Millennial becomes unhinged after boss corrects her spelling of ‘hamster’

[mystery-ak]

August 15, 2019
Millennial becomes unhinged after boss corrects her spelling of ‘hamster’
By Selwyn Duke

Being simultaneously comical and tragic, perhaps nothing reflects our descent into Idiocracy more than millennials who’ll insist their misspellings of words are correct. Just yesterday I read an eyebrow-raising story about this that was quite timely, as I’d experienced millennial spelling moronity just the day prior.

My case involved a leftist who emailed me with some deep, substantive criticism: He said I was “insane,” “nuttier than a fruitcake” and “f*****g” nuts.”  I responded to him. While I generally don’t play the spelling Nazi, leftists’ characteristic superciliousness inspired me to mention to him, kindly, that he’d written “you’re” as “your” three times in six sentences. His response?

“I am under 40,” he wrote. “Your vs you’re is interchangeable.”

But on to the far more interesting and dramatic story I mentioned earlier. According to The Fellowship of the Minds (FOTM) blog, it’s from a series of July tweets by a Georgetown University adjunct professor of public relations and journalism named Carol Blymire; it relates something she’d witnessed. As the blog presents it:

In office space near a client, a young woman was meeting with her boss. She was (by my estimation) in her late 20s.

The boss (also a woman) was giving her feedback and reviewing edits she had made on something this young woman wrote.

They had been speaking in low tones, but their volume got louder toward the end of the conversation because the young woman was getting agitated about a particular edit.

That particular edit was correcting the spelling of “hampster” to “hamster”. [sic] Apparently she had used the phrase “like spinning in a hamster wheel” in this draft (presumably) speech or op-ed.

The young woman kept saying, “I don’t know why you corrected that because I spell it with the P in it.” The boss said (calmly), “But that’s not how the word is spelled. There is no P in hamster.”

Young woman: “But you don’t know that! I learned to spell it with a P in it so that’s how I spell it.”

The boss (remaining very calm and professional), [said] let’s go to https://t.co/n2ZU5Uuuy3 and look it up together. (mind you, this is a woman in her late 20s, not a 5th grader) [sic]

The young woman insists she doesn’t need to look it up because it’s FINE to spell it with a P because that’s HOW SHE WANTED TO SPELL IT.

The boss says, “Let’s look over the rest of the piece so I can explain the rest of my edits.” They do, and I can see the young woman is fighting back tears. The boss is calm, cool, and handles this with professionalism and empathy.

Boss says, “I know edits can be difficult to go over sometimes, especially when you’re working on new kinds of things as you grow in your career, but it’s a necessary process and makes us all better at what we do.”

Boss gets up from table and goes to her office and the young woman can barely hold it together. She moves to another table in the common workspace area, drops all her stuff loudly on the table top, and starts texting. A minute later, her phone rings.

It was her mom. She had texted her mom to call her because it was urgent, and I’m sure her mother maybe thought she was in the ER or something. She then … PUTS HER MOM ON SPEAKERPHONE. IN THE WORKPLACE.

She bursts into tears and wants her mom to call her boss and tell her not to be mean about telling her how to spell words like “hamster”. [sic]

The mother tells her that her boss is an idiot and she doesn’t have to listen to her and she should go to the boss’ boss to file a complaint about not allowing creativity in her writing.

The young woman kept saying, “I thought what I wrote was perfect and she just made all these changes and then had the nerve to tell me I was spelling words wrong when I know they are right because that is how I have always spelled them.”

She then went on (still on speakerphone) to tell her mom I’m very great and office-inappropriate detail about how hungover she was and what she and her friends did with some guys the night before. Mom laughed and laughed.

The colleagues in and around the workplace kept looking at one another and some even put earbuds/headphones in/on. It appeared as though this was a regular thing with her.

She ended the conversation asking her mom how she should bring this up with the boss’ boss. “I mean, I always spell hamster with a P, [sic] she has no right to criticize me.” […]

Based on the way her mom spoke to her and they way they spoke to one another, it seemed as though this young woman had never been told she was anything but perfect by family. […]

Her boss seemed as dumbfounded through the conversation as I was in overhearing it.

I think I was most perplexed by the insistence of wanting to spell something the way she wanted to because SHE WANTED TO, ignoring the fact that there are rules and dictionaries. And seeming offended that anyone would suggest the use of an outside resource as reference.

more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/millennial_becomes_unhinged_after_boss_corrects_her_spelling_of_hamster.html

[musiclady]

This reminds me of the youngns in the first round of American Idol who have terrible voices and sing very badly, but are shocked when they get knocked out in the first round.  They have been told all their lives how wonderful and special they are and they never realize that they can't sing.

If I were the boss, or the boss's boss, I would fire this young lady and let her cry and talk to Mommy someplace else.

[PeteS in CA]

Moronicity

Established spellings is a relatively recent thing in English, but it improves clarity, especially with homonyms like yore, your, and you're.

[Snarknado]

In her defense, that is the preferred spelling in certain areas of Long Island (they also have a world-famous hampburger joint there).

[Jazzhead]

What a dimpbulb. 

[Hoodat]

If I were the boss, or the boss's boss, I would fire this young lady and let her cry and talk to Mommy someplace else.

I would also fire the person that hired her.

[Cyber Liberty]

Apparently the illiterate bimbo had a job that involves writing, and hasn't had it drilled into her that she isn't writing for herself, she's writing for her audience.  Rules for Writing exist for a reason, and it's not about spelling stuff any way she wants, it's about writing for clarity.

