I’m reminded of a previous job, where the hiring manager left after I was there for about five years. The secretaries that the following hiring manager hired were so incompetent that I thought that maybe she decided to hire them based on their response when she asked them what was the salary they wanted. I figured that she hired the women who asked for the lowest salaries.
They made so many mistakes in typing up correspondence that the hiring manager announced that it would be my job to look over everyone’s correspondence and advise the secretaries of any errors they had made in terms of spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. The secretaries were required to fix their errors before sending out the correspondence. In addition, they had to give the hiring manager copies of their correspondence, and if the hiring manager found an error somewhere, there would be An Investigation.
Unfortunately, this new policy made the secretaries very angry, and they took it out on me, even though they knew that I was not the one who had decided to go over their work with a fine-toothed comb. Several incidents stand out.
1) I noticed that a secretary had typed “City Bank” instead of “Citibank” in a letter that she had not yet printed out. I told her to change it to “Citibank.” She insisted that her supervisor WANTED her to type “City Bank.” I said that I didn’t think so. She just glared at me. Eventually, I found out that the letter went out with the words “City Bank.” I asked her supervisor why he was so insistent that the name of the bank be spelled “City Bank.” Of course, he said that that wasn’t the case. He said that he even asked his secretary if I had seen the letter, and she said yes. I said, “You asked the wrong question. You should have asked her if she made the change that I told her to make, because she did not do so.” And then the hiring manager had a fit when she saw the copy of the letter that contained the words “City Bank,” and there was An Investigation. I had to tell her that I had tried to correct the secretary to no avail. And then the hiring manager had to talk to the secretary and the supervisor, who verified that he had never insisted that the name of the bank should be spelled “City Bank.” The secretary wound up getting furious at me.
2) A secretary showed me the letter she had typed up and announced that her supervisor had said that it was perfect. I said that I wondered why she had typed “enc.” at the bottom of the letter, since nothing was indicated as being enclosed. She didn’t say anything. She just glared at me. I showed the letter to her supervisor and asked him how he could say that the letter was perfect. He didn’t say anything. I said that he could enclose his business card or the company’s brochure, but instead, he told her to redo the letter without the “enc.” She was very angry.
3) I pointed out a few errors to a secretary. She didn’t glare at me, but she pouted and sulked. I said, “When you asked me to check the letter for errors, did you really mean it? Or did you want me to tell you that your letter was perfect, even if it wasn’t?” She didn’t say anything, but she did redo the letter.
Some people just don’t want ANY criticism, no matter how valid and objective it is. I had no choice but to attempt to correct errors as I saw them, because if I hadn’t, the hiring manager would have been angry at me, and I might have wound up losing my job. And I didn’t think that I should lose my job because of other people’s errors.