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Company emails were formatted First Initial Last Name @ Companyname . com. I have a common nickname I’m known by. Nobody calls me by my given name, and my nickname had a different first letter. My company email uses my given name. Pretend it’s clastname@company.com.

I start getting phone calls from customers, suppliers, people outside the company, etc. that any email they send to me is getting bounced back. When I ask what address they’re sending to, they’re using an email created using my nickname. Pretend it’s dlastname@company.com. So I tell them it’s wrong, give them the right one, and fix it one caller at a time.

This gets old, and it happens while the IT manager is talking to someone else in the department when it happens again. I walk over to her and ask if it’s possible to have a second email address based on my nickname, because I’m getting a lot of calls about people using that instead of my official address.

“Absolutely not. If I give you a second address, pretty soon everyone is going to want one.”

One of the engineering managers is standing there. He says “I don’t want one.” Another engineer speaks out “I don’t want one either.” IT manager is pissed, but stands her ground. I don’t get another address.

Pretty soon, I get a phonecall from a college intern that was planning to come back for the summer. He says my email address doesn’t work. I explain the issue, and give him the right address.

He says “That’s not what’s on the webpage.”

For some stupid reason, the company webpage had everybody’s email address on it. Except mine was wrong. When IT made the page, they put dlastname@company.com on it. But since that was wrong, all email was returned to sender.

I talked to the IT contractor about it, and he basically said “That’s stupid. It’s a 30 second fix, I’ll take care of it.” And a few minutes later, I had two email addresses and the issue was fixed.