Oops...

A friend of mine - now retired - used to run a largish Arts organisation in the area, and some years ago found himself going through the annual routine of meeting the the representative of the government-sponsored funding body to renew the hefty grant which they had been receiving for many years.

He had been dealing with this man for most of those years, and the man was not particularly popular amongst the various Arts activity administrators to whom he dealt out the cash.

My friend had received an email from the grants officer about the renewal, and decided to forward it on to an administrator in his own company to deal with, for the reasons given above. The email went something like this:

Hello Betty (obviously not her real name). Could you deal with this please and arrange a meeting for whenever convenient to all parties.

Her reply went almost exactly like this:

I would rather eat my own shit than have to spend another hour in a room with this horrible man.

The trouble was that she sent it to the Arts Council funding officer and not her boss.

They instantly lost £170,000 together with their jobs, and never received a regular grant from the funding body again.

During a meeting to discuss the situation, they could not stop laughing about it. They went to the pub and the landlord asked them why they were all laughing so much.

"Because we've all just lost our jobs!"