HBO Max email gaffe: Social media users share their embarrassing workplace mistakes

Users on Twitter came together in support of the HBO intern and started sharing embarrassing stories of their workplace mistakes.

On June 17, millions of HBO Max’s subscribers received an email with a subject line “Integration Test Email #1”. The email’s body only had one line reading that “this template is used by integration tests only”.

Several subscribers took to social media to talk about what had happened, some even suspecting that it was a marketing stunt for some upcoming HBO Max series.

However, the American streaming service soon clarified that it was an “intern” who had erroneously sent out the emails.

“We mistakenly sent out an empty test email to a portion of our HBO Max mailing list this evening. We apologise for the inconvenience, and as the jokes pile in, yes, it was the intern. No, really. And we’re helping them through it,” HBO Max Help said in a tweet.

But, what was meant to put speculation to rest, ended up kicking off an internet storm. Users on Twitter came together in support of the 'intern' and started sharing embarrassing stories of their workplace mistakes. Soon, “Dear Intern” became a trend online.

Here are some hilarious tweets:

Dear Intern, I was using my desktop calendar to make a monthly note of when I started my menstrual period, but after several months I realized I was making that note on a calendar I shared with all of my colleagues company wide. I was 37 years old.

— Caissie (@Caissie) June 18, 2021

"Honestly I feel HONORED to have received this test email!!! thank you HBO intern!!!" said comedian Alexis Gay.

"Dear intern, at least you didn’t spin a studio camera 360° while on live TV. Didn’t get fired and I’ve made my way to weekend anchor! Only goes up from here, my friend!" said KAMR Local 4 News anchor Judd Baker.

dear intern:

it gets better.

ps. don’t wear a beret for awhile, k?

— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) June 18, 2021

"As an actual hired employee I changed the last name of everyone at the company in the HR system to “Holland”. A change which required them to restore the database from a backup. This was during my first week," said TheUrlList co-creator Burke Holland.

Dear intern,

It’s ok. I dropped a prod database when I was a senior engineer. These things happen more often than you might think. Building good systems is about having resilience against human mistakes. Because we, humans, always make mistakes.

— JBD ヤナ ドガン (@rakyll) June 18, 2021

"Dear Intern, I once didn’t recognize then-VP George HW Bush and almost didn’t let him into a meeting… in the Cabinet Room. Of The White House. Where he worked. He was actually as gracious as HBO Max Help appears to be being…you’ll be fine," said Twitter handle @postcards4USA.

Dear Intern,

I once had 5 minutes of dead air on a radio station I was the intern for because I took too long in the bathroom and the music stopped. It gets better https://t.co/MiXQa1G1Co

— Josh Michaels (@ImJoshMichaels) June 18, 2021