typo

All posts tagged typo

A host’s world of oblivion, Day 41

Posted by Arno on October 28, 2010
Posted in: object, travel, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 2 comments

Ever wondered how Jamie Oliver got so rich off his cooking? We found out first-hand last week in Cambridge.
Jamie Oliver has a “Jamie’s Italian” there. It’s a really nice place. We ate there also in September when I escorted the Better Half to Cambridge to settle down for the year. No table reservations, so you have to be in time or be prepared to have a drink at the bar while you wait for your turn to be seated. The bar is also very nice, as we experienced last Sunday. We actually took our starter in the bar/lounge and when we were up next in the queue continued with main course and desert in the restaurant.
The building’s a great one, but the interior setup of this particular Jamie’s Italian isn’t the most charming or cozy one, I think. The food is excellent, however, and absolutely recommended.

So after desert, we asked for the bill, which the Better Half generously offered to pay. So the host got his machine, stuck in the card, punched in the numbers, and all She had to do was confirm, add a gratuity (or not 😉 ), confirm again and enter the PIN code. Piece of cake.
The Better Half wanted to add some 10% gratuity to the bill, as standard, but mistyped. Conveniently, the payment was declined, to which the host dryly added:

Hmm, maybe it’s better it was declined. Either you or I made a typo in the amount

Jamie Oliver receipt

The host made a typo in the price of our menu.

So… For a 3-course menu with some drinks at Jamie’s… be prepared to pay a little over £ 5,000.00 (at the current conversion rate that’d be about € 5.800,-). 😀
No, really… Our host was a really cool guy (happened to be the same guy who served us the first time, although I guess he didn’t remember), and of course apologized. We thought the whole thing was really funny, too, and of course didn’t make a fuzz about it. When I told him this would most likely end up on my blog, he of course didn’t make a fuzz out of that either, and thought it a good joke.

So… that’s it for some light reading on Thursday 😉
Have a good one.

Nikon, Nikon… computer spell-checking isn’t always working…

Posted by Arno on May 17, 2010
Posted in: industry, photography. Tagged: , , , , , . 2 comments

Tsk tsk tsk…
There I was, reading through one of my photography magazines. I ended up with the back cover, checking out how Nikon presents one of its new lenses to its public. Lo and behold, and imagine my surprise, when the ad showed a beginner’s mistake in its copy text. Of course, this kind of error doesn’t show up in the automated spell-check, because both its and it’s are spelled write.

One would think that, with a company of this size, probably hiring services from a well-paid agency, these kind of miss steaks wouldn’t occur. They’d be pulled out in the first correction stage. But nooo….
Shame on you, Nikon!

(the whole sentence reads: It’s huge zoom range brings distant objects right up close.)

Nikon ad

image: courtesy of Nikon, scanned from the back cover of Practical Photography, May 2010 issue.

Oh, and speaking of double-checking…

Posted by Arno on September 8, 2009
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . 3 comments

We flew with Spanair to and from the Canaries.

Cheap flights, but good service, be it you have to pay for pretty much everything and nothing’s included except for some really colorful candies that taste of artificial sweeteners.

But anyway…
They have a menu from which you can order stuff and on our way back, since I had read all five books and two magazines, a news paper and all the other readable stuff I could find, I turned to that piece of literary magnitude to ease my boredom.
When you have time, you start to really read things, and don’t just let your brain connect all the missing links.
So with all that time on my hands, I scrolled down the options (I was actually getting hungry too, so that might’ve helped), and came to the bottom of the menu where sandwiches were offered.
In the three weeks on the Canary Islands, where surprisingly little people speak English, my Spanish took a good boost. But having both English and Spanish at my disposal I didn’t feel like wrecking my brain and try to figure out the Spanish. I went straight for the English.

You can imagine my surprise when I read through this:

Spanair's menu on-board

Spanair's menu on-board

I nearly soiled myself, and I had to go to the toilet, seriously, after that. Maybe it was so terribly funny, because I was so tired and so bored, but really…
These kind of mistakes have NO place in a menu anywhere.

(I still fall in a laughing fit when I see this, and I’m not even tired anymore 😀 )