My boss at work came into our break-room last night, where I was eating my supper.

He said, “You win the award.”

“What award?” I asked.

“The one for making the biggest part order in company history.”

He handed me a sheet of paper. It was a copy of an email sent to cancel the order.

I work in a factory in maintenance. We paint cars in my shop. One of my jobs is to rebuild paint pumps when they go bad. This involves taking them apart, cleaning them up, then putting them back together with new parts replacing any that were worn out.

One of the parts this particular pump needed is called a displacement rod. Costs $147.10 each.

Seems I ordered several million of them. OK, 5,133,600 to be exact.

I guess I made one of my frequent trips into la-la-land while I was at the computer ordering my part. That happens often. I’ll find myself staring off into space, lost in my thoughts, mostly always about Richard.

I don’t remember even typing a “1” into the quantity field on the order screen. I really don’t remember putting millions in there.

The total came to $755,152,560 or so they tell me.

It’s a shame they caught my mistake. It would have been interesting to see what three quarters of a billion dollars worth of pump rods looked like.

Maybe they’d have given my one as a going away gift as they walked my out of the door.