The Coworker's Mistake

Marisol notices the error on Thursday afternoon, buried in a spreadsheet nobody else seems to be checking closely. Her coworker Dominic has sent the wrong pricing numbers to a major client. The numbers are about fifteen percent too low.

She stares at the email for a long moment, calculating what this actually means. If the client accepts the quote before anyone catches it, the company could lose thousands of dollars.

Marisol could say nothing. Dominic is well-liked, and mistakes like this sometimes just get quietly fixed. No one always has to explain how they happened. But if she stays silent and it comes out later, she'll have to explain herself. She saw it early enough to help.

She walks over to Dominic's desk instead of sending an email that other people might see. "Hey, I think there might be an issue with the numbers you sent to Fairview yesterday."

Dominic's face changes the moment he opens the spreadsheet again. "Oh no. Oh, that's bad. I used last year's pricing sheet by accident."

"I figured it was something like that," Marisol says. "Nobody sends numbers that low on purpose."

"Thank you for telling me directly," he says, already drafting a correction email. "You could have just gone to our manager first."

"I thought about it," Marisol admits. "But it felt more useful to give you a chance to fix it first."

Dominic sends the corrected numbers within the hour. He adds an apology that makes the mistake sound smaller than it actually was. Their manager never finds out how close the company came to losing the contract.

A few days later, Dominic stops by Marisol's desk with two coffees. "I owe you one," he says, setting a cup down next to her keyboard. "I mean that literally. This is the coffee."

Marisol laughs and takes the cup. "Just double-check your pricing sheets from now on."

"Deal," he says. "Permanently."