Oct
12
Moral of the Story: NeoCitran Edition
Tonight, everyone in my house is sick. I took a NeoCitran. It makes me really, really dumb. I instituted a rule long ago that if I have NeoCitran in my system, I am not allowed to send anything to anyone more than an hour after I take it, because God only knows what I’d say. I figured I should get off my butt and write a blog post before my lucid time ran out. Thinking about conditions under which you should not send things, this reminds me of another story, possibly even more embarrassing than the one you might have read about in Moral of the Story: Problogger Edition.
There was a time, not so long ago, when I decided I needed to pick up some more freelance writing work to finance my home business. I checked out my handy feedreader, where I get my freelancing gig lists from Anne Wayman, Deborah Ng, and Jennifer Mattern. Normally I just look at them woefully, thinking how great it would be if I had the time to apply for some of the jobs. This time, though, I was on a mission.
[Aside to freelance writers - do you get those lists? If not, you should. There’s money to be made there, people.]
Anyway, where was I? Right, my mission. I decided that I was going for a big and fast boost in income, and I applied for everything. I mean everything. My resume was everywhere. I figured I was golden.
Keep in mind, while I’m not exactly Aaron Wall, my resume is pretty good, and when I apply for jobs, I usually get a few bites at least. This time, I got nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I was up in the wee hours of the night, applying for job after job, and I didn’t even get a “thanks, but no thanks.”
Flash forward a few weeks, during which time I got busy with marketing stuff and the whole thing was out of my head. Somebody asked me to take a look at their resume, and I figured I’d print out mine as an example. This is what came out of my printer.
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Am I joking? No, I am not. Turns out that a few months before, when I was playing around with stationery fonts, I forgot to save my file. Word decided to save it for me. And what does Word do when you don’t title your file? It titles your file for you, generally using the first few words of your text. So the file got called Naomi Dunford. Just like my resume, but in a different folder.
Imagine for a second that you are hiring a freelancer. Imagine you got a pretty good query letter, good enough to open up the resume. And imagine you got a Word document that said nothing but the writer’s name, over and over, fifteen times. (You know what? Stop imagining that. It’s painful.)
Moral of the Story? Be like Santa. Check it twice.
I have been doing this for ten years. I’m not generally known for missing typos. I’ve gotten complacent. I don’t know what all I applied for back then, but if you got one of my resumes, I hope you had a good laugh. Somebody had to.
***
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Ack.
Hmm, ok, now I feel like I should share. I got a voicemail the other day from a gig I’d applied for…the man was very nice, with a foreign name that I jotted down. He left his email address, which (I later realized) was formatted lastname.firstname@gmail.com
And um, because it was a foreign name (which is probably a “John Smith” outside of the U.S.) it’s not easily distinguishable what’s his first name and what’s his last. Yes, I wrote it down but it was like that never happened once I typed in his email address.
Because I referred to him by his last name in my email greeting him.
D’oh. Luckily, I picked up on it subsequently. He hired me anyway, but man, when I realized my mistake my stomach dropped to my ankles because it was a job I was really interested in.
Great post. Thanks for sharing with us, Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
Naomi Dunford
:D
Oh, that’s too funny. If it helps at all, he probably gets it all the time. With a name like Susan, you probably don’t get people messing up your name too much. I get so many variations on my name I’m surprised even I know how to pronounce it. I get Wyoming. I get Nanaimo. I think Baloney was probably my favorite.
Oh wow that is awful…and hilarious. I can’t believe nobody replied back and told you.
I know! You’d think someone would have realized that wasn’t what I meant to do. I think a lot of employers don’t realize that they’re not the only gig you’re applying for, though. It probably doesn’t even cross their minds that you might have that “resume” in fifty inboxes out there. You live, you learn, I guess.
OK, that is the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time. Truly fabulous.
Sonia! You came! Hi! (Holy exclamation marks, Batman.) I figure this is the best way to get a readership – tell them really embarrassing career stories and they’ll remember you as the one who cheered them up. Thanks for stopping by. Normally that would get an exclamation mark, too, but I think I should start rationing.
This is a funny story! I had a similar experience recently. I book gigs for the band Indubious (www.indubiousmusic.com) and I solicit clubs through email (which is probably a lot hard than you think). The other day I sent an email entitled “Indubious Reggae Fuck Trio” when it was supposed to say “Indubious Reggae Funk Trio”. I did not realize this typo until the club owner responded to me and I saw it in the subject title. To my amazement, he did not even mention the typo but gave me a date in which to book my band. Haha funny stuff.
Good luck in your writing. Great articles, keep them coming!
Sorry to laugh at your pain, Naomi, but that’s damn funny.
I laugh only because I’ve been there, not quite as extreme, but I applied for a job once that wanted to know what my salary requirements were. At the time, I was looking for $50,000, but I replaced the comma with a period. I never did get a call. Perhaps they were afraid I was too inexperienced asking for an annual salary of fifty bucks.
Hey Dave and Evan… Thank you. I don’t feel so alone now. :)
Evan, I think you stumbled onto an exciting new message there.
I guess I’m a little late commenting here…
At first I thought, damn that’s just how good she is. No credential, just her name.
I guess only Stephen King or Jesus can do that (ohh I said Jesus, bad word).
Ого! Нормально.
ohhhh I am wiping tears of involuntary laughter off my face. Thank you for a brilliantly told story, and a searingly memorable blog.
:-)
Oh, I’m laughing so loud I’ve woken up both the pets. Hilarious! Not just Wyoming Baloney’s story, but all the stories in the comments. I think, for me, it’s such a great testament to how important it is to be genuine – that something that you might be mortified about, the rest of the humans are warmed and amused by, not because they are mocking your experience, but because they identify with it – we’ve all been there in one way or another. I forget that all the time. So happy to be reminded. Thanks Wyoming, and all!
-K
Naomi,
This was too funny…and I think we’ve all been there.
An example…
I re-wrote my resume once, and saved it under a cool document name…with nicely written story and cool looking fonts etc…
It was a gem.
Too bad I uploaded the OLD version to my website on accident (at the time)…and THAT was the version I sent out to about 50 or so people before realizing what I had done.
And there was a reason I re-wrote the OLD version in the first place, LOL :)
Ahhh, the glory.
So now, the moral for me is “Always change the filename to something WAY different and snazzy when you update a document.”
Nice article found your site searching in yahoo I think you could have taken a more neutral view.
I once sent a text to my husband saying,
‘Sent that proposal to the client. I put the rate as £5,000/month. Woo hoo! Worth a try, I suppose.’
Except I didn’t send the text my husband.
Yep, I sent it to the client.
(I’m putting this in the comments here just for anyone else stalking the archives. Hey!)