Linda was sitting at her desk when her supervisor came into the room. She was red in face and very excited as she was nearing Linda’s desk. She was almost shouting: ‘Linda, whatever have you done?!’
Linda looked at her confused. She had no idea what the problem was. She was not aware of any problem and so she waited for her supervisor to calm down end explain to her what had happened.
The supervisor noticed the confused expression on Linda’s face. She realised that Linda had no idea about what she had done.
She took the only glass of water that was on Linda’s desk and drank it at once. She felt much better and she was not so red in her face anymore. She waited for a few seconds more before she spoke to Linda in a completely calm voice: ‘Has nobody told you what happened yet?’
Linda kept looking at her. ‘No. Nobody has told me anything. What’s going on?’
‘Well, we have a little problem,’ Ms Pearce replied. ‘Yesterday you sent the email to all the students who had passed the entrance exams in order to inform them that they were accepted for the next school year, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Linda slowly in a quiet voice. Now she knew that she had done something wrong. Only she didn’t know what. She was waiting for Ms Pearce to tell her.
‘The thing is, you didn’t only send that email to the student’s who had passed the exams. You sent it to all the students who had applied to the school. And you also sent it to the students who already are studying at our school.’
Linda was quiet.
‘You sent it to approximately 2500 people. You were supposed to send it only to those 200 students who had successfully passed the exams!’
Linda felt terrible. Yes, it was her fault. It was her job to inform the successful students that they were accepted by the school. But she didn’t feel terrible for long. It was a mistake and mistakes happen. That’s how she saw it.
‘I’m very sorry about this, Ms Pearce. I have no idea how that happened. I meant to send that email only to those 200 students as you had asked me to.’
‘It makes our school look real bad, you know…’
‘Yes I know. But it was an honest mistake. What do you think that I should do to set it right?’ asked Linda.
‘Well, the only thing that you can do is that you will send another email to those students who weren’t supposed to receive it and you will explain to them what happened and that they cannot study at our school because they didn’t pass the tests.’
‘OK, Ms Pearson. I will prepare the email first and I will send it to you in order for you to read it first. If you say that the email is well-written, I will then send it to all the students who weren’t supposed to receive the yesterday’s email.’
Ms Pearson agreed. She was not angry anymore. After all, nobody had died.
whatever have you done? – čo si to len spravila!
be aware of stg. – byť si niečoho vedomý
in order to – aby
approximately – približne
were supposed to – mala si (to poslať)
set it right – napraviť to
After all – koniec-koncov
© Sparrow’s English Reader
Sparrow's English Reader 