Despite the fact that circ generally flies under the radar, when things go wrong, they go very wrong. In fact, if I’m completely honest, I am constantly amazed by how many things could potentially go wrong that don’t.

The average circ work day consists of innumerable possibly disastrous decisions that for the most part work out just fine. Data pulls and complex coded mailings, judgments on the fly, last minute choices made with seconds to spare. The nice thing about circulation is that, because everything goes in cycles, your last minor mistake can usually be corrected before it does any real harm, financial or otherwise.

You take every precaution, proof hundreds of times, check everything  repeatedly, but every so often even the most competent circulator makes “the big mistake.” And occasionally those mistakes become the stuff of legend.

I’ll guarantee every circulator has a mistake in their closet they’ll pull out as a “what could go wrong” anecdote at a party, to be greeted with wide eyes and gasps.

The direct mail where the name fields didn’t match the addresses. The wrong customer service phone number going out on hundreds of thousands of mailings. Bad barcodes. Forgetting the return address on the brochure. (That last one was mine, by the way.)

These are the kinds of things that we laugh at later, but in the moment of discovery nausea takes over as you realize, “my god, I can’t fix this one.” (Queue face to palm.)

So what, dear readers, was your favourite big mistake? A story you’ve heard or something you’ve managed to screw up all by yourself? Let us commiserate, because I’m sure you’ll all agree, I’d rather forget to insert the BRE than be responsible for a typo on the cover.