That time a lasagne crippled a global network

I look back on my first few years as a B2B marketer with genuine fondness.

Within nine months of joining BT Global Services I had a double promotion, responsibility for the professional services sector (nobody else wanted it), and a front row seat to one of the funniest things my then 22-year-old self had ever witnessed.

It centred around a cold lasagne.

We had a kitchen that was, let's say, in need of some discipline. The usual crimes. Cups nowhere near the dishwasher. Mystery spillages. Buffet sandwiches quietly composting on the table. And fridge items of deeply suspicious vintage.

Someone decided enough was enough. Every Friday, like clockwork, she audited the A2 kitchen fridge. Any food left over a weekend would meet its fate.

Then came a particular Friday. Around 4:59.

She found contraband Tupperware. Red mist descended. And in her haste to deliver justice she typed, in what I imagine was white-hot fury:

WHOSE LASAGNE IS THIS?

She did not check the To field.

She sent it to the global distribution list. Fifty thousand people.

What followed was magnificent. Ping. Ping. Ping. Colleagues across the building, across the country, across the world, receiving the same urgent lasagne inquiry. And then, helpfully, replying all to say it wasn't theirs. Or to ask to be removed from the chain.

By replying all.

The exchange server buckled. But we could still hear pings in the distance. Those of us left in the office had the energy of a trading floor at peak hours. We just sat back and watched the digital tsunami roll.

About an hour in, one of the sales guys came back from a client meeting he'd been in all afternoon. Completely missed it. We got him up to speed.

He sat down, started shutting his laptop, and muttered very quietly:

"Hey guys. I think that lasagne is mine."

I was so tempted to reply all with his name.

I didn't. Probably my finest act of professional restraint to date.

But I did write the song below about it all: