Mom accidentally invites all 487 contacts to daughter's 1st birthday party
FILE - Birthday cake with chocolate icing decorated with balloons and sprinkles. (Photo by: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
A California mom planning a first birthday party for her baby girl accidentally invited all 487 contacts ever saved onto her cell phone.
Emily King, a 30-year-old teacher in San Jose, explained the mistake in a now-viral TikTok video while using Evite, the digital invitation service she was using on her phone, earlier this month.
"I just made an Evite for my daughter's first birthday party and on Evite it says, 'Import contacts' and I thought it meant import to select through (the contact names)," King said in the video, which now has more than 14 million views.
"No, it imported all 487 of my contacts and invited them to this birthday party," King continued. "Not only did it invite my boss, all of my coworkers, all of the people that have ever been stored in my phone but it sent invitations based off of how they are stored in my phone."
"I want you to just take a second and think about everyone stored in your phone and how they're stored in your phone," King added. "And then imagine someone receiving an invitation ... 'Derek Eye Roll.' He received an invitation. 'Jess Hit Her Car In Parking Lot.'"
"Anyways, I have to quit or get a new identity," she joked. "I don’t even know."
The TikTok video has more than 24,000 comments.
"This should qualify you for witness protection," one user joked. "I would be SPIRALING," another chimed in. "I think evite owes you compensation," a third person wrote.
Many noted the unusual contact names people have saved in their own phones.
"I have someone saved as ‘restraining order,’" one person wrote.
"I would die if ‘Mark STILL OWES ME 100’ came to my son's bday," another quipped.
Evite saw King’s TikTok video and created an app update that it labeled the "Emily Hotfix."
"We immediately reached out to Em as soon as we saw her post! While we have several steps in place so that things like this don't occur for guests, Em's journey inspired something we call the ‘Emily Hotfix’ that removes the ‘select all’ function on iOS apps," Olivia Pollock, Evite's senior director of brand marketing, told FOX Television Stations. "We're always learning from our users, and hope this update is a help for other users too!"
Additionally, Evite also sent King’s family $500 worth of DoorDash gift cards to help pay for the bigger party, the company told FOX Television Stations.
Among the accidentally invited were roughly 70 of King’s students at school, she told Today.com. The day after the invites went out, King’s students were gossiping about the party.
"There were a lot of, 'I wasn't invited, but you were’ conversations," King told the outlet, noting how she had to un-invite colleagues too – including "New science teacher I think?" and "David parking lot attendant," and her vice-principal.
Fortunately, King said many guests didn’t actually RSVP for the "Lord of the Rings"-themed 1st birthday party in June. She also decided to expand her guest list from 50 to 70 invitees, according to Good Morning America.
This story was reported from Cincinnati.