By May 4 I had begun the acting assignment, and the first lesson I regretted giving was one I had not meant to teach. A coworker learning the counter stood beside me with a pencil poised over a sample summary. She had marked the margins neatly, little arrows connecting the complaint totals to the statement that nothing remained outstanding. My initials were visible on the confirmation clipped behind it.
"So this tells us the individual sheets were checked," she said.
I put my hand on the edge of the paper. "It's supposed to." The answer came out sharply enough that she looked at me instead of the form. I softened my voice and explained that a summary could not replace the work it summarized. She nodded, then asked whether she should write that down. It was the kind of question I had wanted people to ask me when I imagined being good at this assignment.
"Write that you check the next step," I said. "Don't just carry the total over."
"But if it's already marked resolved?"
A man at the window interrupted us with two slips that did not match. I used his request as an escape, taking longer than I needed to compare them. The coworker watched carefully. I showed her how to distinguish what the record said from what the visitor expected it to mean, and for several minutes I could be the person I had been selected to be. Then she brought the sample forward again.
"May I keep this one to follow? Celia said it was a completed example."
I could have said no. I could also have said why. Instead I told her to leave it with the other training material until I checked something. She erased an arrow she had drawn beside the resolved line. The rubber made soft crumbs on the page, and she brushed them away with the side of her hand. My ink remained underneath, small and definite.
At lunch I went to Celia with a blank correction sheet, an object I hoped would make the conversation practical rather than personal. She had a sandwich on a folded napkin and did not invite me to sit. I asked whether an old monthly summary could be corrected after it had gone through ordinary review. She set the sandwich down and asked which summary.
"I'm asking about the procedure."
"The procedure depends on what's wrong."
"Suppose the totals were carried forward before every item had been checked." I kept my eyes on the blank sheet. "Could the section submit a replacement?"
Celia moved the napkin away from her working papers. "Not a replacement that makes the first one vanish. Bring me the particular error, the original entry, and what supports the correction. Then we decide what needs to be added and who needs to see it." She waited. "Is there a particular error, Marlene?"
I heard the opening she had given me. There was no trick in it, no demand that I know how everything should end before I spoke. I had brought the question because I wanted to repair the record without first standing inside it. Now she was asking for exactly the facts I possessed, and my hands tightened around a sheet on which I had written nothing.
"I want to be sure I'm teaching it correctly," I said.
"Then teach them to bring the error, not a hypothetical." She picked up her sandwich, then stopped. "And don't let a clean-looking form do their thinking for them."
I thanked her as though I had received general guidance. Walking back, I rehearsed what I could tell Ellis: there was a route; the original had to stay; we needed an account. All of that was useful, and none of it changed the fact that I had just declined to identify the error when the person able to receive it asked directly.
The coworker had straightened the training pile while I was gone. She asked whether she should return the sample to Celia. I said I would take care of it and put it beneath my own working papers. I did not alter a mark. Removing it from immediate use felt like action, though the example had already done its work in front of her.
Before closing, she checked a new entry against its supporting slip and asked a question before making her mark. I praised her for that. The praise was deserved, but it hurt to hear myself give it. After she left, I laid the blank correction sheet beside the completed summary. There was room on the desk for both. I knew now that there was a place to take them, too, and could no longer pretend that not knowing the procedure was what kept me there.