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RE: Dirty trick or fair play (was: RE: Honestly -- when an SME completely REWRITES your text ... GEEZ!)
Subject:RE: Dirty trick or fair play (was: RE: Honestly -- when an SME completely REWRITES your text ... GEEZ!) From:"Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com> To:"Janet Swisher" <jmswisher -at- gmail -dot- com> Date:Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:45:11 -0500
Well, to be fair, in a subsequent review, she did indicate that my overall writing had improved.
I suppose I must conceded that it doesn't matter why I did it. Hey, I was just thinking -- I had my eyes examined on Monday and f one of the assistants had mishandled the equipment and blinded me, I wouldn't much care why they did it. But it bothered me to be accused of the wrong thing. Without including my explanation, her comment accused me of some combination of carelessness and naïveté, when in fact I was guilty of egotism.
-----Original Message-----
From: Janet Swisher [mailto:jmswisher -at- gmail -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 12:11 PM
To: Downing, David
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Dirty trick or fair play (was: RE: Honestly -- when an SME completely REWRITES your text ... GEEZ!)
On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Downing, David <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com> wrote:
> However, that editor did something that I thought was kind of a dirty
> trick, and I was wondering whether the folks on this list agree or feel
> it was fair play. She called a meeting with me to discuss the matter and
> I explained it to her, just like I explained it to you. And I believe I
> made it clear that I understood now that working with another person was
> a whole different ball game than working alone, and that now that I
> understood that, I would never submit anything to her that I hadn't
> spell-checked.
>
> So I thought we had resolved it between ourselves -- BUT ...
>
> Along came my six-month review, and in those days, we had peer reviews,
> rather than manager reviews. She was one of my reviewers, and had made a
> statement something on the order of, "I was shocked by the fact that
> David turned in a draft that was full of spelling and typographical
> errors." She made no reference to the discussion we'd had in which I
> explained why I did that -- thus making it sound like an act of pure
> carelessness, or a complete lack of awareness that the document needed
> to be proofed at some point.
>
> I realize that you can argue that this was a professional relationship
> and not a friendship, and that therefore, it wasn't reasonable for me to
> expect her to just let the matter drop when I explained myself to her --
> that an official screw-up can be expected to result in an official
> reprimand. But I feel like she could have at least included my
> explanation in her comment.
A professional relationship is still a relationship between human
beings. I don't think she needed to include your explanation, but she
should have indicated that there was a change in your behavior:
"David turned in a draft that was full of spelling and typographical
errors. After we discussed the need for the writer to proof before
giving drafts to an editor, his submitted drafts have been more
acceptable." From a management standpoint, it doesn't matter why you
did what you did. What matters more is that you changed your behavior
based on feedback. But then, she was not a manager, and not even many
managers understand that.
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