Friday, May 16, 2008

Ubiquitous

There's someone out there with the same first and last names as me, who has the same email address as me except with a middle initial in it. Some time ago she apparently began putting the wrong email address (mine) on forms left and right. Long story short, I ended up finding out her real email address and now I forward her anything that comes to my inbox that isn't spam but is clearly not for me. (Yes, I can be a nice person sometimes.)

The strange thing is that, judging by her email, my doppelganger lives in several different places. She's supporting Barack Obama's campaign in Washington state, taking her kid to gymnastics lessons in Houston, and, according to the evite I got today, perhaps attending a barbecue in northern New Jersey. Or, more likely, these are three different people. Maybe I will track down all of their email addresses eventually and end up routing their mail like one of those old-time phone operators. Except that it will also feel like that restaurant scene in Being John Malkovich.

4 comments:

towwas said...

Nice! J.Vo had an e-mail doppelganger in college who was much less nice - when people made the [perfectly reasonable] mistake of e-mailing the doppelganger instead of J.Vo, rather than just forwarding the message, she would reply to them and point out how stupid they were.

Anonymous said...

You're entirely too nice. I think I've only ever gotten one misdirected email. It got consigned to the Great Bitbucket.

Anonymous said...

I know how that feels. The people who rented my house before I bought it ran a business selling faux primitive furniture and decorative items. They have bought a house down the street.

Anyway, apparently Verizon never changed the number between when they left and I moved in. They closed their store and now only do mail-order, or something like that.

Last year around Christmas I got 3 or 4 messages on my answering machine from various previous customers looking for where to find them (apparently directory assistance still listed them under my number somehow).

It got so bad that I finally changed my outgoing phone message to say that they don't live here and gives their new number.

When I moved to Ithaca I had a similar experience, where I kept getting messages from an elderly woman trying to reach her oncologist. I finally changed my message in that case, too.

*sigh*

In your case I'd probably investigate getting a new gmail alias and training my associates to use it instead, and abandon the one which overlaps with the Mystery You.

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Come to think of it, I've had phone messages from people who thought I was a doctor's office or something. My extremely unprofessional outgoing message didn't deter them from trying to set up an appointment. The zenith (or nadir, I guess) was one unhappy individual complaining about how poorly they were treated and that they would never do business with me (as it were) again. As no one ever left a return phone number, I could never call anyone back to explain their mistake.