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Fortune has an article up today about how dumb email mistakes end up costing people their jobs or their reputation.

For most of us, common sense and good values keep such problems at bay. But there are plenty of gray areas when it comes to e-mail, and even sensible executives - the ones who stayed awake in the HR training sessions - can be tripped up by an unintended nuance or other inadvertent slip. Fortunately, following a few surprisingly basic rules can help.

While these specific cases all deal with illegal activity documented in emails, many of us cubefarmers have seen our fair share of grey-area emails forwarded around at work.

One summer, I had an internship working for the same county government as my mother. Since our names both begin with J, our email addresses were almost identical. She had j, and I had ja.

Of course, one of the guys in my office decided to forward an email that was definitely a bit risque. And then I got the call from my mother.

Oops.

I wasn't fired or anything and my mom was pretty cool about it. But it just goes to show how casual we are sometimes with email, especially at the office.

So think about it the next time you consider passing along that funny forward you just got. What would happen if the president of the company saw it? Or what would happen if a highly sensitive co-worker saw it?

What are your bad work email experiences?