I Shouldn't Be So Judgmental...Of Typos

 I posted a picture last week of a sign on a motel. It was missing a letter and that struck me as funny. I snapped a couple of pictures and posted one, complete with a clever (to me...) little caption. 

Maybe I shouldn't have.

I mean, it's really just a typo, except of it being a misspelled word on a page, it's an incomplete word on a sign. Sort of the same thing.

I write a blog post every day. I've published a couple of books and have several short stories out there for all to see. And I'm prone to typos. There may even be typos in this post when it's all said and done. 

Typos are just mistakes. Some have bigger impact than others, of course. There's knock on self-published stories, because they--usually--aren't professionally edited or proofed, and because of that, those in the "approved" publishing world look down on them, and not just the books, but the authors as well. However, I have found typos on books published by established houses before. No one's really immunized from it, or very few, anyway.

I guess it's like taking the beam out of my own eye before I start pointing out the typos in other people's eyes...

Or motel signs that elcome you.

Well...That Was A Bummer

These most likely look like random numbers to you. There are a select few that can understand what they mean. They would have to work for the same employer that I work for, and they would have to work on the same computer program that I work on.

Like I said, a select group.

I am a caseworker and have several hundred cases assigned to me. Yesterday, I was instructed to shift some of those cases to some of the co-workers on my team. They're new and it's time for them to take on more work, more responsibility. Of course, I'm a team-player and want to help them on their journey. I gladly begun transferring the cases.

I started transferring yesterday afternoon. It took several hours and I was only halfway through. Right now, we're upgrading from an old version of our program to a newer version. It's a complicated program taking several years to build. Because of that, there are some shortcuts built in that I know about, but many more I don't. I was getting tired of transferring cases the old-fashioned way. I thought I'd try and see if I could figure out one of those shortcuts.

Nope. 

I didn't figure out a shortcut. I actually transferred every case I had to a poor co-worker, and a newbie at that. I hurried and called the help desk to see if they could somehow fix my mistake. The guy just laughed. He apologized for laughing, but I knew how he felt. It was laugh-worthy.

It took several hours to fix the error. Thankfully, I was caught up and was able to get my regular workload done today even with the distraction. No...the old adage of "slow and steady wins the race" is a good one. Next time, I'll make better decisions. Live and learn.