Terminating event triggered before workitem created

[Robin Sahasranam]

Hello WF experts,
 
We have some instances where the workitems to release a purchase order remain in
the agents Inbox even after the PO is released. The workitem has a terminating
event which is triggered even before the workitem is created for the agent.
There is a delay of a few seconds, before the workitem is created as there are
two background steps which run prior to the foreground task. In some cases where
the users are in a hurry, they do a U1 release of the PO (which  start the
workflow)  and M1 release (the trminating event) immediately within a couple of
seconds, before the task is created in the box. As the task is created after the
terminating event is triggered, it remains in the Inbox. The agent later
executes the task and gets error that release is not required. The Workflow
Administrator then has to delete the task from the Inbox, besides having to
respond to trouble tickets, explain the problem etc.
 
Is there a way to introduce a delay in the triggering of the terminating event,
or other mechanism so that the task will be logically deleted automatically? We
are currently on 4.0b, but I have also seen this problem on our 4.6c system to
which we will migrate soon.
 
Thank you for your assistance.
 
Robin Sahasranam
World Bank