As someone who went to school to be a writer, I honestly care a lot less about grammar than some of the people who went to school with me!
The mistake has to be especially serious for it to really bother me. As long as I can understand what you’re saying, I’m fine. That being said, I don’t mess around with endless sentences. Use a point!
But when this editor had her pay docked due to minor grammatical errors made due to her American origin, she pettyly pointed out every mistake her boss made on a recent assignment!
Check it out!
Years ago I accepted a job in another country for a very small company that taught English.
My responsibilities included reviewing and editing lesson plans created by non-native English speakers.
Many of the lessons were taught in EU English, although I am used to US English, my boss (and the only other native English speaker) was from the UK.
And the subtle differences between American and British English ended up causing a big problem for OP…
Therefore, there were certain nuances that I did not know. That said, I was one of the best QA people on the team, but I wasn’t perfect by any means.
Obvious mistakes were often made in lessons that I was not assigned to review, but I never purposely called people in to review them.
It was a pretty bad company, and it had bad lessons to begin with. But if there were obvious mistakes, I would quietly correct them.
But apparently OP’s grammatical errors were such a problem for her boss that he cut her pay!
One pay period, months into my employment there, I received a reduction in my salary.
The demotion came with a note explaining that the reasoning was due to X and X errors that had crept into my work.
It bothered me because this wasn’t part of my contract but I couldn’t really contest it in this foreign country.
However, the note indicated that this decrease in salary for “errors” committed in the performance of their work duties applied to all employees in my department.
If his boss wanted to play the petty game, OP was more than willing to play along!
I knew there were a lot of errors in other lesson plans that were not mine.
So I opened the first one and started messaging in the group chat about all the bugs I could find. And there were a lot of them.
I did this quickly until my boss, who was sitting in front of me, sent me a message that basically said:
“Don’t worry, I can assure you that I am held to the same standards and expectations” before standing up and walking away angrily.
But ironically, OP didn’t even realize that her boss had been working on this lesson!
After he moved out of earshot, my other coworker laughed and said that she had messaged him and asked how he knew that particular lesson was one he QA’d.
I told him I didn’t know he had just released the first one and that I knew it had mistakes.
After that, no more money was taken out of my paychecks, but I left the company shortly after.
Hey, if you want to die on grammar hill, so to speak, you’d better make sure your own writing is absolutely flawless!
Reddit was delighted to see her get her grammatical revenge, but many said that, in reality, companies typically want American English, not British.
This person couldn’t get over the obvious pay cut and the fact that the company didn’t even try to cover it up.
And this quality control said that sometimes grammatical differences between cultures actually contributed to better sounding sentences!
And finally, this user said it was good that OP was leaving a company with such shady legal dealings!
What do people say about people who live in glass houses?
If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO telling a web developer to “act his salary”… and that results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.
