Email Trash and McD’s Reputation

I don’t get a lot of junk mail and I like it that way. I do, however, receive forwarded mail from friends which I have to read (they are from friends don’t ya know).

A couple days ago I got one about McDonalds and the source of their beef. I was going to pass it along to you here so… I checked it out. Guess what… It was bogus. In fact, it’s been in circulation now for eight years and was a lie right from the start. It looked real, had upsetting info in it (made me mad at McD’s), was so believable and even included the authors name and contact information (the only part that was accurate except that he didn’t author the thing).

So now what? I thought…

Maybe I’ll just drop it and chock it up to experience. Nope. In fact, I copied the article (one of many exposing the fraud) and sent it to the friend who sent me the original mail. I felt the need to correct the bad info, for McD’s benefit at least not to mention my friends future gullibility. Along with it I felt the need to apologize for correcting the error and to assure that friend that I wasn’t being judgmental. Was that really necessary? Unfortunately I think it was. We’re all so defensive that our feelings are hurt when we, among so many things, have to admit we’ve been duped.

Now there’s a new question on my mind. Will I ever get another forwarded message from my friend? I hope so because that will tell me that I’ve handled the situation properly and my friend took no offence. We all fall prey to false information and I hope this instance serves to help us all to communicate in a helpful way after all, the McD’s beef article was forwarded by someone with my best interest at heart. Right?

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