These last 3 days I've been working on an OTP implementation for a login page
OTP stands for "One-Time-Password". Do you know how, on some web pages, you try to log in but can't until you insert a code sent to your email? This was an implementation of that.
We use test accounts to work locally and in our implementation environments. These accounts were made a looong time ago, and we use them whenever we need to log into that environment.
So, I grabbed a random account from the list that's always available to us and got to work. Every time I tried to log in, an email was sent. Was it my email? Pffff, no. Do you know if I checked who I was emailing? Pffff, no.
And then, we got a teams message from our boss with the @everyone tag.
Could we stop spamming user 28574930 with emails?
"Hey guys, just got a message from Damon Connor (one of our clients) saying that he keeps getting a bunch of spam emails relating to a token. It seems like this account, 28574930, has his email associated with it. Can we either stop using that user or change the account's email?"
Suddenly, people are asking around. "Hey, anybody using this account?" "Not me, I'm using this other account". "What about you Rachel?" "Nope, me and Andy use this other one."
"What about you Mauro? Have you been using it?"
Silence...
"Mauro?"
I sigh.
The jig is up. I have to come clean. So, with all my strength and all my might, I puff up my chest and ready myself to say the truth. I open my mouth and these words come out:
And they never found me again.
The end.
ALRIGHT, you got me. I ended up saying Oopsie Daisy, it was me. My bad! And then I stopped using that account to not annoy our client further. Honest mistake.
But in my defense...
The idea of accidentally spamming a client with, what I imagined would have been over 100 emails in just a few hours is very funny
Obviously, never with malice or real intent. But the accidental nature of it just adds a dimension of humor that makes me chuckle even a few days later.
I guess this email serves as a triple reminder.
- Double-check your work, don't be like me, and make sure you never spam anybody by accident.
- Be okay with taking the blame, laugh it off, and avoid it in the future
- Check out the Exceptional Frontend toolkit to learn how to ask better questions, become a better developer, and truly level up 😎
