Monday, September 22, 2008

Idiot Du Jour

Well, all that bragging about being productive at work kind of backfired on me today. I'm no stranger to the printing business, and I know that mistakes ALWAYS happen, no matter how long you've been in the business, it's just unavoidable. Envelopes get printed upside down, things get cut wrong, a typo gets through unnoticed... and I've already had a couple minor screw ups in my two weeks at my new job.

Today I was the idiot of the day though. I got a cursory lesson in how to make buttons and was turned loose to do 300 buttons that need to ship out tomorrow. I got into a rhythm and was cooking right along when one of the other employees came by and picked up a button and looked at it. "I guess this one goes in the trash", he said. I wasn't quite sure what he meant, as it looked ok to me. Then he clarified by pointing out that the pin back was on crooked. Uh oh... well, no one told me to check that the pin back was in the right spot... oops!

I broke the news to the boss, that I had screwed up nearly half the order, and he took it in stride thankfully, and the two other employees sympathized with me, and admitted that a lot of times one is only given half the instructions and pretty much left on their own to figure out the rest, but I've been in the printing business long enough to know that you always check the first one and make sure it's perfect. Paying attention to detail is crucial, and I didn't and could have kicked myself.

I told the other two guys that I should make a button that says, "Idiot of the Day" and wear it today, and then whoever screws up can wear it each day. They laughed and said that we'd definitely need more than one button! Yeah, some days are like that. Sigh...

4 comments:

LisAway said...

The idiot of the day button! What a great idea. You have a great sense of humor.

I remember when I was working for a collection agency and they had a big deadline to send out these packets to businesses (I think there were almost 200). I was the one doing the sending. The day after they were mailed, more than usual came back undeliverable. Then we realized that I had put on the wrong postage!! The nice head secretaries told me not to tell the boss and they took me to the post office to add postage to all the envelopes.

In the basement where the postage machine was there was an old listing of postage rates that I went by, instead of the new one. Oops! I also told the boss on my own, because that was just wrong not to let him know that they shipped a few days late.

Rose said...

Mistakes happen to the best of us, so don't feel too badly about it! I routinely seal my bills with the check covering the address or sealing the envelope upside down. I'm always messing something up around here!

Ally said...

Sorry. :-S

I'm glad they were all good sports about it!

And I'm not even going to attempt numerating all the mistakes I constantly make....

Just use your imagination - it'll take a while! ;-)

Anonymous said...

I could definitely use one of those buttons .... LOL!

Love,
~Big Sis