They gave me a desk right by the door of the Marvel Bullpen.

My job would be to do lettering corrections.

I thought it might be fun to have a little sign made up to put on the door, so on my lunch break I went to a tiny hole-in-the-wall place a block or two away that made plastic signs.

I decided on a small black sign with incised white block letters.

The old lady behind the desk gave me a little piece of paper and told me to print neatly on the paper EXACTLY what I wanted the sign to say. She explained that whatever was written on the paper would be what they would put on the sign. “That way there can be no mistake” she said with a smile. I wondered if she thought I looked like the type of person who was prone to making mistakes.

So I wrote: “DEPTARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS”.

I paid in advance and she told me the sign would be ready in four or five days.

The following Monday morning before work I went to the store to pick up the sign and when I opened the bag, I realized they had made a mistake.

The sign said: “DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS”.

Someone had taken the liberty of correcting my mistake. When I pointed out the mistake, the lady turned to a man in a small room in back and said that the sign did not match the order form, he looked at the order form, made a resigned face and sighed.

I came back in a few days and picked up the corrected sign and put it on the office door next to my drawing table.