So I just had a disagreement with co-workers: Several of them have to record names on a log at my desk and I, in turn, must search a database and code them…Sounds simple, but not when I cant even make out the first 2 letters?
So I told them they simply must correct this, and they replied with something like, “that is just how I write”…
It really angered me for adults to argue that poor penmanship is simply not correctable? I mean what does that say of their level of intelligence?
I call it lazy, thoughtless and rude for them to continue this illegible scribbling, but they say (and I almost think I hit a pretty raw nerve from their angry reactions) it is how they learned and it is not something they can change?
Am I the only one who thinks that is a stupid retort?
My signature is completely stylized and unrecognizable as being my name (actually my full first name, middle initial, and last name – no, really, it’s all there). Ditto for my initials, which you can kind of tell, once you’ve been told, is the first letter of my first name, circled.
If someone needs to be able to read my name or initials, I print. I do know which occasions call for which version, legible or illegible.
It sounds as though your coworkers not only have poor penpersonship, but they’re idiotic and rude as well.
You are not being unreasonable. I have bad handwriting and if I dash off a note to someone and see that a word is difficult to read, I’ll cross it out and redo it. It’s perfectly acceptable to say something along the lines of, “I couldn’t make out what you wanted, so I thought I’d better speak to you first.”
My brother had horrible handwriting. He bought a caligraphy book and studied it for a while, and now his handwriting is better than most. “That’s just how I write” is a lazy copout.
Could you ask them to print? Mr Neville and I both have horrible handwriting, and that’s what we do when we need to write something down for someone else to read.
I have (nicely at first, less so as the behavior continues) asked them to correct this and explained how it makes my job more difficult, and they still dont seem to think they can change?
Today, I just entered the ones that I could read and gave the data back to my boss. (He has heard my requests for better penmanship and has reinforced my need for it)
So I figure when it starts affecting his reports ( and it will ) he will let them have it and maybe they will care then.
It just really made me mad that I am not worth the time it would take for them to slow down and write it clearly the first time? Rather than me wasting my time asking them to clarify them everyday!
Actually, really bad handwriting can be a sign of a learning disability similiar to dyslexia known as dysgraphia. There are exercises that can be done to help make the handwriting more legible, but it requires quite a bit of constant concentration on the persons part and isn’t worth it for most little notes, or sign out sheets. It is in no way lazy, thoughtless or rude and it is certainly no indicator of their intelligence. I have gotten every “chickenscratch”, “you-must-want-to-be-a-doctor”, “you have badhandwriting=you must be lazy” comment you have stated in the OP and then some. I hope I don’t come off short, but having been diagnosed with this in middle school, I thought I would share and help fight a little ignorance.
My writing’s been crappy since the first time I picked up a big fat pencil. It was so bad when I was a kid that I was actually drilled on it, both at school and at home. I print when I can. I try to be polite when someone tells me they can’t make out my signature. I write slowly, I hold the pen/pencil in many different ways, I use ruled paper as a guide. The results differ by only fractions of a degree.
Are you angry that I can not hit .400 against major league pitching, sink a 30-foot putt or run the 100-meter dash in 4 seconds? What you’re talking about is a matter of physical coordination and dexterity that has nothing to do with intelligence, training or practice.
Poor penmanship is indeed very difficult to correct. My own is pretty scratchy, even when I make an effort to be really nice. It *is * learned, from the start…I always got 'D’s in handwriting and 'A’s in everything else.
However, they were rude, too. Would it have killed them to say, “I’ll try” and then tried to be neater?
I had bad handwriting, purely because of laziness, and it got really bad in college and grad school when all I was writing to hand in were problem sets (math with very little verbal stuff) and lecture notes (for my eyes only.) So I got a book on retraining handwriting and used it. It took a lot of work (probably a lot more than your co-workers would be willing to put in for a single form).
My proudest day was when I had written out a few pages of notes for a role-playing game and handed it to the GM and my husband snorted and said, “Ha! He’ll never be able to read your handwriting.” The GM looked at it and said, “It’s perfectly legible. Very pretty, actually,” and passed it back to my husband, who had to admit that my handwriting was readable, and, in fact, rather nice. (My husband writes like a 5th-grade girl. So there!)
Those examples you give are things one would not expect of the average person. The average person can, however, produce legible handwriting. Most people who have bad handwriting could improve it with retraining and practice. Whether they consider it worthwhile for the application in the OP is debatable.
Some people do have problems with their handwriting that cannot be fixed by practice. The likelyhood that all of the OP’s coworkers suffer from same is small.
I agree, though, that the OP’s remarks on the intelligence of people with bad handwriting are unfortunate, particularly when they are made in sentence fragments that are randomly ended with question marks?
Not that my writing (both print and cursive) was ever particularly illegible, but I so admired my stepmother’s penmanship that I endeavored to change mine so that it would at least be similar…
after many hours of practice and self-prescribed drills, I successfully “changed” my writing style…it doesn’t look exactly like hers (because that would be very “Single White Female”), but it’s similar…
I used to have absolutely awful handwriting. There were times where even I couldn’t read it, let alone my teachers. I wish I could blame it on dysgraphia, but I can’t; it was just plain laziness on my part. I worked on it, and now have nice handwriting. It’s still sloppy on occasion when I have to write quickly, but I can read it, and that’s what counts. Stuff other people have to read gets typed.
There is bad-handwriting-as-a-result-of-learning-disability (kindly mentioned and explained by a poster above) and then there is bad-handwriting-because-I’m-too-lazy-to-bother-writing-as-neatly-as-I-can.
I suspect the OP is more concerned with option two.
There are some people who really can’t write any more legibly without extensive and possibly unreasonable effort and/or retraining. There are also (I’d venture to say a lot more of these) people who can’t be arsed to write legibly when other people are being expected to read their penmanship. A pox on the houses of the members of the second group.
I often have to read other people’s handwriting for my job. I’ve formulated and stick fast to the following rule:
If I cannot read it, I will ask. Once. If you give me a snippy, mouthy or dismissive line of nonsense about how stupid I am because I can’t read your writing, I never ask again and your work drops to the bottom of my priority list along with Ritual Desk Cleaning, below board surfing. If you make an effort (and it’s easy to tell who’s trying and who’s just lazy), I’ll make the time to try and learn how to read your writing.
My penmanship is poor unless I really take my time and make an effort to do grade-school cursive. I find when I try to write neatly, I get a death grip on the pen and my hand cramps - guess I have issues there. Honestly, it’s not a priority in my life, but when it has to be legible, I do my best.
Sadly, my frequent use of the keyboard has lessened my penmanship skills.
I believe and old friend of mine falls into the “dysgraphic” category. You could not read anything this guy wrote. It didn’t even look a lot like letters; those that did were some completely random approximation of the spelling. His signature looked like two, identical, tightly-compacted strings of the letter ‘w’ - although there was no ‘w’ in his name. I’m pretty sure he never learned to write in cursive. Be glad you don’t have to try to decipher his scrawl!
I did some calligraphy in high school. My handwriting still sucks, but evidently it doesn’t suck as much as the OP’s coworkers’ handwriting. I’m always glad to find that there’s someone whose handwriting sucks worse than mine.
Try side-stepping the issue of trying to make them write more legibly because it sounds like some people just can’t do it. Maybe you could get stickers with their names printed up and keep the stickers by the log book.
(My husband writes like a 5th-grade girl. So there!)