Wednesday, September 02, 2009

A Dreadful Error

This morning, in the Classified section of the paper, there was a Dreadful Error. I'm not meant to talk about it but come on, it was published in the paper, how much of a state secret can it be?

Anyway, the below is a totally unrelated, completely hypothetical situation.

Imagine that sometimes, when a customer wants a To Let ad placed (or, as we in the business call them, 'Toilets'), he (or she) will email through the main body of the text ('WANGTON EAST, 2 bdrm flat, sunny, $290pw'), and the person who receives it will copy that text, paste it into their ad-creating space, then draw it up, cast a jaundiced eye over it, and send it to print.
Now imagine that a customer sent through an email with the text of the ad, the date they want it published, the column they want it published in and, most importantly, their credit card details (for swift and easy payment.) Suppose that the person who received it was to accidentally copy and paste the entire text of the email into their ad-creating field, credit card details and all and, being pushed for time, run the ad without first casting an eye over it.

Nothing like that has happened at my work recently, that's for sure, but Holy Freakin' Christ, if it did, I certainly would have had a stressful day.

I had a good day! I am now at the stage where people call up and say, "I want to put an ad in the Situations Vacant," and I say, "Email me through the text and I'll see what I can do," and then I create an ad of unsurpassable grace and beauty and they pay lots more than they were originally intending to because the ad is just so lovely, and my commission skyrockets. Seriously though. My ads are works of art. Presumably because I don't have enough on my plate and still have time to fart about with fonts.

On an unrelated note, anyone have any ideas for what to get my father for Father's Day? He likes "T-shirts with things written on them," and he recently had a colonoscopy and was pronounced "clean as a whistle." I'm hoping to combine these two themes.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.oztion.com.au/vshops/previewpic.aspx?itemid=5199774&tid=&picnum=1&#pic

i think you'll find this a suitable and appropriate gift.

tennysoneehemingway said...

The T-shirt just writes itself doesn't it?

Geek Girl said...

what an amusing hypothetical situation...
As for father's day, that's what t-shirt printing places were invented for...

Anonymous said...

Haha that's pretty bad! My worst work cock-up...well let's just say I feel a lot better now (I think my mum's might be worse though, she once killed the only specimen of a particular plant in the whole of Australia).

Argh father's day! I have the double-awesomeness of my dad's bday being two days before, so twice the present-difficulty. I second Charlie's make-your-own-tshirt idea (if you have a blank white tshirt and make the print yourself and put it on disc, it's only $10 to get it printed I think).
Possible slogans... I'm sure there's potential for a play on 'youtube'... 'Your youtube search returned zero results' ok I am bad at this...maybe something to do with these guys! http://www.peeandpoo.com/eng/flasheng.asp

WV: arsai - the noise you make after the youtube search finishes

IT IS ALLY said...

Anon - that is possibly the perfect present. Except he would wear it.