WHEN I NEARLY COST MY BOSS A LAW SUIT....WELL ALMOST

When reading River's post today she mentioned her ability and sometimes inability to touch type.  In particular she mentioned certain letters that would sometimes get in her way when she didn't want them to.

This brought to mind one particular failing of mine that constantly happens when I am typing (and I am a good touch typist even though I say it myself).  I tend to transpose NOT and NOW and I do it repeatedly.

In 1974 I worked for a real estate firm in Cottesloe and did quite a lot of shorthand typing while there. In those days we used IBM Selectric electric typewriters.  There was a really nice Dutch chap from whom I often took dictation.  On this particular afternoon he had several letters for me to type ready to be posted that afternoon.  I got them typed in time for him to sign them that day and off they went.

The following morning Carl came straight to me when he arrived and beckoned me into his office. It seems when he had been signing the letters the previous night he'd only scanned through them quickly before signing them in order to get them into that night's mail.   After that he checked them again and there was one particular client he was writing to with whom they had had many problems over time and one who would sue anyone for almost anything he could possibly think of.

This gentleman's wife had been ill and at the bottom of this particuar letter Carl had said "I trust your wife's health has now improved." or words to that affect.  A bit of flannel there of course to keep in this chap's good books.....BUT:

My oddity had come to the fore once again and it read "I trust your wife's health has NOT improved."

You can imagine how horrified Carl was when he realised what I had typed and what he had missed seeing.  This particular client lived in Vincent Street in North Perth opposite Hyde Park (a very large treed park in that area).  The next morning Carl left home a little earlier than usual and parked his car on the verge of the park waiting for the postman to arrive at this client's house.  Fortunately they had a reasonably early delivery that day and as soon as Carl saw the postman deliver mail at that house he hopped out of his car, crossed the road, checked through the mail in the box and grabbed the letter from our firm.

Luckily nobody caught Carl in the act of interfering with the Royal Mail, which is of course a criminal offence.  I think he moved that quickly that nobody would have had time to realise what he was doing anyway so he got away with it.

We both breathed a sigh of relief knowing all was well that had ended well and had saved our firm a possible law suit.   I immediately typed a new letter being careful about my accuracy which Carl read through carefully, signed it and asked the office girl to pop over to the post office with it straight away.   Carl and I then sat and enjoyed a cup of morning tea and couldn't help but have a good laugh over the episode.  In hindsight it was funny but could have ended very differently and quite seriously for all concerned.

Strangely enough I still transpose those two words so obviously any lesson I should have learned from above the above incident did nothing to correct this error I still make.

I only worked for that firm for 6 months as I didn't think much of the bosses and their treatment of their sales staff and their whole attitude to just about everything and decided I'd prefer not to be associated with them any longer.  I gave them two weeks notice and was fortunate to obtain a wonderful job with the Forests Department in Como where I worked from 1974 to 1986 when a car accident put an end to my working life, much to my regret.

P.S. Even modern-day "spell check" wouldn't have picked up the error as both NOW and NOT are both normal words.