beliefs were you didn't drink anything alcoholic, but you managed to confuse me about this by sending all the invitations to ... a leaving drink.
Jan-Ernst
Jan-Ernst, I still won't :) but I can still get my friends some drinks isn't it?
Crazy fellow!
what a mess of an outlook!
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