“I Love Justin Bieber’s New Haircut” — Woman Horrified After Realizing She Never Deleted Her Teen Email Signature
"How did literally NO ONE tell you in that time?!"
Published Sept. 26 2024, 5:00 a.m. ET
Jessica Stahle (@jessicastahle31) is urging folks to check their Gmail settings, specifically their signatures, in a "cautionary tale" PSA she posted to TikTok that's accrued over 76,000 views on the popular social media application.
Jessica begins her clip by speaking into the camera, revealing that for years, she has unknowingly been signing off her email correspondence with an embarrassing signature: "I'm in love with Justin Bieber's new haircut!!!!"
While it might be cute for a teen to let everyone know what they think about their favorite pop star's personal stylings, as an adult, it's a toss-up between humiliating and concerning.
Jessica thought that the email signature was "optional" and that whenever she would send messages from her laptop's web browser, she would simply delete the signature from the dialog box.
However, the TikToker says that the majority of her emails these days are sent from her phone, where she never sees the message at the bottom of her correspondence — just a simple sign off that says, "Sent from my iPhone."
The influencer concedes that while she probably should've deleted the message a long time ago, she wanted to keep the memories of being a Belieber alive, but never thought that the email signature was going to be attached to every single email she sent from her iPhone.
Unfortunately, one day while sending an email message to a "top dog" manager at the company she works with, Jessica forgot to delete the Justin Bieber haircut email signature. Freaking out, she decided to message her work friend, asking her what she should do in this situation.
Her pal laughed about the mix-up but said that it's already been too far gone and that she probably shouldn't worry about it too much. "Do I address it? Do I ignore it? Do I talk to him privately the next time I see him? I don't know how to go about this," she said, chronicling her stress over the situation.
As it turns out, her manager and her work friend laughed over the signature via an email conversation and she thought that it was "water under the bridge" at that point.
Until some time later, when another one of her managers told Jessica that she loved how she was unapologetically herself in her emails.
Jessica thought that this manager had become privy to the private conversation she had with her other work friend and the "top dog" manager, however, this wasn't the case.
So she asked this other woman at her job how she knew about the Justin Bieber email signature mishap, to which the woman replied that she could see all of the emails she sent.
This caused her to spiral into a panic where she went back and looked at all of the emails she had ever sent at the company. She soon learned that even though her iPhone email signatures were missing, the ones she sent from her desktop still showcased her love for Justin Bieber's new haircut.
"Approximately 60 percent of emails [she's] ever sent" in the company contained the signature. Wanting to know how this happened, she decided to delve into her Gmail settings to see just how this mistake occurred.
"I go into my desktop version, I go into my settings and I'm like, 'What did I do?' Turns out I was on a setting that made sure that signature was embedded into the email, no matter what, at the very bottom of the page."
This meant that the signature was going to stick to every message she sent. "Even if I deleted it, it was still embedded into the emails."
What's more, she says she's used that same email address to apply to colleges and jobs. "That email address is my primary form of contact with my extended family. I even applied to some colleges with that email address."
Upset, she said that "no one thought to tell" her about the signature, or at least give her a heads up that they found her message to be unprofessional, not even her family members who may have seen her signature.
TikTokers in the comments section of her video shared their own embarrassing email stories. So at least Jessica can console herself with the fact that she's not alone in her shame.