When most people think of insurance companies, they picture boring, stuffy old buildings filled with bland leather chairs and humorless, pencil-necked guys in suits. And, in general, that tends not to be far from the truth.

CJ worked at a blue-chip insurance company that we'll call L&G. He worked at the helpdesk at their head offices in Surrey. This was years and years ago, when spellcheck was a young enough feature that users hadn't yet developed a healthy level of fear and respect for.

L&G would frequently send out boring mailings about boring services they offered boringly, which would be distributed to their thousands of sales reps (2,500 in the UK alone). On one of these mailings, they were advertising the option to purchase additional pensions on retirement. The marketing plan and ad copy went through various levels of management and was eventually passed down to a clerical assistant to type up, copy, and mail to thousands and thousands of insurance reps.

Thanks to the newfangled spellchecker technology and a poor proofreading job, L&G found itself offering accidentally all existing clients the option of purchasing "additional penises upon retirement." This is the perfect retirement plan for players of Second Life, a game in which peddling penises (ha, I bet you're afraid to click that link) is not only creepy, but highly lucrative. And if any L&G reps are out there reading this, I'll take seven, thanks.

Surprisingly, the offer of additional penises didn't get the response L&G had hoped for. Only one response came in from an amused sales rep, describing his clients as having "a lot of interest in the possibility of purchasing additional penises," and asking for more information on the offer.

L&G, far from the stereotypical humorless insurance company, issued the following response:

Dear Sir,

Due to unforeseen demand we would like to apologize for the premature withdrawal of this offer.

Sorry guys, looks like you'll just have to make do with what you've already got.

[Advertisement] BuildMaster allows you to create a self-service release management platform that allows different teams to manage their applications. Explore how!