The Flop Hat: The Day I Blocked the Entire Internet

Published under The Flop Hat on HatStacked.com

It was supposed to be a simple fix: block the spam, restore inbox peace, and move on with my evening. Instead, I shut the door on every customer, vendor, and partner trying to reach us because I flipped an expression.

There’s something uniquely mortifying about realizing your “quick fix” just created a company-wide communications blackout.

All I wanted to do was stop one very annoying spam campaign. Instead, I created a compliance rule in Google Workspace that told our email system to only accept spam and reject everything else.

No, seriously. That’s exactly what happened.

The Box I Shouldn't Have Checked

We were getting hammered with emails that had the exact same subject line. Obvious spam. Dozens at a time. Google’s built-in filters weren’t catching them, and I was tired of manually flagging them.

So I logged into the Google Workspace Admin console and wrote a compliance rule that would reject any message with that subject.

Except I didn’t.

What I actually told it to do was:

Reject anything that does not contain that subject.

So what got through? Just the spam.
What didn’t? Every legit message from clients, suppliers, teammates... you name it.

I had essentially built a force field that only spam could pass through.

When Silence Becomes Suspicious

The rule went live in the evening. I didn’t notice anything was wrong for about two hours. Then a message popped up from our sales rep:

“Customer says their quote email bounced. Weird?”

Then another:

“Vendor X says their invoice bounced back.”

And suddenly it hit me.
That rule I proudly wrote to eliminate one very specific message had turned our entire domain into a digital hermit.

It was like building a drawbridge… and forgetting to add a gate.

Kind of reminds me of when I missed payroll and had to cut paper checks like it was 1998. Different system, same chaos.

Related: The Week I Forgot to Pay Us All

Undoing the Damage

Fixing the rule took less than a minute. The damage control? That was the real job.

I had to:

• Reassure confused customers who thought we were ghosting them
• Ask vendors to resend emails (after explaining why their messages exploded)
• Let the team know everything was fine… now

I used the phrase “temporary filtering misconfiguration” a lot.
It sounds so much better than “I accidentally blocked the entire internet.”

How to Avoid This Particular Brand of Shame

1. Test Before You Wreck

Google Workspace lets you simulate compliance rules before enabling them. It’s buried in the interface, but it’s there. Use it. If I had tested mine, I would’ve caught the logic error instantly.

2. Quarantine First, Nuke Later

If you're writing a brand-new rule, set the action to quarantine or tag emails first. You can always crank up the punishment later once you're sure it works.

3. Exceptions Are Your Best Friend

Your team. Your domains. Your key vendors. Exclude them. No one wants to explain to a manufacturer why their purchase order bounced because you got clever with a checkbox.

4. Set a Trigger Alert

You can configure alerts when a rule activates. That would’ve saved me about 90 minutes of “everything seems oddly quiet…”

5. Back Away From the Admin Console After 5 PM

The odds of breaking something scale directly with how close you are to the end of the workday. Trust me.

When Automation Overachieves

In theory, rules are helpful. They prevent spam, enforce policies, and keep things tidy.

But in practice? They do exactly what you tell them to. And if you tell them to block the world, they’ll do it with the efficiency of a medieval moat.

This wasn’t our biggest flop. No money lost, no customers screaming. But it was a good reminder that even “small” mistakes in admin panels can punch way above their weight class.

If you’ve ever fat-fingered a setting, misclicked a filter, or deployed a “helpful” automation that set fire to your entire workflow… welcome to the club.

You’re in good company.