Adventures in Spelling Part II

Yesterday at work, my boss asked me who would be more likely to spell an employee's name wrong: that employee themselves, or the HR department.

It's a tough question indeed. The woman in HR who enters employee records is very meticulous. I've never seen her spell an employee's name incorrectly in the official records.

On the other hand, the employee who wrote her name on the form should be able to spell it correctly, as she has been spelling it for 20 years, give or take.

As my boss and I discussed the error in spelling, we finally decided that it was the employee who had spelled her own name incorrectly on the form. She seemed to blend her first name back into her last name, and since we've seen her write it differently in the past, we decided that she had, in fact, misspelled her own name on this occasion.

I giggled about that last night, and then I realized that the employee in question would not know that she had done it. There would be no point in mentioning it to her.

This truth makes it entirely possible that I've done the same thing in the past and no one has bothered to mention it to me.

Awkward to spell something wrong. REALLY awkward to spell one's own name wrong.

I'm going to have to start paying attention when I write my name down.