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Learn from your mistakes. We all do it, from a very young age. This is why young humans are so short; they can fall over a lot without hurting themselves too badly, and eventually learn not to fall over at all.

Don’t eat the yellow snow. Don’t lick frost on ski-lifts. Be polite to the crazy man with the gun (well maybe that one doesn’t really afford you the opportunity to learn, but you get the point by now, surely).

Pretty early on in my career, I learnt that it’s not a good idea to leave yourself logged onto a computer in a common area of the office. I learnt this when a particularly grumpy, in fact downright fucking scary, manager called me into his office.

He said it was good that I was enjoying myself at my new workplace and he was glad that he had apparently made me feel so welcome, however it wasn’t necessary to thank him in such intimate terms; that I was a fit young man and my various offers and suggestions were flattering however he was happily married. He said he would see about actioning my request that we work together more often, but, given my professed crush on him, that it would probably be best not to.

He handed me a printed copy of the email that had been sent while I was in the toilet, and I noticed without surprise but with a fair degree of horror that it had, of course, been CC’ed to the entire office. So, in the ten years since that day, I’ve never walked away from an active computer . These days that’s a bit easier, cause I have my own desk, and no one comes near it without HazMat clearance and a Star Trek communicator.

Plenty of my younger colleagues, however, didn’t have the early instructive experiences that had benefited me, and so we come to why Katherine Hates Pants.

I work for a big organization. There are over ten thousand of us, in offices of various sizes, all over the state. One day, some peanut, let’s call him Bernard, at Head Office, where they have lots of company cars and parking provided, notices that some other peanut has left their headlights on in the multi-storey carpark attached to Head Office.

So Bernard types up an email, and sends it, with his line supervisor’s approval, to everyone in the organization who is listed as working at Head Office. No big deal, yeah? Except Bernard accidentally drags and drops the wrong Group Email into the address box, and the email goes to Everyone. In the State. Bernard fields quite a few phone calls and emails gently reminding him that he is, indeed, a peanut. Bernard and his boss tend to agree.

One of the people who replies to Bernard is some clown, let’s call him Brian, from one of our northern suburbs offices. Brian, being a clown, doesn’t know the difference between Reply and Reply All. So his complaint that he doesn’t work at Head Office, why is Bernard wasting resources with this stupid email Goes to Everyone. In The State.

No doubt Brian receives a few polite phone calls and emails as well. When this email starts arriving on every desk in our office, many were the calls of “dickhead left himself signed on!!!” “Nah, I know him, he’s the kind of dickhead who’d do that.” Et cetera.

Katherine is one of my younger colleagues, one I count amongst my friends. Katherine leaves her computer logged on while she attends to something vital in the kitchen, and I decide, in my mentoring role, I can teach her a salutary lesson about computers.

So I sit at her desk and hit Reply All on the email from Brian, then type out “I don’t even own a car! Why did I get this email?”. Now, I have absolutely no intention of sending this email, it’s just a “Hey, chick, don’t leave Outlook open when you’re not at your desk!”. As I’m writing out a Post It note to stick on her screen to this effect, I am interrupted by the arrival of an Idiot, let’s call him Zibby. Zibby asks what I’m up to, and I show him.

The next ten seconds last an eternity.

Zibby: “Is this a Global?”

Me: “Yes, it’s fucking global. I’m just gonna leave it like this to scare her.”

Zibby then types “I hate pants” at the bottom of the locked and loaded email.

I laugh.

Zibby: “So it’s global, hah!!”

Me: “Yes, fuckwit, it’s a fucking global! Go away!”

Zibby grabs Katherine’s mouse, and clicks Send.

I shit.

Me (very softly, listening to every computer in our office ping as it receives this new email, and imagining every computer in the state doing the same): “Fuck. You fucking stupid fucking fuck. Oh Damnation and Fuck.”

Zibby (voice suddenly goes high): “You said it was just to our office!!”

Me: “No, fuckfuck, I told you like fifteen fucking times, it was GLOBAL type global!”

Then Zibby shits.

Then Katherine gets back to her desk and wonders why we’re standing there looking like we just shit our pants. We explain that we have just shit our pants.

Then the emails start. Katherine starts screaming at us, quite legitimately demanding to know what the fucking fuck we’ve just done? Zibby is running around in circles, hoping the mothership will teleport him out. It doesn’t. I cannot stop laughing, not out of schadenfreude, just from sheer terror and hysteria. Katherine does not care about this fine distinction, and starts throwing stationery at me.

Then the phone calls start, most of them from senior management at offices all over country Victoria (they have more time than metropolitan managers, apparently). The only query seems to be “What’s wrong with pants?” Katherine doesn’t know, she didn’t fucking type the fucking thing!!!!!”

Zibby and I get in trouble from the boss, but we’re more scared of Katherine. The boss can put in a report about us. Katherine can actually glass us at Friday drinks.

We learn our lesson.

Until six months later, when Zibby manages to invite The Entire State to his place for a pool party.

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