Am I as good as fired (job related)??

[DrDeth]

[QUOTE=Evil Captor]

Y’know, I write and edit professionally, and I often let stuff go on this board that I would never let go at work, because I’m getting paid bupkis to write here. In fact, I’m the one who pays, and that being the case, I just try to make sure I’m saying what I intend to. I do not give a flying fuck about fine points of grammar, spelling or punctuation. I imagine this is true of most posters to this board. I’m really surprised you do not know this already.
[/QUOTE]

Right. Hell, I have also got paid for my writing. But here? Who gives a flying fuck? I never submit anything professional without spellcheck, but I almost nener use that here. How one posts here is hardly a reflection of ones personal writing skills.

[Idlewild]

[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
I know that. My allusion to Nero Wolfe might have given you a clue there, but I guess you didn’t grasp its implication. My point was that knowing the difference between infer and imply is a very fine point on which to judge a customer service rep unless you’re in the “persnickety English major help desk” field, in which case, yes, it’s important. Otherwise, not so much.

[/QUOTE]

How does one get a job in the “persnickety English major help desk” field? I majored in Politics but I’m a quick study, and I once involuntarily corrected a stranger on a bus for using ‘less’ when she meant ‘fewer.’

[Evil_Captor]

[QUOTE=dennis gallagher]
Actually I am a probationer and just found this site, so there is a lot I don’t know about it I am sure. One thing I have noticed however is the care with which most posters take in making their arguments. I am not part of the grammar police going around and telling people that you don’t pluralize words by adding apostrophe “s” or that lose and loose don’t mean the same thing or that obbligato has 2 b’s (oh I see, some things do get pluralized with an apostrophe.) But, this particular poster is concerned because his communication skills have been questioned and since everyone else was too tactful to suggest that maybe he is being careless or is not as knowledgeable as he should be, given his duties I decided to suggest this possibility.
[/quote]

I’ll grant you that the OP’s problem may be communication skills, but the reason I raise the issue about infer and imply is that most of the execs and biz people I’ve worked with over the years had relatively weak English skills and a difference like that would just whiz past them. Hell, I had one department head (in marketing, yet) who more or less bragged to me that he couldn’t spell “cat.”

Now as to your Nero Wofe allusion and the fact that you just want to make sure that your point comes across as you intended even when not done with “Strunk and White” accuracy. Well, you failed. I did not get it when you said it and I don’t get it now. As to knowing the difference between the words, yes I know that many people use them interchangeably when they are not. I would not have mentioned that one single error at all, or commented at all, had that been the sole error in his post.

Nero Wolfe is fictional detective, a genius who’s also very strict iwth his use of language. “Infer” and “imply” have come up in his stories, along with lots of other stuff of that nature. No reason you should know that, but you might have wondered why I asked "Who are you, Nero Wolfe?

I am surprised that someone who writes and edits professionally does not “give a fuck about the fine points of grammar” since it is these points that allow subtle distinctions in arguments to be clear to the reader. Maybe you just meant that you can’t be bothered correcting spelling errors since you do it all day at work. Very nicely put.

Clearly, in context, I meant “I don’t give a fuck about …” on the Dope. For the reasons I stated. This is a recreational site, the minute I have to work at posting here, I stop posting here.

[Evil_Captor]

[QUOTE=Idlewild]
How does one get a job in the “persnickety English major help desk” field? I majored in Politics but I’m a quick study, and I once involuntarily corrected a stranger on a bus for using ‘less’ when she meant ‘fewer.’
[/QUOTE]

Man, you’re almost there. Do a search on a few message boards for people using the word “who” and you’ll find a few who should be using “whom.” A stiff upbraiding and you’ll probably get certified.

They might even let you be the ship’s proofreader when the spaceships leave Earth.

[Evil_Captor]

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
On the one hand, I agree with you: it’s a pretty fine point, and the use of “infer” as a synonym for “imply” is so common that I consider “imply” to be an alternate definition of “infer” at this point.

On the other hand, it’s not your opinion or my opinion of the word’s meaning that matters: it’s his boss’s opinion, and the opinion of the clients. If any of them are prescriptivists, this may well irritate them and cause them to form negative opinions of his writing skills.

It was certainly something I noticed when reading the posts as well.

Daniel
[/QUOTE]

Oh, yes, the woods in business are just crawling with prescriptivists. That’s why business communications are so clear and use language so eloquently. Yes, there’s nothing like natural, proactive, kwik, EZ business grammar for Ye Olde Clarity in Communication. It’s like a free gift of grammar!

[Cat_Whisperer]

[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Right. Hell, I have also got paid for my writing. But here? Who gives a flying fuck? I never submit anything professional without spellcheck, but I almost nener use that here. How one posts here is hardly a reflection of ones personal writing skills.
[/QUOTE]

I look at my participation here from a 180º different perspective from yours - as an administrative type, when I type letters and documents, I am often the final say on what is correct and what isn’t. I use my time here to hone my writing, grammar, and spelling skills, and after participating here for six years, I can honestly say that my writing skills have improved dramatically from all the practice I’ve had. In my opinion, sloppy writing=sloppy thinking (and I am no fan of sloppy thinking).

