Beware the Spell Check!

The oversight of building maintenance was one of my non-financial responsibilities at a job a while back. My colleague and friend, K, is an exceptional Maintenance Mechanic, so all I really had to do was approve his plans, assist him with his budget, and interface with the agency staff. At one point the upstairs bathrooms needed repair and had to be closed for a day. This wasn’t too much of a hardship as there were others on the main floor. 

Backing up just a bit, spelling has always been a mystery to me. I cringed all through elementary school with our weekly spelling tests. My best friend P and I diligently studied every week.  P would get 95% or 100%; I barely scraped by with 70%. 

 High School meant no more spelling tests, rather being graded on spelling in all written work. I could have looked up how to spell words that stymied me, but as I would whine, “How can I look it up in the dictionary when I don’t know how to spell it?” I did develop a survival technique. First, I made my handwriting less legible so that it could a toss-up, “Is that an O or an A? An E or an I?” I was usually given the benefit of the doubt. Also, if I used a “difficult” word multiple times I would scribble a different spelling of it each time, figuring at least one of them had to be correct.

Fast forward and after about 20 years to of PCs in the work place; word processors made me a much better speller, sort of. I could no longer camouflage my errors with sloppy handwriting, but the spell checker usually got it right. Sometimes it took a few attempts to get the word I wanted, but that would eventually happen. As my work became more and more computer driven my typing improved and, to some degree, so did my spelling; also, my belief in and reliance upon the spell check.

Now, back to bathroom repairs. The day before the repairs were to be done I sent an agency wide email advising of the bathroom shut down. By mid-afternoon of the repair day all work was done and the bathrooms were once again available for use. Again, I sent an email advising staff of this and thanking them. My email was to have ended: "Thank you for your cooperation and hopefully this has not caused too much inconvenience.”

 
Inconvenience has been one of those words that truly stumped me. So whenever I use it I sort of get most of the letters and then let spell check fix it. This particular day I was in a bit of a rush and blithely accepted the offered correction. Shortly after sending the email I heard bursts of giggling and snickering. I re-read my email to find I had ended it: “Thank you for your cooperation and hopefully this has not caused too much incontinence."

 
Not necessarily the concern I intended to express, but, somewhat appropriate in this situation!