“No, are you a student?” and other subleasing related woes

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, so this pitting involves two distinct issues:

First: the complete fucking inability of some students at my school to use standard English and its accompanying punctuation marks in any format of electronic communication.

Second: the complete fucking inability of most students at my school to use any knowledge of economics in any personal decision making process.

Now for some background: My adopted hometown of Boulder, CO is about to drain of students like a reservoir behind a burst dam for summer session. I like it here, have no immediate job prospects in other locales, and I’d like to stick around for the summer. The first step, of course, is finding a swingin’ pad. By consulting posted flyers, Craigslist, and the newspaper it’s not hard to find 50 undergrads trying to sublease their apartments or houses over the summer. Unfortunately, trying to communicate with some of these people via e-mail yields unfortunate results like this:

No, are you a fucking student?

Oh for the love of god, the inability to use standard English just burns. By the supplemental o’s in goood and too I can only guess that the mission here isn’t brevity or efficiency. Seeing how this person attends an institution of post-secondary education with some modicum of reputation I have to presume that this person has the actual capability to use a period at some point in her writing, but if it isn’t for efficiency and it certainly isn’t for readability, for the life of me I can’t figure out why she’s just chosen not to.

Second, what is it about paying a certain price for something that gives people a de facto entitlement to not having to take any type of bath on said item. Back when I started shopping around for spots in early April, I actually had a guy e-mail me back and say that he was willing to sub-lease his place for a mere $580 a month, and given that it was only $30 over what he paid for the place ($550) he thought he was giving me a heck of a deal because his sublease was less than a 10% markup! Okay jackass, I’m sure you just covered the retail business model in your micro-economics class last week or something, but that isn’t how it works. When nobody wants to live in Boulder, the prices go down, not up.

Anyway, the most annoying thing to deal with are people that write these heart-wrenching e-mails about how they’re paying so and so for a place and can only afford to lose so much money on it because they have to save up for their next place, etc. Hey numbnuts, I don’t care what you got duped into signing a 12 month lease on your place for, I care about the cheapest price that I can find a decent place around Boulder for over the summer. So spare me the tales of how I’m getting such a deal because you’ll knock a $100 a month off of your $700/month rent and tell me if my offer is worth your while or not.

If you feel that my offer is below what a fair market price for the place is, tell me and we can stop wasting each others time. I guess some people would rather eat the whole cost of their summer rent and have their places totally empty rather than get $900 to lease it out to someone, just because they feel insulted by having a reimbursement of less than 95% of their original cost.

Warning, some more really atrocious grammar follows.

Screw em’ all. I just made an agreement over the phone for a kid with a really nice place at $300 a month with utilities, parking, internet, and phone included.

2

I have to agree with you that it’s very difficult to read e-mails like that by my main reaction is:

Holy shit! You can get an apartment for $300/month with all that included! That’s just remarkable. Maybe I need to move to Boulder.

Really, though, how hard is it to punctuate and capitalize? I really don’t get it and I can’t do it. I guess proof-reading is out of the question. Or maybe they did which would be really sad.

3

My guess as to why there is an extreme lack of grammar/punctuation/capitalization and a general lack of formality is these people are students. They have yet to enter the ‘real world’. To them email is just a tool to talk to their friends/family, much like IM and text messaging, which don’t require any formality. Spell checking or reading these emails before sending them is just something they don’t know to do yet. Email, to them, is a form of informal communication. They assume you are a student as well, and will have no problem reading their emails.

As to the rant about them not agreeing to a reasonable sublet, ever think maybe its you who are unreasonable? If they, or friends of theirs/housemates what have you, are getting these amounts then it is no way unreasonable for them to ask for them. However I do agree with you, I subletted every summer basically when I was in school, it was agood way to save a few bucks.

4

Sure but Jesus H. Christ, there’s a world of difference between “informal” and “unintelligible.”

Formal:
I’d like to make an appointment to meet with you sometime next week. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Informal:
Hey buddy, wanna do lunch next week? Call me!

Stoopid:
yo d00d c u nx wk? ttyl

Cripes, I know a six-year-old who writes better than that.

5

The way to reply to this one is “What are you doing calling me a cunx, you fucking asshole?!”

6

I don’t understand this. I first got on the Internet in 1999 when I was 13. I always wrote with proper grammar (well, might have skipped a bit of capitalization and inserted some LOLs in IMs, but no bratspeak), because I thought it was the right thing to do. I mean, I had a penpal. We both wrote with proper grammar and spelling, why is the net any different? When did it become expected that teens would automatically type like ass? I don’t understand, because I communicated like an intelligent human being from the start.

7

No. College town bled dry is the perfect setup for rock-bottom sublet prices. That they don’t get that $300 is better than nothing, which is what they’d be getting otherwise, is unreasonable. And since these people seem to be going into back and forths with the OP instead of snubbing her immediately, they prove her point. Yes, they’ve taken responsibility of real estate over a period where nobody, including themselves, is interested in it. They don’t want to deal with the burdensome economics surrounding that circumstance, and their entitlement to circumventing that (a markup!?) is disgusting.

8

:smiley: See, I’m so literate I can’t even make up the stupid stuff right!

9

The stoopid writing is entirely intelligible to many people. I may happen to think cyrillic looks “stoopid” that doesn’t make it so. In fact it would make me “stoopid”.