This entire incident is stupid, starting with a hiring manager who accepted an illiterate writer.  It would be like hiring an Engineer who could barely pass Freshman Algebra.  This is how you get bridges and buildings that collapse at the first windstorm.

[Cyber Liberty]

I would also fire the person that hired her.

The first act in a trail of stupidity.

[Free Vulcan]

Hampster. Is that like a clothes hamper in the shape of a hamster?

[Cyber Liberty]

Hampster. Is that like a clothes hamper in the shape of a hamster?

I think it's from that old website, "Hampsterdance."

[jpsb]

Moronicity

Established spellings is a relatively recent thing in English, but it improves clarity, especially with homonyms like yore, your, and you're.

Monolingual dictionaries were preceded, both in Britain and in continental Europe, by bilingual dictionaries, which served a more immediately practical need. Important examples in Britain include The dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knyght  (1538), a Latin-English dictionary which went into several editions throughout the sixteenth century, Claudius Hollyband’s Dictionarie French and English (1593), and John Florio‘s Italian-English Worlde of Wordes (1598).

The first book generally regarded as the first English dictionary was written as Robert Cawdrey, a schoolmaster and former Church of England clergyman, in 1604 Cawdrey made use of wordlists published earlier in educational texts, such as Richard Mulcaster’s Elementary (1582) and Edmund Coote’s English Schoole-maister (1596).


https://public.oed.com/blog/the-first-dictionaries-of-english/

[musiclady]

I think it's from that old website, "Hampsterdance."

I LOVED that place! 

[Cyber Liberty]

I LOVED that place! 

#MeToo!

[Sanguine]

Monolingual dictionaries were preceded, both in Britain and in continental Europe, by bilingual dictionaries, which served a more immediately practical need. Important examples in Britain include The dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knyght  (1538), a Latin-English dictionary which went into several editions throughout the sixteenth century, Claudius Hollyband’s Dictionarie French and English (1593), and John Florio‘s Italian-English Worlde of Wordes (1598).

The first book generally regarded as the first English dictionary was written as Robert Cawdrey, a schoolmaster and former Church of England clergyman, in 1604 Cawdrey made use of wordlists published earlier in educational texts, such as Richard Mulcaster’s Elementary (1582) and Edmund Coote’s English Schoole-maister (1596).


https://public.oed.com/blog/the-first-dictionaries-of-english/

In geologic terms, that's very recent.

 

[Wingnut]

I LOVED that place! 

That and the "Dancing Baby" rocked


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[LMAO]

This reminds me of the youngns in the first round of American Idol who have terrible voices and sing very badly, but are shocked when they get knocked out in the first round.  They have been told all their lives how wonderful and special they are and they never realize that they can't sing.

That’s why they riot when a presidential election doesn’t go their way or think that they can whine, cry and use violence against those who have different viewpoints

[GrouchoTex]

Moronicity

Established spellings is a relatively recent thing in English, but it improves clarity, especially with homonyms like yore, your, and you're.

Just say Y'all and All Y'all and everything will work out fine.

[Cyber Liberty]

That’s why they riot when a presidential election doesn’t go their way or think that they can whine, cry and use violence against those who have different viewpoints

Well, the tantrums worked against their "parents," so why not?  I'm not their bleepin' parents so it won't work with me.

[Sanguine]

Well, the tantrums worked against their "parents," so why not?  I'm not their bleepin' parents so it won't work with me.

And, that's who should be blamed.  These idiot young adults don't know any better.  Their parents sure as hell did.

[truth_seeker]

Moronicity

Established spellings is a relatively recent thing in English, but it improves clarity, especially with homonyms like yore, your, and you're.

Granted, once "established spelling" is the norm, it is not productive to go backwards.

English is widely used, in part because it has a very large vocabulary, and therefore can be very precise.

Creative spelling might be fine for potry even literature, but NOT for STEM.

[EasyAce]

Creative spelling might be fine for potry even literature, but NOT for STEM.

@truth_seeker
Suddenly I can't tell whether you're saying creative spelling might be fine for poetry or pottery. 

Of course, I'm the writer who still has a vivid memory of being chewed out by an editor under whom I once worked . . . for daring to describe someone using choplogic as a chop-logician. I didn't mind him chewing me out, however wrong he was, until he told me, and I quote, "You can't invent words!" I didn't dare remind him that that was how words were created in the first place, never mind that I wasn't the one who invented that particular word.

And don't get me started on autocorrect or automatic spell check. Spill chick is gone to bee the debt of mi.

[GrouchoTex]

Spill chick is gone to bee the debt of mi.

A MAN!

Whoops, I mean

 

[PeteS in CA]

Varied spellings of words, even within a single document by a single author were not uncommon as late as the 18th Century. And when it comes to usage, the UK, US, and Oz/Kiwis are nations divided by a common language.

I've probably mentioned that one of my kids is attending a university in China. It's not in a city that has a lot of Westerners, so she has had some interesting experiences.

She is part of a reading group that is almost all Chinese, but reading books in English. She grew up in Silicon Valley, but found herself having to explain some of the local dialect and cultural stuff in To Kill a Mockingbird (which was published around the time I entered elementary school). A bilingual fly on the wall in that room would probably have died laughing.

Sometimes a Chinese friend asks her to explain an English idiom/slang phrase and she has to consult friends from the UK and Oz to see if anyone recognizes and explain it. Not always with success.

My spouse works for a hospice, and it is difficult for my daughter to explain that job, because the concept of hospice care is not in Chinese culture.

[PeteS in CA]

Spill chick is gone to bee the debt of mi.

A MAN!

Whoops, I mean

 

Hay! Isle luff spill chukar!

[Sanguine]

Hay! Isle luff spill chukar!

Partridge?