i was on the phone with a batchmate and she was dismayed that something she said somehow got mangled passing mouth to mouth resulting in a rather embarrassing situation.
this is similar to a recent occurrence at the office. so the manager of one project was asking me about the requirements they have to comply with before their project goes on board. i tell her, submit to us this and then we'll test that, if the results are ok then you can go live. for reasons i'd rather not disclose, things didn't go as planned : }
in our next meeting, there i was, talking strict and all, emphasizing to our contractor, i do not want something like this to happen to us, ok, blah-blah-blah.
to my surprise, the contractor tells me the action was done based on my instructions. huh?! why on earth would i instruct such?!
they relay to me that they were in a meeting and then the PM i was earlier talking to called saying my office was requiring this before we establish that. uh-oh.
what the PM relayed was verbatim up to a certain point but then she mistakenly added two words at the end changing the object of the action altogether. yikes!
so this explains why prior to the conduct of the test, the PM called me saying we had to get permission from a certain office before we conduct this certain activity. i told her there was no need to ask for anyone else's permission because this was our turf. my, my, my. it turns out we had different objects in mind.
BIG lesson. be very, very explicit. always specify the object of an action even if it means you have to be repetitive and redundant.
another case. so i e-mail my officemate a document which i named matrix4revision. we were talking just seconds before i mailed so i did not write anything on the message body anymore. i simply attached the document and clicked send. what do you know, a week later i find out that she interpreted matrix4revision to mean matrix version 4 revision instead of what i intended, i.e., matrix for revision. yikes! i'm attuned to the text generation, you know. i text-spell filenames! lesson: don't! spell out!
still another case. i send my aunt an e-mail with the subject: nov 4 pics. she mails back: there are only 2 pics. ha-ha-ha. she was thinking quantity; i was thinking date. the pictures i sent were taken on the 4th of november!
i'd like to end with one of my favorites. this one's about audio without visuals. just hearing, "gladly, the cross i'd bear" could mean different things to different people. it could be just that, i.e., "gladly, the cross i'd bear." it could, however, also be, "gladly, the cross-eyed bear." sometimes, you have to see to fully understand.
enough said.
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