“No brown M&Ms in the backstage area.”

In a 2009 Episode of “This American Life”, entitled “Fine Print”, host Ira Glass led a discussion with John Flansburgh (from the band, They Might Be Giants), about a provision in the Van Halen band’s contract that read, “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”

From Van Halen singer David Lee Roth’s autobiography, quoted in the This American Life transcript: ‘Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in…The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say “Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . . .” This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”

So, Roth said: “When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl . . . well, line-check the entire production… They didn’t read the contract…Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.”

Like, for example, a stage collapsing and killing people.

So… back to current reality. I have a pen on my desk. My favorite pen. I’ve just bought five boxes of refills for the pen. I don’t ever want to be caught short, you know. It’s my favorite.

And, during a quiet moment this morning. I sat at my desk staring at one of the boxes of refills on the side of which is stamped the company’s name, and the subtitle, “Attentively Pursure Quality.”

Yep, the first few times I read it as, “Attentively Pursue Quality” because that’s what I expected to see. But (it really was a quiet moment in the morning) as I stared at the box a little longer, I had the thought, “I can’t believe it…. they have MIS-SPELLED the word, ‘pursue’”. On their box. Thousands of times. “Pursure”!!!!!

So… I wonder… what else?

Nick Miller is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. He assists banks and credit unions to generate more and more profitable relationships, faster, with business clients, their owners, and their employees through better sales strategies and execution. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.