24 März 2009

Another pet peeve - proof-read your shit!

I often get requests at work for things which I don't mind, because in some ways, I'm really just an intern. I do mind, however, when these requests are either unclear or in some way internally contradictory... because that means I have to spend some effort interpreting or mind-reading the requestor. For example:

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Sent: Tue 3/24/2009 4:12 PM
Subject: Sally Mae* onsite tomorrow... needs badging
Body: Hi Andrew,

Can you please provide Sally Mae with detailed directions on the badging process. She will be arriving Thursday later in the afternoon, onsite Friday, and through the weekend and into next week.

Cornelius*

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*Names changed. Sally Mae sounds like a co-ed you can take advantage of and Cornelius simply sounds fucking awesome.

This may sound minor and people (like Cornelius, the sender) may be really busy, but how busy are you that you can't spend five seconds to proof-read something and then fix it?

4 Kommentare:

ozan hat gesagt…

Actually, Sally Mae just sounds a lot like Fannie Mae. Sounds like you've got a whole company coming onsite. You know, a company that got bailed out by the government.

Andrew Chen hat gesagt…

You sure? Because I'm pretty sure Sally Mae came by my office yesterday with questions about nucleophilic substitution. I demonstrated to her SN2 reactions... you could say I inverted her stereochemistry.

Also, is that your class blog account?

Peter hat gesagt…

See, the really funny thing is that it looks like she's coming onsite on Friday. The whole arriving thursday thing is confusing, too, but presumably Sally Mae is flying in from out of town.

ozan hat gesagt…

That is my class blog account. If I'm logged into gmail, it automatically logs me into that particular blogger account. And as you can see, I'm too lazy to do anything about it.