What was meant to be fun way for Gmail users to sign off emails with a punchline has resulted in horrific and possibly long-lasting results for some who were negatively affected by the company’s April Fool’s joke.

Today Gmail replaced the “Send & Archive” button with one that allowed users to instead attach an animated Minions “drops mic” gif (face it, who doesn’t love a good gif). The process and result thereof looked like this.

Looks suitably funny and cute right? Not if you mistakenly attach the gif to an important email you’re sending, say, to your boss or for a job interview, which is exactly what has happened according to some users.

These complaints were posted on the Gmail Help Forum, with some threatening to stop using the service:

Google has issued an apology to all those affected and subsequently removed the button.

Big corporations always have to tread carefully with April Fool’s Day jokes so that their brand and their customers or clients are in no compromised as a result.

It seems this time however, Google didn’t take enough time to consider the joke carefully. Not that the joke in itself was inappropriate, but the company could’ve presented it in such a way that users could, first of all, remove the button and most importantly, not replace a very commonly used button with the once-off feature.

Hard lesson learned.

[Image – Minions Wallpaper]