Here’s a funny little anecdote that we thought we’d share on the dangers of working while on holiday. Recently, one of our team members who we’ll call Fernando (he said he’d rather not be named) went away for a few days to Venice with his fiancee. Despite the fact that he was away, he couldn’t get his head out of work mode and spent quite a lot of his time on his phone trying to get stuff done.

Fernando is the sort of guy who, even when he does find time to relax, wants to do it efficiently.  So he happily discovered a new time-saving hack in Apple’s iPhone voice command tool, using it to flick between Instagram reels while he was in the shower without having to use his hands.

That evening one of our larger customers had an issue and our Fernando sent it to our developers to sort it out. Come the next morning, the problem had been fixed and he went to send a quick email confirming that to the customer. In the middle of drafting that email, his fiancee started asking him when he’d be ready to leave the hotel.

Fernando quickly gave her a response that he’d need a little time to get ready. Unfortunately for him, he still had the voice command turned on on his phone. To his dismay the email he had accidentally sent read:

“Hi…

The issue has been sorted. I still have to shower and poop.”

Poor Fernando spent the whole day beating himself up while his fiancee laughed at his (admittedly very funny) mistake. Eventually, he decided the best solution was to email the customer back and blame the offending sentence on his young nephew stealing his phone.

After a sleepless night, Fernando awoke to a reply:

“Hi Fernando,

Thanks for the prompt resolution.
And no problem at all - I do hope the poop and shower went well!
It was a great start to our day.”

Thankfully, the email incident ended up being nothing more than an amusing story, yet it carries a valuable lesson for us all. It’s important for all of us to relax from time to time, but when you are going to work. You’ve got to give it your full attention, if you don’t, it might just turn to poop.

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