So its only okay to the amount you took it to? Why not just say “laughing out loud” and use proper capitalization? You obviously did not communicate like an intelligent human being, you choose what was acceptable for you, and are now happily bashing others who do the same.

So they are going back and forth? Or what most would call negotiating? And this is wrong? They shouldn’t be trying to get the most they can? Since I know nothing of the real estate business in said college town maybe, just maybe, people do pay more for sublets then the OP, you, or I would think reasonable. I know my GF just had one of her friends move into her spare room, just for the summer until she is done her masters, and is paying $300 + utilities. To me that seems like a lot. I never paid over $175 + utilities. In this town, at this time $300 + utilities is apparently a good deal. I know its not exactly a sublet, but in no way did my GF need someone to move in.

10

Nah, as far as I can tell, you were right. I was just suggesting that as a reply next time you get an email like that from an idiot like that.

11

Yes, and I could write my messages backward and make you hold them up to a mirror, and you could read them just fine. Or maybe tear open a paper bag and write on it in crayon. Doesn’t mean it’s appropriate or appreciated.

Yes, it would make you look stoopid. Not the point. There’s a time and a place to use such shorthand (and precious few of those), and communicating about a possible business arrangement with an unknown person isn’t it. Or any situation where you want to be taken seriously.

By the way, I wasn’t picking on you or anything by quoting your post. I actually agree with you about students (hell, people for that matter) thinking e-mail is informal. Just used it as a jumping-off point to illustrate that informal != sloppy.

12

That’s some pretty amusing stuff. My favorite snippets are:

I would “be agree” that this was not written by a native English speaker. I take it this guy never took a class on business writing?

Here, I can just imagine the author giving a DVD-style director’s commentary: “See here, I omitted the ‘rrow’ in ‘tomorrow’, which freed up some time for me to use that tilde dealy at the end, which, as I think you’ll agree, looks pretty cool.”

“This was the finishing touch. First you think I’m still talking about the apartment and then BAM! The finger is pointing at you! I clinched the sale with this mindfuck turn-of-phrase.”

13

I can’t stand the chat-speak-type English like the examples in the OP. While it is inteligible (with a bit of work), it makes the writer sound like he or she has a brain malfunction. I’ve been online since I was 12 (I’ll be 21 soon), and while I’ve adopted a few common abreviations into my online writing style, I’ve never felt the need to start typing like a monkey trying to reproduce the works of Shakespeare. I just don’t get it.

14

I agree with you that there is a time and place for informal writing, and a business arrangement isn’t it. Nor am I really trying to defend these people who use improper grammar/what have you, I am just pointing out that these people have yet to really conduct business of any sort, and probably do not know better. They don’t realize that what they are doing is wrong in this context. They think they are just talking to another student via email so they naturally fall back to the form of communication that they are use to when in this situation. That form is l337 speek. I seriously doubt they speek l337 when emailing prof’s asking for an extension. This doesn’t make them stoopid, it makes them inexperienced, and in all likelihood not realizing that contacting a subletter is a form of business.

No worries, I wasn’t at all worried about being picked on. Hell I have a friend who is big in to MMPORGs and about 3/4s of the time I have no clue what the fuck he is talking about on IM (doesn’t help that a good portion of the time he starts sentences with /g or /gu, lol) so I sympathize, and agree that it isn’t proper. Just think its understandable, and maybe rather then ranting about them you could offer some constructive criticism in a reply email. Of course I probably wouldn’t do this, I’d just say whatever, offer lower and see if they would take it. If not then fuck 'em.

I really don’t understand why some people feel it is ok to use a few common abbreviations, yet slam others who use other abbreviations. Either don’t use any or stfu about people who use more then you. It does not make them stupid, or monkeyish.

15

Sadly, they do.

16

Really? And it works? Profs don’t just say to them “well I am not an unreasonable person, and if you submit your request to me in proper form I may consider it, but until then I have no idea what you are talking about”? They should. IMO university/college is suppose to train you for the real world by giving you the skills you need. This would be a great and easy way to give people said skills.

17

I have no idea what professors say to them. I do know that my former roommate, who is a college professor, has gotten essentially leet emails complaining about grades and so forth. I am only privy to the general gist of these emails, and not to her responses, as she honors the privacy of her students.

That said, I know an appalling number* of young people (not those on the Dope) who honest to $deity believe that capitalization, grammar, and spelling do not matter unless they’re writing for school. I’ve been told (when I gently corrected someone) that it didn’t matter how they wrote because they weren’t being graded on it.

*In this case, an appalling number is any number >1.

18

I strive to be honest with my students. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t understand them in order to make some kind of a point.

When you take it upon yourself to teach your own college course, I’ll let you decide how you want to budget your energy. I have enough headaches in this job without getting bitchy with students for using ‘u’ instead of ‘you.’ I limit my efforts in the matter to always sending clear, polite email using complete sentences in order to set a good example. It’s up to them pick up on the fact that this is how the grown-ups communicate. If it were a student majoring in my field, someone with whom I take a mentoring role, I might take them aside and tell them that they should probably be more formal in their corresponence, but I’m not going to fight that battle with every idiot among the two hundred students in my classes. I’d just as soon keep the emailing back-and-forth to the bare minimum required to let both of us get on with our lives.