Just Another Day at the Office....Yeah Right.

So, yesterday was going be another day at the office; albeit a slightly more interesting one than usual. I was expecting the manuscript of my favourite author's new novel to proofread. I work at a small but successful publishing house and have done for 8 years. It's a great place to work and I have a lot of fun. And I can't even begin to count how many books I've read since I started! Anyway, the novel I was expecting was the final chapter in an awesome espionage saga. I'd waited over a year for the last book and couldn't wait to find out how it ended. Anyway, when I arrived in my office that morning the envelope containing the hard and digital copies of the manuscript draft were sitting on my desk. I rushed over (you may be interested to know that at this point I spilled my coffee everywhere and had to do a quick clean up first!) and ripped open the envelope. For some reason the manuscript wasn't there: it was just the front and back pages along with the USB stick. I decided there would be a simple enough reason for this and thought nothing of it. I plugged in the USB stick and settled down to read and correct. Got a bit of a shock though. I opened up the file to see obscenities screaming out at me. I didn't know what to think. I scrolled down but it only got worse. Yes, the book as it should have been appeared to be all there but scattered inbetween random words were various atrocities. It was the only file on the drive so I didn't see how it could be a mistake. But I couldn't believe that Jarod would do anything of the sort. I mean, as well as him being a totally lovely guy; his livelihood depends upon us liking his work.

I decided not to notify my boss immediately; just in case there was a reasonable explanation, and instead left a message for Jarod to call me back. When I explained what I'd found he couldn't believe it. He had no idea how it had happened and was freaking out. I told him we'd sort it out and then went back to my desk to begin work on something else. I was mainly just disappointed not to be able to properly read the book!

Today, I found out the truth, which was thankfully not as bad as I'd suspected. Jarod's deadline was fast approaching and he'd been too busy looking after his kids to type up his handwritten manuscript and so had sent it off to a transcription service with good copy typing rates to get it finished in time. It was due to arrive 2 days before his deadline but he was going to be away on a book tour starting 3 days before the deadline so he entrusted his 13 year old son with the task of picking up the copy and USB pen from the post office and sending it to the publishing house, i.e. me. Turns out he'd aggravated his son the previous week over something trivial and his son wanted revenge. The kid had removed the hard copy and hid it in his room (I suppose it was relatively decent of him not to have destroyed it); and then edited the pen drive, sending it along with just the manuscript cover in the envelope. I ended up getting the full manuscript a couple of hours ago and am just taking a break from the reading to write this. I guess everything works out in the end.

But, bit of advice to any parents out there: don't trust your kids; they're monsters! Nah, I'm just kidding. But maybe just make sure you know when you've done wrong by them and don't give them too much responsibility; just in case. And maybe tell the babysitter to keep an eye on the post if you know something important is going to arrive!