The randomly generated name for the Google Docs templates has become a real punishment for a real person.

Meet Casey Baumer

Most of the design templates in Microsoft Office documents or Google Docs are crammed with meaningless texts that show the user what the finished document will look like. Usually, a distorted passage from the philosophical treatise of Marc Tullius Cicero, On the Limits of Good and Evil, is used as a filler text. It was written in 45 BC. and this text is not subject to copyright.

Many document templates, such as resumes, require the name of a person. Some authors of templates insert simply “First Name Last Name”. Well, someone generates a fictitious name and works with it. Developers from Google Docs decided to go exactly along this path. They chose the name Casey Baumer and inserted it into almost all the service document templates. But as it turned out, Casey Baumer is a real person. And this man began to write hundreds of strangers.

For two years now, pretty Casey Baumer, who works as a food designer (or a food stylist, if you will), has to deal with reports from users of Google Docs. The messages are mostly aggressive.
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The first message she received two years ago. She wrote a friend who asked: "Wow, did you know that your name is now used in Google Docs?". At that time, she did not understand what was going on. But then I understood.



A Google representative said the company chose this name instead of the usual John Smith or Jane Smith to add originality to the documents. As soon as the name appeared in the templates, Casey Baumer began receiving dozens of not very good messages in dozens.



At first she was amused by it, and she simply ignored incoming messages, or answered, explaining the situation. But a year ago she looked into the “Other” folder in her inbox and saw a bunch of messages from disgruntled users. Some of them thought that she had hacked their Google Docs accounts, and put down her name for a mercenary purpose.



Some users were very, very unhappy with the “burglary” of their boxes.



There were also personal messages. For example, Casey was written by a girl who asked why the name Casey Baumer appears on all of her husband’s documents on Google Docs.



Casey tried to explain something, but soon realized that it was just meaningless. “If you look beyond the name on the document, it will immediately become clear that this document is not real,” says the girl. "But people obviously do not read it!"



A little later, her name even got into the stories of some authors.



Casey wonders if Google used to google her name before putting it down everywhere.



After a while, Casey got so sick of it that she posted a call for help to Facebook: “If someone works at Google or Google Docs or knows someone who works there. PLEASE HELP ME. Google used my name for all template documents. Anyone who works with Google Docs sees my name on the templates. I receive Facebook messages from people who think that I have an affair with someone's husband EVERY DAY. I get messages from people who think I hacked their computer. I get messages from people who think I stole their school work. AND MUCH MORE. If you do not know anyone who works at Google, then let's make this post viral, hoping that Google will see it and # change the name !!! ".

It worked. The case of Casey was noticed by many people and companies. Finally decided to deal with this problem and Google. A company representative has already announced that the company has begun the process of replacing the name on its templates.



Casey hopes that the company will complete this work as soon as possible, and it will stop tormenting strangers.

I must say that Casey is still lucky. There are situations when a failure in Google services leads to the demolition of the house, which just needed to be repaired. Homeowners residing in Texas, USA, requested repairs to the building because the house was damaged due to a tornado (back in 2015). The building was located at 7601 Calypso Dr., as seen on the map. Ironically, the Google Maps map service believes that the house is also located here, which, in fact, is located at 7601 Cousteau Dr. The second house needed not to be repaired, but demolished. And the team of building liquidators, having not understood, destroyed a completely different building .

A failure in the GPS system led to the fact that people who were looking for their missing phones started coming to the house of a young couple. As it turned out, the search service used by the owners of the lost and stolen devices pointed to their home. And all these people were all owners of phones of different brands, with different operating systems. Lost smartphones were tied to different operators, including AT & T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint. And the problem was not so easy to solve .