[Chimera]

[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Yes, there’s nothing like natural, proactive, kwik, EZ business grammar for Ye Olde Clarity in Communication. It’s like a free gift of grammar!
[/QUOTE]

Harrump! :rolleyes:

You’re clearly not being proactive in leveraging your linguistic synergy to maximize the communications throughput.

[Sam_Stone]

[QUOTE=diggerwam]
Company told me that I turned co-workers off by my tone. Either unprofessional or short demanding sentences. I had never heard this about myself before and I made myself more aware of my audience. Like I said, it was actually mentioned how much progress I’d made in this area. I thought I was on the right track.

Now I find out that above and beyond unprofessionalism, other offices are questioning my compitence (sp??). Do I really know what I’m supposed to know and do I infer to my clients that I know more than I really do? I basically have a bad reputation in a couple offices and I don’t think there is much I can do about it. It’s time to cut my losses. It just bothers me that I survived 7 years, 4 administrations and numerous layoffs, but this is what is ultimately going to set me adrift.

I just think this administration is shocked to see how much $$ we’re losing and I’m the next weakest link. None of my clients have left do to poor service, nobody else in my position can say the same thing.
[/QUOTE]

To be frank, it sounds like you may have some issues you still need to work out. You admit that you have work to do in some areas, your boss has apparently had complaints from both co-workers and clients, and you say that you have a bad reputation with other offices.

The company may be treating you poorly, but the best advice I can give you is to treat this as a wake-up call and to start seriously working on improving your relations with others and do some hard soul-searching about how you’ve been talking to clients on the phone. Do you get abrupt with them? Talk to them in a condescending tone? Sound annoyed at their questions? Give them advice that you’re not sure about, or that goes over their heads?

If I were you, I would very politely go talk to your manager or supervisor, and ask for some extra information about precisely what’s wrong. Ask them to help you build a performance improvement plan that has concrete steps and evaluations to get you back on track and regain the confidence of management and co-workers.

If the management is worth anything at all, they’ll be more than willing to guide you. In fact, part of a poor assessment should have included a program for addressing your perceived shortcomings and helping you get past whatever problems you’re having.

It’s tempting to just call them a bunch of jerks and walk out or find another job, but if there’s even an inkling of truth to what they are telling you, you’re going to find your career very limited in years to come. Now’s the time to improve yourself. Adopt the attitude that you’re going to blow them away with how much better you’ll be a year from now. Show them that you can take criticism, rise above it, and exceed their expectations.

Doing that may actually impress a lot of people. They may decide that at the very least you really care about doing right by them, and that will buy you a lot of mileage. Worst-case scenario is that they get rid of you anyway, but you’ll come out of the experience stronger and more prepared for your next job.

This is important for another reason: You don’t want to go through life knowing that you were fired, and that there was actually a good reason to fire you. That’s the kind of experience that can destroy confidence. Even if you want to leave, it would be far better to leave after you’ve erased the black mark, get a good evaluation, and then leave on your own terms, confident that you are still a valuable asset to a company.

Finally, if they have been really trying to get rid of you unfairly, doing this will take away any pretense they can come up with for ditching you. You got your bad review - if you respond to it by meeting all their objections, you’ll pull the rug out from under them. At the very least, you may change a ‘termination with cause’ into a layoff, which will get you some severence pay, better unemployment benefits, and a better shot at getting your next job.

[diggerwam]

A little clarification. 90% of my clients like me, a lot. To the point where when we have shuffled workload, my clients invariablely want me back. I naively thought, and I said this before, that as long as my clients were happy, that was all I had to worry about. Apparently I was wrong.

2nd, I tend to stammer, I do 90% of my communications via e-mail. The criticisms have tended to be “too direct, not tactful” usually in co-workers and “not professional enough” from other offices. Once that was brought to my attention in February, I immediately started really taking their suggestions to heart. I was told that people noticed and mentioned improvement.

3rdly, a big point I’m trying to make is that I’ve been doing the same basic job for years (different job title, but basically the same responsibilities). Now all of a sudden, my communication skills aren’t up to snuff. That almost perfectly coincided w/ yet another new administration. If my communication skills weren’t good, they’ve had plenty of time to included me in one of the numerous company layoffs.

Could my communication be better? Yes of course, everybody has elements to their job they could do better. I’m not immune to weaknesses. It just feels a little bigger than that. I don’t think there is any way to come back from this. It pisses me off, I liked this job and I thought I was well suited for it, but I’m at peace with it and I do hope that I can find another job before I’m let go. I don’t think they will let me go, like some other folks said earlier, it’s cheaper this way.

Thanks for all the input. I’ve gotten a lot from it.