Lisa Makes a Mistake at Work

The quiz night at the bookshop was in ten days, and Lisa was very proud of the poster. She and Mia had worked on it for a whole week. It had a big question mark made of books, bright colours and the words "Book Quiz Night. Thursday the twelfth. Seven o'clock. Free entry."

On Monday morning, Helen asked her to send the final file to the print shop.

"They need it before twelve," Helen said. "Then the posters will be ready on Wednesday, and we can put them up all over town."

Lisa opened the file, checked it quickly, and sent it. Then she went back to her other work and forgot about it.

On Wednesday afternoon, a big box arrived at the studio. Lisa opened it with a smile. Two hundred posters, shiny and new.

Then she read the first one, and her smile disappeared.

"Book Quiz Night. Tuesday the twelfth."

Tuesday. Not Thursday.

She looked at the next poster, and the next one, as if they might be different. They weren't. Two hundred posters, all with the wrong day.

Lisa opened the file on her computer. There it was. On Friday, she had changed a few things, and somehow, she had typed the wrong day. On Monday, she had checked the colours and the picture, but not the words.

Her face felt hot. Her first idea was to hide the box under her desk and fix everything quietly. But the quiz night was only eight days away, and Helen needed to know.

She walked to Helen's desk with one poster in her hand.

"Helen, do you have a minute? I need to tell you something."

"Of course. What's wrong?"

Lisa put the poster on the desk. "I made a mistake. The posters say Tuesday, but the quiz night is on Thursday. It was my fault. I changed the text on Friday, and I didn't check it again before I sent it."

Helen looked at the poster for a moment. Lisa waited for her to be angry.

"Okay," Helen said calmly. "Thank you for telling me straight away. That's the most important thing. Now, how do we fix it?"

Lisa had already thought about this on the way to the desk. "We could print new posters, but that costs money and takes two days. Or we could print small stickers that say Thursday and put them over the wrong day. That's cheaper and faster."

Helen nodded slowly. "Stickers. I like that. Call the print shop and ask if they can do it by tomorrow."

The print shop said yes. Lisa thanked them about five times.

On Thursday morning, a small envelope arrived with two hundred round stickers. Each one said "Thursday" in big, bright letters. Lisa and Mia sat at the big table and put them on every poster, one by one.

"You know," Mia said, "the stickers look better than the original. They look like they're part of the design."

Lisa looked at the posters. Mia was right. The bright round stickers made the date stand out even more.

Then she had to call Mrs Hill at the bookshop and explain. She was nervous, but Mrs Hill only laughed.

"Oh, don't worry," she said. "Last year, I sent out a newsletter with the wrong phone number on it. Mistakes happen. The important thing is that you fixed it."

That afternoon, Lisa and Mia put the posters up all over town. In cafés, in shop windows, at the university.

On the way back to the studio, Lisa stopped in front of one of them and smiled.

She had made her first real mistake at work. But she had also learned something important. Tell people quickly, bring a solution, and always check the words, not just the colours.