I accidentally showed my employer an email confirming my new job, before I gave my notice.
Context
So this morning I accepted a job offer (yay!). It was a difficult decision because I enjoy my current job and I love my colleagues, but the new position is a better fit with the kind of work I want to be doing.
I got an email from the recruiter this afternoon confirming my acceptance.
I haven’t signed a contract yet and I also haven’t given my current employer my notice, and it’s been a bit uncomfortable being at the office acting normal when I know I’ll be dropping this bomb soon.
We are a small company, I’m in a close-knit team of only 4 people, all of us are good at our jobs and we are quite busy. My leaving will be unexpected and not great for the team, and I do feel bad about it.
Unfortunately for me, I now have an even better reason to feel bad.
So this afternoon I was in a meeting with my team, including my team lead and our “manager” (who is also the CEO and whom we all get on well with).
We were brainstorming some design solutions (I’m a designer) and my colleague suggested there was a feature in Gmail that was similar to what we wanted to achieve. I was already sharing my screen, so I logged into my personal Gmail without thinking (work email is a different platform)…
At the top were 2 unread emails, but below that in the Read section, The Email was the top one, with subject “Job offer” and preview “Thank you for accepting our offer! We’re glad you want to join our company.” (paraphrasing here)
I didn’t realise until like 5-10 seconds in when I immediately opened a new tab and tried to play it off. I am absolutely mortified. No one let on that they saw it, but if they did (and I think that’s not unlikely), the email preview left absolutely zero doubt about what was going on.
I really hope my new employer will send me the contract tomorrow (my day off) so I can sign it ASAP and give my notice first thing Monday… and apologise profusely in case my boss saw it.
I really really really did not want them to find out like this.