Here’s to the lady who won’t be lunching at a certain restaurant because of a typo in a newspaper ad for the eatery. We don’t know, in fact, if it was a lady or a man who was so offended by the typo, but let’s be real: we all know it’s an old lady and I shall call her Opal.
One day, Opal opened up her local newspaper to do the crossword puzzle and read the “miscellaneous lost” section in the classifieds when she stumbled across an ad for a local restaurant. Her eagle eyes spotted the word “accommodates” and noticed immediately that it was missing an “m.” Opal was a high school English teacher for 83 years and since retiring in 2012, she has desperately missed grading papers and writing passive aggressive comments to her students with a big red Sharpie. Rather than ignore the misspelling or assume it was a typo, Opal knew she had an opportunity to dust off her gradin’ pen and get to work.
“Now, where did I put my red Sharpie?” she asked herself. “It’s been so long since I have used it.”
After rummaging through a few junk drawers and a couple of boxes labeled “school days,” she gave up looking. “Oh, well, it’s probably all dried out anyway,” she said. And Opal knows a thing or two about being all dried out.
She found a simple ball-point pen and steadfastly circled the error, also adding an asterisk next to it to make sure the mistake was seen. She then retrieved a piece of stationary from her desk (it’s her favorite stationary; the one she bought when visiting a small town near the Grand Canyon that has an image of a dream catcher on it) and composed a short note:
To whom it may concern,
I would never subsidize a restaurant that can’t spell correctly in a newspaper ad. It’s “accommodates.” Hope this is helpful!
Opal was especially proud of the exclamation point at the end of the sentence because she knew that it made it seem that she wasn’t really trying to be helpful and instead was just being a nit-picky bitchy who has nothing better to do with her day than to write a letter to a restaurant she has no intention of going to either with or without a typo in their ad. She placed the letter in the envelope and went to the kitchen to find a sponge that she could use to dampen the flap to the envelope since, as mentioned before, Opal is a bit dried out. Thankfully, her stamp was one of the self-adhesive kind and her level of moisture was not further depleted.
After dropping the letter of correction into her mailbox, Opal sighed with self satisfaction. She knew that she had made a real difference that day. Thanks to her, a restaurant owner was going to know about a most awful injustice that had happened by the misspelling of a word. That owner would also know that they missed out on a customer who would have come in and ordered a hot tea with a side salad and then left a10% tip. Opal would eagerly await the next edition of the newspaper to see if the correction had been made so she could add the restaurant to her list of places she still will never go to.
Good job, Opal. Good job.
Karin
It’s “stationery”, not “stationary” 😉
The Chef Hates You
Whining about unimportant, non-life-changing bullshit- the American Way.
Paula
Why are you so cruel about an old lady, folks?
? Why not enjoy and applaud her eccentricities? This
Contempt for her age ( repeated insinuatio
ns about her dryness, etc.) deprive all of you of the chance to rejoice in her crotchety love of
The English language.the loss is yours, because your capacity for love has been reduced by excluding a class of humans.
Love, from a brilliant and glamorous old lady
Of 69.
Annie
I agree with ElysianaV – the newspaper probably made the error. In the southern state I moved to, I subscribe to the better, more balanced paper and it has misspelled words, bad grammar, every issue. And that’s the BETTER paper!
Also re: cursive – this same damn state actually made it a state law that schools still teach cursive. That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Yes, taxpayers, that’s what they’re fighting to the death about around here. Being a southpaw, writing was always difficult for me, since I dragged my left hand over what I’d just written, and it was smeared, and I got holy hell from my teacher (3rd grade or so).
This was back in the last century, by the way. When I became employed as a secretary/word processor, I had to deal with co-workers whose handwriting suggested they were using their feet to write letters. Monkeys had better handwriting.
Anyhoo, to sum it up, why bother learning this ancient, unneeded skill, when you can rev up your computer, go to MS Word, select the cursive font, and then type out your assignments at 90 wpm???
Sorry to be so long worded but that just burns my biscuits. (And no, I am not 100 years old.)
At the very least, Opal should consult a dictionary or thesaurus re: her use of subsidize. REALLY?
LS
I’ve worked in ad design for awhile, and while the newspaper probably made the mistake, the client (restaurant) most likely signed off approval of the ad without noticing the mistake.
ElysianaValenti
Hey Opal I am pretty sure the newspaper probably made the error, not the restaurant.
CincyDrunk
You know it’s an old lady by the cursive alone. Do they even teach cursive anymore?
Sammie
I think she means “patronize”, not “subsidize”. If restaurants depend on subsidies, there’s something wrong in the world. And most wonderful is that she misspelled accommodate in her written correction, and she had to correct it.
Brianne
***WOULD
Susan
Admit it…you spelled it w-o-u-k-d just to mess with me and all the Opals of the world, didn’t you?
I can be bitchy too. :-p
Stephanie Creede
Ohhh… The Opals if this world, (should their great-great-grand-progeny deign to suffer through the horrors of getting them online for a single day, which is PLENTY), won’t understand the sarcasm here at all.
They’ll hearken back to when a cup of tea and a shiny biscuit would cost them a whole shiny dime, and a few pennies would suffice for a generous tip; they’ll dramatically insist on this still being the (*more* than reasonable case!), and tell ALL their friends.
Sure, most real “friends” will have long passed on, but that won’t stop Opal from inviting the whole town, promising those prices, camping for hours on twelve sticky cents, and speaking at the lowest volume and slowest pace possible – EXCEPT! When making racial, religious or homophobic slurs!
You jest, dear Bitchy, but what hath thou wrought?