Mismanagement

Do you see me? I don’t. My friend Chas didn’t either, which is why he sent me this photo. (Thanks, Chas!) Chas, who runs the It’s Filmed There website, was on his way home from work when he came across this sign in Warsaw, Indiana, while sitting at a traffic light. While the light was red, Chas read a billboard in dire need of a couple of letters for hire. He noticed an unorthodox management style.

Managent is certainly not what Family Video, a large movie and game rental chain with more than 750 stores throughout the United States and Canada, meant. How did the company, um, manage to misspell a word so badly? Was anyone supervising this sign?

Then again, perhaps no letters are missing. Maybe Family Video is hiring a man agent. If that’s the case, the missing space and the misogyny disappoint me. Nah, that’s not the Family matter with which we’re dealing.

Family Video simply showed signs of carelessness, creating an error that caused drivers to stop abruptly — red light or no red light.

On the “about us” section of the company’s website, Family Video claims its days “are built around four daily goals: to learn, to teach, to WOW and to improve.” Today, Family Video, your goals weren’t met. You didn’t learn to spell a certain three-syllable word. I’ll teach you. Apply two more letters between the e and the n. M-A-N-A-G-E-M-E-N-T. WOW! That’s a marked improvement. Goal!

We had a situation in northern Indiana today. Chas put me on the case, and I put me on the sign, fixing the problem. That, readers, is crisis manijme managen management.