What's In A Name?

James Weston Miss Barbara Pierce Madison Smith and brown Mrs James Dixon just names but what's in a name well that all depends a name may be an organization this building is the home of one a name may be a member of that organization any one of us or a name may be one of our many customers names are accurate and Priceless identifications of individuals and organizations our telephone directories are filled with such names the names of people who respect our reputation for prompt accurate courteous service these names are a major concern to all of us in fact they are the reason for the existence of our company and the many different kinds of work we do each name is important take the name sarly John B before this particular name got into the directory it caused a good deal of trouble to go back a bit Mr sarly came to our city to look for a job and took a small furnished apartment with the hope of having his wife join him later his field is statistical research and he was interested in getting a job with one of the industrial trade associations in order to keep in Personal Touch with the contacts he was making and so that they could reach him he decided to have a telephone installed so he called the telephone company and was connected to one of our service Representatives Miss Ferguson may I help you yes I'd like to have a telephone installed in my apartment yes I can arrange that may I have your name please the name is Sly s a r l e y John B the address is 5623 North Capital Street Apartment 1 101 she recorded Mr sly's order but failed to verify his name the mistake in that one letter made a big difference to Sly and to us Mr sarly got his telephone without delay his first call was long distance to his wife then a day or two later he ran into an old friend bill it was a lucky break for sly because Bill had heard of a new job under discussion in his organization a trade association bill made a note of sly's telephone number on his newspaper and promised to contact him later bill told his boss about sly's excellent qualifications his boss told Bill he already had a man in mind but would hold off if sarly would come in and see him right away but Bill had inadvertently thrown away his newspaper with sly's number and couldn't find John B Sly in the directory so he called information and asked for sly's number the information operator checked her listings I'm sorry I find nothing listed Sir Bill insisted but it wasn't there and that was that he had to tell his boss that he couldn't contact sarly you can guess what happened later when Sly didn't hear from Bill and finally decided to check with him he found that the job had been filled it just couldn't wait sarly was not very happy to say the least he called us immediately and was connected to another one of our service Representatives she looked up the original records and there it was Farley not sarly obvious ly the name had not been verified properly after making the correction she verified it using key names S as in Sam a r l e as an Edward y as in young JN and the initial v as in boy she then prepared a correction and it was sent to to the service order Force for Action there a further check for accuracy had to be made by the directory compilation people but that was only the beginning the snowball of Corrections and additional work had just begun to roll a correction had to be included in the work going to the printer the printer then made the necessary changes so that the new listing would appear in the directory and on information another directory clerk had to verify the listing in final form another verification card was mailed out the original one apparently had gone astray the accounting department had to destroy its incorrect record and make a new one for billing purposes and the plant Department had to change its records but our customer had lost his Chance For What Might Have Been Just the job he would have liked he also lost his confidence in us and we were put to unnecessary expense just because of one bit of inattention we were able to correct the listing just before the directory went to press the only good break we had but we won't need good breaks if we remember verify all listings spell back everyone even the so-called unmistakable ones there are many similar sounding letters b d p and v c and z f and s i and y m and n and so on the only way to be sure of them is to use key Nam names such as boy David Paul Victory and so on always print the name using capital letters check all of this may give you some idea as to what's in a name all