Let’s just get this out of the way right off the bat: no one’s perfect.
It would be completely unreasonable for anyone to expect us to be otherwise. Sometimes we make mistakes, and that’s okay. That’s totally human.
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Now, with that being said, some mistakes that people make can be a bit bigger than others.
One of the easiest mistakes to make are typos.
A slight slip of the finger over the keyboard, an overlooked word during proofreading – it happens. But did you know that some of these typos can actually be pretty costly?
Like, super costly.
In 2005, the Roswell car dealership had a promotion where they gave lottery tickets to potential customers.
30,000 customers, to be exact. One lucky winner would win $1,000.
It was a fun idea until the dealership realized the ticket manufacturer had misunderstood and all 30,000 customers got winning tickets.
Since they couldn’t exactly hand out $30 million, each winner got a $5 Wal-Mart gift card. Which is sort of like winning $1,000 but also sort of not.
That mistake cost the dealership $250,000 in Wal-Mart gift cards, but it could have been worse.
Those were just 30,000 lottery tickets. What if an entire airlines suffered from a sales typo?
In 2006, Alitalia Airlines offered passengers a deal on a flight from Toronto to Cyprus.
According to Reader’s Digest , the trip was supposed to cost $3,900 but the airlines accidentally listed the deal for $39.
Obviously, people were quick to sell them out of tickets. Cancelling those tickets would cause some serious backlash, so the airlines let the people fly for $39, costing them a total of $7 million in losses. Yikes .
However, this isn’t as bad as Australia’s most recent typo disaster.
Australia’s top bank has revealed a mistake made on its new $50 note.
According to LADBible , the Reserve Bank of Australia started distributing the new note last year.
It features Indigenous writer David Unaipon on one side, and Edith Cowan, Australia’s first female parliamentarian, on the other.
Cowan’s side of the note includes a one of her most famous quotes…with one little typo.
In the middle of the quote, there’s the line, “It is a great responsibilty [sic] to be the only woman here, and I want to emphasise the necessity which exists for other women being here.”
So the bank had to take responsibility for the word “responsibility” having a typo. That couldn’t possibly be more perfect unless it was the word “typo” misspelled.
So how much did this error cost?
Well, a lot.
If the reports are true and 46 million notes were printed with the typo, that means that about $2.3 billion AUD worth of currency is floating around out there with a misprint. Which is a pretty big “oops.”
But he bank doesn’t seem to be sweating it. A spokesperson for the RBA has said that the bank “is aware of it and the spelling will be corrected at the next print run.”
Maybe this time they’ll do a few proofreads just to be absolutely sure it’s good to go.
