It was a calm, quiet evening. I was working at the local office supply store. My job was to take orders, log them on the website and send them to the warehouse for shipping. Everything was under perfect control.

One day, a customer named Ms Evans placed an urgent order for office and home supplies: papers, cartridges and “one box of pencils”. It was a simple order and part of my routine, so I felt confident about it. However, sometimes what you are most confident about can lead to misjudgement and an embarrassing result. That is exactly what happened to me. A momentary lapse in judgement and a tiny coding error started this whole mistake.

Because I thought of it as a “simple order”, it did not even cross my mind to recheck it. In a hurry, I didn’t realise that although I had typed “1,” I had mistakenly pressed extra zeros, so that “1” had become one with four zeros — 10000! Confident that it was just a simple order, I sent it straight away to the warehouse without even realising the mistake.

In utter disbelief, Mr Dave, the manager, read the orders aloud. “10,000 boxes of pencils for one lady?” he exclaimed. “This is a whole year’s supply!” The whole warehouse had to stop work just for this one order. A bigger problem was that it was marked urgent and had to be ready within a day. The situation was becoming catastrophic, exhausting their pencil inventory. Since the order had already been placed, they had no choice but to start packing the boxes.

I wasn’t aware of any of this. But after a while, the staff could barely muster up a single ounce of strength. The system was almost paralysed, sending high alerts of heavy duty activity. That was when I realised that something was wrong. I wondered what could have caused such high alerts, as I hadn’t noticed any large orders yet.

Just then, I received a call from Mr Dave telling me the problem, his voice livid with rage. I was shocked, but I immediately performed deep scans and finally found the error. I isolated the errant code and the programme slowly restored full function.

Meanwhile, Mr Dave checked the original order, instantly spotted the “one with four zeros,” and stopped the shipping. He informed me as well.

I was so embarrassed that I had no words to explain myself. Then began the tedious job of putting all the boxes back in their proper places.

Unaware of the terrible blunder, Ms Evans received her order just on time, but the lesson was monumental. My programme was updated, forcing me to recheck every order twice. The biggest lesson I learnt was: even the smallest lapse in judgement can bring the biggest headache.

Published in Dawn, Young World, March 14th, 2026