Past typos

[susans]

Have you ever made that stupid little typo or mistake that ends up embarrassing you?

[peaches2160]

I haven't made any worth being embarrassed about, but I have seen  a few.
When I worked in the training area, the worst was manger for Manager.  

I try not to get embarrassed when I made a mistake.  I just laugh it off, learn from it, fix it of course, and move on.

[jennika]

I think the most embarrassing was when inviting the CFO to a party, I invited Don B, when I needed to invite Dawn B.    I have seen a few good one, there was on horrible one that was just a translation error.  We have a decent amount of Hispanics in the organization, one admin that to plan the end of the year party. She decided to give it a south of the border theme and had a big banner saying Feliz Ano Nuevo.   In Spanish the word for Year is Año.   (with the ñ)  Ahh well, let's  just say .. ano isn't the nicest word and it insulted quite a few people.

[gee4]

No, my life wouldn't be worth living!

[JessW]

My most amusing typos have been correct as far as spelling and grammer are concerned, but totally changed the context of the sentence with humourous implications.  Luckily my bosses (and I would stress this was some years ago that I last made these mistakes!) had a good sense of humour and loved the errors which cheered them up no end!

[geminigirl]

One that I still do is sicnerely (sick-nearly!) for sincerely.  So much so that for years it's been on autocorrect.

But that's about it apart from adding an extra T to architecture - making it archTITecture.  That was embarrassing when I used to work for an architectural partnership but that was years ago!

Nowadays, thank god for spoll chicker.

[debby]

Yes,  in my earlier days here at my current employer, while putting a procurement bid package together, I accidentally let the spell check change the word public to pubic.

Good thing, my manager caught this before the bid packages were mailed.  Once the error was found, I made a mad dash to the mail room to retrieve all those envelopes and I ended up staying late that night fixing my earlier mistake.  Lesson learned even after spell checks changes my 'alleged' errors, I still print off the document and re-read it.

My manager and I still have a good laugh about this a couple of times per year.

[spitfire78]

This wasn't my typo (thank heavens!), but it was so funny that it stuck in my mind.

Many years ago, an admin was typing up an agenda that was being distributed company-wide.  One of the names on the agenda was Whitman, but she typed it Shitman.  And never caught it until after the distribution.  The rest of us admins first breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn't done it and then all had a good laugh at her expense.  Poor soul was absolutely mortified and issued a public apology to Mr. Whitman.  Fortunately, he took it well, and I believe even laughed about it.  

[msmarieh]

I was typing from dictaphone and the boss referenced a book called "The Fourth Great Awakening"... well you know what??? That sounds just like The Fourth Grade Awakening... LOL we laughed about it.

Marie

[misslynn]

One of the guys in my office sent out a big e-mail to a lot of people, instead of using the word 'liking', he wrote 'licking'. Not just once, he did it twice.

For my own, I sent a coversheet with my application for some community volunteer work. On the coversheet I described myself as having 'expensive' experience, instead of 'extensive'. Funny that I never heard back from them.

[suis]

I had to type this hand written "typo" report where, the person who created the first draft was not an admin and English was her second language.   But thinking about it, still makes me laugh.   Long story short, we had to double bubble wrap 6 bottles of chemicals then report discrepancies.  Through out the WHOLE report (must have been 5 or more times), wrap was typed rape and 6 was written .. well she dotted her i's so they looked alot like e's.  This was 100% NOT intentional and just really someone not thinking, this person was totally professional and would not submit a report just to be funny.  To this day, a co worker and I still giggle about the how you had to double bubble rape the sex vials of what ever chemical it was.  

[spitfire78]

Probably the most serious mistake I ever made wasn't really a typo.  I was sending an e-mail with attachment to a group of people.  The attachment was minutes from a meeting in which big bosses were discussing problems involving someone lower down on the food chain.  My boss was pushing me to get them out as quickly as possible at the end of the day (not really an excuse, I know), and I sent it out via e-mail using a nickname list.  Unfortunately, I completely forgot that the person who was being discussed was on the list, so this person got a copy of what was being discussed about him in the meeting, and it was not complimentary at all.  Needless to say, I was completely horrified and humiliated.  My boss and his boss were so extremely nice about it.  I called both of them personally as well as sending an e-mail to them apologizing for the error.  It was a serious breach of protocol that I have never forgotten.  Likewise, I have never forgotten their response to it.  Boss' boss actually said to me - well, we all make mistakes.  I've made my share.  And the world will certainly keep turning.  I know you didn't do it on purpose, so don't worry about it.  

I was practically in tears over it - both because of my error and in thankfulness of their reaction to it.  I have never ever forgotten this and have tried to be as thoughtful and forgiving of others who have made errors.

One of the decisions that came out of this that we all agreed upon was that never again would we send sensitive information via e-mail.  If the minutes had been sent as hard copies I know it never would have happened.

[misslynn]

Spitfire - it's amazing that doesn't happen more often, glad to hear your bosses were so understanding of it.  Something similar happened a couple years ago in my team.  Corporate was looking at possibly reducing the number of local admins, one of the managers sent an e-mail to the admins' bosses with an update on it.  I called him and reminded him that the admins have access to their boss's e-mail, we had to call all the managers and tell them to delete the e-mail immediately.  Too late though, several of the admins had already seen it.

[debbiedot]

A few gems I remember from our typing pool days mainly from the good ole 70s trying to work out what was being said on audio tapes:-

1)  "Excretia" payment instead of ex gratia payment
2)  Typing "the house was owned by My family" instead of the name Myfanwy
3)  My boss was doing a sponsored diet and I typed on the sponsor form he was to be weighed in "short trousers & shoes" instead of shirt, trousers & shoes
4)  Taken his tea into him in a sugar bowl instead of tea cup and he spent the meeting rotating the bowl trying to find the handle without letting on to customers!

And many many more that I can't think of straight away

[glow8490]

This typo (done by the HR admin.) has stuck in my mind for years. At a previous job I had in the early 90's we always had a weekly company newsletter waiting at the front receptionist every Monday morning.  One week there was a reference in the newsletter that some company information was being made available to all employees, but they had to submit a 5 1/4" floppy disk to H.R. to get a copy of the info. Unfortunately the H.R. admin. typed "floppy dick" instead of floppy disk. Glad it wasn't me doing the typing!