Dear Gertrude:
It's enough, to me, that you don't know the name of our company (itself an offshoot of one of those giant companies -- but I digress, as is my wont). As in, you use a name we haven't called ourselves in years. I know this because we are a newspaper, and the name of the company is the name on the masthead, the name on the giant sign outside where you park -- the name on the printed product you pull out so you can show our less-enlightened clients that yes, indeed, their add for little Suzie Space-Alien (honestly, hyphenated names these days are getting a little outlandish) and her fifth birthday did run.
So already, I know you're not necessarily the sharper tack in a pack from which the other tack (being sharper) has already been removed. And while I appreciate the difficulty in understanding how one object can be less sharp than nothing -- ... actually, let's drop the analogy.
I am saying that you lack basic job function skills, starting with not knowing the name of the company.
But it gets worse.
Let's say you're trying to spell a word like, oh, procrastinate. Now, because my job is predicated (ooh, another toughie -- sorry 'bout that) on being able to spell, I am happy to help you spell procrastinate.
Don't want me to? Don't acknowledge my presence even as I am required to be able to hear you and your whiny phone voice saying, in a state of constant complain, "Hello, ma'am, this is Gertrude from the Dumbass Gazette" -- it is actually the Dumbass Morning Gazette, though I grudgingly accept that for some of us, dumbassery is not restricted to the morning -- because I have to be able to hear other people who might have something important to say to me?
Cool, fine. Actually, given a choice between talking to people and not talking to them, especially when they are in the homo sapiens paulisper trinomial, I vastly prefer the latter.
But then one of our more enterprising co-workers, who is much less known for sitting on his head than you will ever be, points out that there is an actual, honest-to-Fred user of words mere feet from you. (Gotta love Fred; he never mistook a bat for a bird.)
So you tell me, reluctantly, to spell procrastinate. (You don't even ask -- you had asked the people in your department how to spell it, but you can't lower yourself to that amazingly low level of subservience, can't begin to contemplate a world in which an editor might actually be of some service to you in helping you not continue your streak of craptacularity.)
I spell it for you because I am way the fuck nicer and smarter than you will ever appreciate. ('nother long one -- but here it is for you to mess up once you're back to needing to warm your hair on your backside.)
You say thank you in that "I wish your mother had swallowed that load instead of taking it up her cooch" sense -- an amazing feat considering I am still at my desk and you now have information you likely would have spent half an hour looking for -- while not finding it, as usual. I can tell what products you're responsible for because they look like day-old kittens (who generally haven't opened their eyes) would've taken one look at your work and laughed.
(And yes, Google Chrome, cooch is a word. Stop putting a red line under it!)
But, see, here's the thing.
When I offer to come over and make sure your streak of mistakes has actually ended (cue picture of a blue moon), you say "THANK YOU" in that voice we all know as:
"Take one fucking step closer to me and I swear to God I will find some way to make you more miserable and I will enjoy it like thick, hard, strong, dark coffee (what, you thought I was going for a dick joke? You sit on your head; there's no room for a penis) from this day until the day one of us is not around to see the other."
Now, I am happy to invent a ZIP code with no numbers, just an asterisk, a heart, some cuneiform and a soggy Cheerio rounding it out -- if only because I would then have the opportunity to forget what a magnificent failure you are as a full-fledged human being -- but part of teaching someone a new skill is verifying that they didn't just screw the pooch by, for example, reversing the first r and the o in procrastinate ... a simple mistake, and one I've seen before, and even been guilty of myself (thus why I am familiar with spell check, dictionaries and similar useful tools).
So I don't know, even now, if you got the word right or wrong, and if you got it right, I am sure you will act like it is no big deal for you to spell a word with more letters than you have whiteout and space on your nails.
But if you got it wrong, you will point to me as the one who led you astray.
And bitch, that ain't fucking happening.
Don't ask me to identify words on a sheet of crudely mimeographed 17th century Afrikaans, but something like procrastinate?
I got that, yo.
Now, I am willing to admit some fault here. When I hear people struggling over some basic-to-me English, I am eager to help. Perhaps I do this too much, though, at a newspaper, I think it would be kind of difficult to have someone too dedicated to not printing crap -- especially so long before you leave for the day and forget you work here. (I got your back on that one, actually. I am longing -- longing -- for the day I leave this place and don't have to put up with, shall we say, the lesser among us. They don't know who they are, which is why they are the lesser.)
But all you have to do is look over at me kindly, the first time, and let me know you know where I am if you need help.
And from that moment on, I will mourn the language you are working so studiously to kill, from improper spelling to comma butchery to even failing to make sure all of the text in that advertisement fits in the space.
But I will do so quietly. You won't know -- not that, if past care factor impotence is any indication, you would care.
(Am I weeping on the inside? No, no, that's just that gosh-darned chronic pleurisy and a nasty case of heartburn from yet more of the local food, where tastiness is quantified in gallons of chemical-burn-inducing spices. Pay it and my labored, wood-charring breaths no mind.)
But if you ever want my help again, you'll at least pretend you care about doing something right because it's your job and not because your boss is standing over you suggesting you go ask the guy who wishes Merriam-Webster made flavored dictionaries (all the better to eat them with, my dear).
Otherwise, you are cordially invited to find out if your caecum makes a better hat than do your asscheeks. (I know the answer, but I know you're forever determined to find the wrong answer before the right one, and if I can't have you around as a useful, contributing co-worker, I'm happy to have you around as an endlessly entertaining one.)
love and kisses,
iampunha