My current employment requires that I call and email folks who have damaged or potentially damaged utility lines above ground and underground. You would be surprised (or maybe you would not be) by how many folks will say they weren't there at that time, you can't prove they were there, and so on. Often times, we have witness statements, and there are times when we have written admittances from employees of the company we are calling - those brave enough to raise their hand and say "it was me, I snagged the line". The problem is that most people don't raise their hands when they make a mistake.
I've always been one of those who not only admit I make mistakes, but if it is truly my fault, and I have either harmed someone or made things difficult for someone, I will raise my hand - every time. You don't have to worry about me being embarrassed; I know we all make mistakes. I will be embarrassed, 9 times out of 10, but I also recognize and realize that we are all just humans, and we can't always help or control the outcomes.
Here is yet ONE MORE example of me raising my hand (laughing while I'm doing it) to say, "Hey, that was me; it was my bad 100%." I sent off my book "Stratford" to Ingram Spark so they could format it into their book printing press and then prepare it for me to approve. In doing so, I first download the book from my files on my computer. I format it, give it all the right page layout criteria, and so forth, and then I save it to a PDF file so that it can be uploaded on their end. Well, something did not go the way I intended.
When the book came back to me yesterday, after only 2 days in the workshop at Ingram Spark (that's really fast), I looked at the file to be approved and just about had the proverbial cow. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The pages were all about 3 inches off, meaning they started three inches down the page from where they should have been, and of course, that meant that the pages would pick back up on the next page, but they were 3 inches off -- it was UGLY!!
My first thought was to blame someone at Ingram Spark. How could they be so inept as to misalign the book to the templates? Didn't they have experience? I know I've sent up 14 or 15 books with them; I know I know what I'm doing. That's what I told myself. I decided to be less arrogant and more introspective. I decided I could have been mistaken, even though, I told myself, it wasn't likely.
Well...there it was. MY FILE WAS OFF. I opened it on my desktop, and yep...it was me. Somehow, someway, and no, I don't know how I had saved the file with it being off -- I couldn't begin to tell you how that happened, but it was on my end, not their end, and yes, I made the whole silent apology. I didn't need to make an actual apology since I hadn't accused anyone of anything - except in my head.
It didn't take long to correct, but correcting it allowed me to add a "word" by my friend Lorna Pratt, who forgot to give me a word for this particular book. There you go, two problems solved and one happy author. YEA! I'm OK with being a dork, I've been one for many decades, but I do hope to resolve the part of me that automatically blames someone else - even if only in my head. I'm grateful that I hadn't sent off an email accusing someone of something. In the past, I would have - maybe old age is teaching me things. Geez, it's about dang time!
Photo Credit: IngramSpark.com
No comments:
Post a Comment