"I need to know something"

"Yes?"
"I put something in the wrong place and...."
I am a steward for the handicraft section of the state's annual show. (For those of you in the US think "state fair".) It is my job to answer questions about all sorts of things.
Yesterday I had an email from someone I have never met. We have corresponded by email before. I am sure she is a nice person, certainly she always says "thank you", but yesterday she sounded flustered.
    "I put an entry in and I put it in the wrong place...."
Oh. She isn't the first person to have done that...and she won't be the last. 
Entries have to be in by a certain date in June. There is a further seven day period in which you can put in a late entry if you pay three times the original entry fee. There is also a very strict rule that this is an end to the matter. You cannot put any further entries in after that.
Now she hasn't finished the entry - and admitted that she might not finish it in time. What she wanted to do was put another entry into another class instead - and use her entry fee that way.
No. You can't do that. That would be like putting in a very, very late entry.  I told her she could, if she finished it, still put her original entry into the wrong class. It won't get judged but, if there is room, it would get displayed. It is up to the competitor to put his or her entries into the right class.
She accepted it with good grace and said, "It was my fault."
I hope we don't have any more of those this year. It is always disappointing. Last year there was a lovely piece of work, work which would have won a prize, put into the wrong class. I remember the judge standing there and looking carefully at it and then saying, "I wish I could give this a first." 
It always bothers me when something like this happens. I don't like people to be disappointed.
While I never put anything in to the wrong class and can no longer put anything in - well I could but I don't think it is appropriate to be standing there while someone is judging my work - I remember the nervous thrill of filling out the form, of paying the fee, of taking your work in, of waiting for the results. On the first occasion I didn't even need to do all those things because someone else told me of the shawl I had made,
    "I'll have that for the show please."'
There are a lot more entries now. We have more display space - although not nearly enough - and the new Convenors of the area have had some really innovative ideas that are making people take much more interest.
But, it all depends on people reading the schedule carefully - and putting things in the right class.
So the person who contacted me yesterday says she will try again next year.
I hope she does.