Rough day at the office ...

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I want to laugh and cry at the same time!

Our marketing department hired an ad agency to develop a new brochure for my program and I was responsible for overseeing the process and editing it, which is fine because I used to work in publishing before taking my current job and have a copyediting background.

The brochures came out a few months ago and have been getting handed out in the community, but I only looked at one of them for the first time yesterday. I had been having a really, really bad day to begin with, but it got worse when I noticed a mistake in the text.

We have a toll-free number that is 888-XXX-XXXX, but it got printed as 800-XXX-XXXX, the same number but the wrong first three digits. I had pointed out the mistake in an earlier round of revisions, but did not notice that they neglected to make the change and approved the final proofs.

It turns out that 800-XXX-XXXX is a phone sex hotline. I learned this because I got a phone call from a sweet little old lady who tried to call me to get assistance from our social services agency, but instead was horrified by where she actually called. She said, "They started asking for my credit card number and everything and I didn't know what to do!" She and her son were rather upset.

It turns out Marketing went ahead and had 15,000 copies printed, so this was a pretty costly mistake I made. Plus, a pretty embarassing one, too! The way gossip travels here, the whole company will probably have heard about this within a couple of days.

Dont worry, in a week someone else will make a mistake and another in another week. this stuff only hangs around a short while.

You'll all laugh about it in a couple of years. Mistakes happen, we're only human.

Brilliant! wo0 is right; it'll become an office legend

I hope they don't make you pay for it though

Can you sue the ad agency? The damage seems obvious enough.

After sleeping on this, I do realize how hilarious it is. I mean, of all the phone numbers to accidentally get printed ...

And, it looks like the damage is not as bad as I'd thought. It turns out they had 5,000 done, rather than 15,000. The Marketing Director actually gave me a hug yesterday afternoon and told me not to worry about it.

She is just going to have some new ones printed and told her staff "not to broadcast the mistake throughout the entire organization." I think this is partly because overseeing projects like this is her responsibility and I'm not sure if she was supposed to have delegated it to me in the first place. Guess she will not be asking for my help again anytime soon.

That's a very funny story, blueroses. But,,,, an oversight by you? Really? It's not that I don't believe you.....but I always had an idea that there might be a bit of a prankster/troublemaker lurking beneath that "innocent" appearance of yours. It makes me wonder. ????

And that poor little ol' lady, she'll never be the same - at least the phone call didn't cost her anything so I'm sure she'll be fine.

I'm glad that it didn't get you in any trouble at work, I know that isn't something you want to have to deal with right now.

So keep up the good work - at work , but try to behave yourself... for goodness sake!