Oops! Did you accidentally let an email slip through the cracks of your inbox, only to realise days (or maybe even weeks) later that you never replied? Don't worry, we've all been there! In the fast-paced world of digital communication, it's easy for a well-intentioned email response to turn into a forgotten item on your to-do list. But fear not, because we're going to be diving into the art of gracefully recovering from the 'I totally forgot to reply' moment. 

Let's explore the gentle, witty, and oh-so-relatable ways to make amends when your inbox plays hide and seek with your good intentions.

1. Tell them you’re sorry and follow it up by giving them a heads-up

Apologise first but then say, “Sorry for the delay and forgetting to reply back to your email!” and then add, “I’m going to reply really fast for the next day to make up for it because I’ll probably forget to reply again as soon as next week just as a heads up.” Politely let them know in advance.

2. Come up with an excuse

Come up with an excuse that will make them feel too dumbfounded to question you about the situation.

Give them an excuse like, “Sorry I didn’t reply; I was too busy sifting through my work emails.”

3. Say your email isn’t working lately

Write up a generic auto-email response and send it to that one person you’ve forgotten to reply to and say that, unfortunately, your inbox isn’t working for some reason, so that’s why you’ve been currently unavailable on email. Pretty much, blame the software for the reason you missed their message and allow them to think that it wasn’t you, but a technical issue.

 4. Make it incomprehensible

Make your response unreadable. Write a long paragraph of confusing jargon so they can’t even challenge you for forgetting to reply. ChatGPT should be able to create something that infuses over-complicated words into something utterly ridiculous.

Here’s an example:

“Apologies for my tardiness in correspondence, as I’ve been a symphony of silence. The gravitational pull of my inbox formed a singularity of unread messages, resulting in a cosmic collision of priorities. Alas, amidst the interstellar chaos, your email found itself temporarily entangled in a quantum quandary, trapped in the quantum superposition of both read and unread”—anything that doesn’t make sense will work.

5. Blame it on your guilt

Blame it on feeling worried about the whole scenario. Because it’s been so long since that initial email, say it’s stressing you out just thinking about having to reply, and you can’t deal with that stress at the moment.

“Sorry, I haven’t emailed you back for several weeks. Because it’s been so long, just having to explain myself is giving me anxiety, so please give me some more time while I deal with this.” In other words, you’re telling them to not follow up on this email for the sake of your mental wellbeing.