One small carelessness or stupidity can touch off a chain reaction of untoward events, culminating in endless inconvenience and frustration. This is a trite statement, and easily dismissed, until you're actually at the frustration end of things. A small package, sent via Fedex, failed to appear at my door last week. After several emails back and forth, we discovered the shipper had incorrectly entered the address: 2149 instead of 2140. Perfectly understandable, since the two digits are side-by-side on the keyboard. However, the good folks at 2149 have denied all knowledge of said package and claim never to have received it. And the fallout: my homestay student is out several hundred dollars and doesn't have her tickets to the NBA game she was planning to see when she travels to New York on spring break.
All because somebody hit a wrong key and didn't bother to proofread.
Reminds me of an old chant in House-That-Jack-Built style:
For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
...blah, blah, blah...the kingdom was lost,
And all for want of a horseshoe nail.
Sigh.
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