Round Ups r/AskUK

What’s the most unnecessarily anxiety-inducing email you’ve ever received at work? – 17 messages that messed with people’s heads

Dominic Carter. Updated November 7th, 2026

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Corporate jobs are stressful for a number of reasons, from office politics to hectic deadlines. But if one terror is universal, it’s the dreaded inbox.

If it’s not bursting with far too messages to manage, inboxes are causing quiet panic with their distressing subject lines. u/International_Will62 wanted to hear about the most unnecessarily anxiety-inducing emails workers have received after getting one of their own:

‘My senior ‘found some discrepancies in the work I sent’ before she clocked off for the day.

‘No further explanation. No indication of which figures were incorrect. No attached comments or corrections.

‘So now I’m sitting here with my roast beef wondering what I’ve done wrong, whilst the only person who knows what the discrepancies are is enjoying his evening.

‘Cheers mate.’

Brace yourself, here are the top replies…

1.

‘I work in health and safety, my manager at the time emailed me to say “there’s been a fatality in the factory” while I was on annual leave….

‘it was a pigeon, a fucking pigeon’
-stevielfc76

2.

‘I once had a “Got 5 minutes?” from my CEO on Teams.

‘Turned out all he wanted was Fantasy Football tips.’
-desertcanyons

3.

‘Email from my boss to say my work phone had incurred hundreds of £ in international roaming charges I would need to pay back.

‘The month before I had taken my work phone on a family trip to SEA, but it had been switched off the whole time.

‘I replied asking for more details of the charges and where and when they were incurred as I couldn’t understand how this had happened.

‘Silence for a week. And then “oh sorry, wrong person.”

‘WANKERS.’
-stewieatb

4.

‘I got an email from a major client saying “Can we talk? I have doubts.” – turns out that “doubts” is a common mis-translation for “questions” for Brazilian Portuguese speakers, and he wanted to ask a couple of very minor things.’
-HavanaPineapple

5.

‘An ex manager once scheduled in a private meeting one to one on a Monday morning, at about 4pm on the Friday. No explanation, no detail, no nothing.

‘Turns out her son had an appointment for something or other and she needed to block the time out, but somehow managed to BCC about 8 people into it. She was very apologetic in fairness.’
-Harrry-Otter

6.

‘Used to work as a psych nurse and had “Request for Coroners report – urgent”

‘Sent to the wrong email address’
-Non_sum_qualis_eram

7.

‘I had one that went to everybody saying that someone in the office had bad hygiene. They didn’t want to name names but everybody was walking around sniffing their arm pits for a week or 2.’
-WelshBen

8.

‘“that wasn’t meant for me”

‘Was ranting about my coworker. Sent it to my coworker.’
-uffers4

9.

‘Not received but I once accidently hit Send on an email after only typing “Hi John, I’m afraid”. He called immediately thinking something horrible was happening in the office/I was having a MH episode’
-Maximum_Discount_486

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