Sorry, we're out of that

Don't you just love it when typos slip into advertising? It's like, "Didn't anyone read this before they printed it?"

This sign, in the front window of a local Woodstock grocery (wasn't it voted No. 1 recently?), is part of this week's sale.

Maybe it was just an attention-getter, designed to get customers to the rear of the store and motivate them to gather up two-three containers that they didn't have on their shopping list. I might even go back before the sale is over to stock up.

This sign reminded me of another typo I'll long remember. When I worked at the Sears, Roebuck headquarters in Hoffman Estates, the company was planning to lay off about 400 employees. For some strange reason, a decision was made to spend a lot of money reducing the sizes of cubicles. I never saw the sense of that decision; they certainly were not going to need more room, once the 400 employees had departed!

The new, reduced-size cubicles were on display in the atrium, so that employees could preview the size of their new "mouseholes". Paper signs announced which category of employee (director, manager, etc.) would get what size cubicle. Clerical employees (popularly called "administrative assistants") were going to get a small cubicle AND be expected to share - clear evidence that some designer of office space had absolutely no knowledge of the amount of paper and files that these employees worked with!

But what got my attention was the word ASSOICATE on three of the four printed signs.

Now, I've typed the word "Associate" with that same typo, but re-reading the text (or using SpellCheck) catches the error, which is easily corrected.

I remember laughing out loud and not caring who was standing around. One woman asked me why I was laughing. I said, pointing to the typo, "This is what happens, when you give too much work to too few people, and expect them to get it done in too little time."

Somebody had typed it and missed the error. Somebody had printed it and missed the error. Somebody had put up the three signs and missed the error. And, when I went to the Office of the Building to suggest the signs be corrected, "somebody" said it didn't matter because the display was to be removed the next day.

One of my favorite sayings is, "If you don't have time to do it right the first time, you definitely don't have time to do it over."