Spell Check may be great at catching typos, but if you’re like me you forego typos altogether and just spell a different word.  A perfectly accurate, totally acceptable, can easily be found in Webster’s Dictionary, “other” word.  A word that makes no sense in the context of your article, and will never be flagged by Spell Check.

I do it a lot — I just can’t type. I blame my Vienna Sausage fingers. And I found out the importance of proofreading my work…the hard way.

I work in in the marketing department of a large health care facility.  Years ago, our department was responsible for launching the daily lunch menu on the monitors within the building. I’d run spell check and “assume” everything was fine. But do you know what you do, when you ASSUME? Just watch that court room episode of the Odd Couple. Felix Unger will tell you.

With over 500 employees in the building it was unfortunate (to say the least), to find errors after they had been broadcast in the lobbies and the food court of the facility. And, for the life of me, I don’t know why we had so many problems with the lunch entry “Hot Dog on a Bun.” One time it was Hot DON on a Bun, then HOG Dog on a Bun, but the worst ever was Hot Dog on a NUN! When I saw that, I ran back to the marketing department to fix it. And trust me, running and laughing at the same time is no easy task.

My co-worker, Mary Jane, always has me in stitches…same age as my mother, but I think of her as one of my best friends from high school. When I told her what happened she said, “Be careful! You‘re laughing so hard you’re gonna pee your pants,” then added “…of course that’s not unusual for ME! I do it every day.” …which practically had me on the floor.

After that, we were very careful and had a good run for a while. Until the dreaded day when they served Roast Beef. As I stood in the lunch line, I glanced up at the monitor. Apparently we were waiting for a helping of ROAD Beef.

The lunch menu is no longer broadcast on the internal monitors. 🙂