I came out as trans and changed my name last year, and with the name change I set up a new email alias for work. Then I set up automation to send out a gentle reminder email about the change for people who emailed my old alias. It worked fantastically for a few months… right up until the point that (due to a series of individually innocent events) the automation ended up running across the entirety of my 7 years worth of inbox. Everyone who had mailed me over the 7 years prior to the name change started getting the reminder email. One reminder for each email they had sent me. The worst part is that due to a bug in the email automation stuff, emails sent by the automation weren’t preserved in my sent box. So I don’t even know how many people I spammed. If I had to guess, I sent dozens of emails to the CEO and other execs, hundreds to my director, and thousands to people who worked closely with me over the years.
I learned a valuable lesson that day.