COLUMBUS, OH — A routine Tuesday morning at Meridian Solutions turned existential for Marcus Delgado, 41, after he accidentally replied to a company-wide announcement email with a grocery list, a reminder about a 4 p.m. appointment with “Dr. Fenn (the feelings one),” and the message “honey do you want the organic or does it not matter.”

Delgado immediately attempted to activate Microsoft Outlook’s Recall This Message feature, which informed him the recall had been “sent,” a confirmation that means, technically, nothing. Follow-up notifications arrived over the next eleven minutes informing him that 4,200 individual recipients had each declined the recall, most without opening it, through a passive automated process they had no knowledge of.

“I just kept clicking Recall,” said Delgado, who remained in his home office with the lights off. “It kept telling me it was working. It was not working.”

“The recall feature exists so that you feel you have done something. You have not done something. The email is with the people.”

Meridian’s IT director, Pamela Woo, 53, confirmed the message was unrecoverable and noted this was the third recall attempt she had witnessed this fiscal year, all unsuccessful. “The grocery list was actually very organized,” she said. “Categorized by aisle. Honestly, I think people respected it.”

Delgado has since sent a follow-up reply-all apologizing for the first reply-all, which introduced 4,200 people to the existence of Dr. Fenn who had not previously been aware of him.

At press time, a colleague in the Portland office had replied-all with “we’re out of almond milk too lol,” generating 47 additional reply-all responses and one prayer chain.