The Water Cooler

10:42 AM

1

Q: Should I correct my coworker's language mistakes?

I'm not a native English speaker, but I still notice some basic mistakes in grammar, pronunciation and wordings when my colleagues are talking to customers. But when I try to correct them, they rudely tell me not to do so. Their argument is that they don't need to speak perfect English, it just n...

Edited and retitled this but I'm still not happy with the title, please edit it if you can think of something better.

Jane S

11:01 AM

@Lilienthal Your title implies a single coworker, not the organisation.

It's close, but something's not right :)

Lilienthal

Ah, that should have been coworkers', corrected.

Jane S

"Should I correct second language mistakes that may make the organisation appear unprofessional?"

Lilienthal

It's more that I can't find a better alternative for "language mistakes"

Jane S

Just a suggestion :)

Lilienthal

"improper language" suggests vulgarity rather than mistakes :)

Jane S

11:04 AM

Yes it does :)

Lilienthal

I also considered adding in the fact that he's an intern as that basically makes any answer "no" but it's more useful as a general question I think

Jane S

I think you need to make it clear that it's a second language.

And that it's concern for the organisation appearing unprofessional.

Internally, nobody would care :)

Lilienthal

@JaneS "Should I correct my coworkers' mistakes in their second language if they risk appearing unprofessional to customers?" is about as close as I've gotten

And horribly verbose :)

Jane S

I took a couple of tries to parse it :)

Lilienthal

the problem is that "second language mistakes" can be interpreted in multiple ways

Jane S

11:10 AM

I think what you have edited it to now is okay.

Any more and it becomes information overload.

My tiny brain would explode! :)

Lilienthal

Yeah, it could be better though so feel free to edit if you think of something

(stepping out for lunch)

Jane S

Closer to bed time in my part of the world :)

Lilienthal

11:30 AM

:)

Lilienthal

11:46 AM

34

Q: What's wrong about being honest about your career plans?

Premise Until a few weeks ago, I worked for a software company as a software developer. Honestly, I tried to do my best every day. Not only I did what I was supposed to do, but I always tried to improve practices and outcomes. Even though I was working for less than a year, I received many bene...

professionalism termination job-satisfaction

I hope these upvotes are for the OP's edit and not his original post.

Masked Man

12:06 PM

@Lilienthal What's wrong if they were for his original post? He has asked good questions, which are useful to the workplace, and those deserve upvotes. Voting is not based on whether someone likes the OP or whether you agree with how he reacted to the described situation, or anything else like that.

Jane S

@MaskedMan Well said :) So often people use downvotes if they don't like the question, not because it's necessarily a poorly asked question.

Masked Man

"I think I did this awesome thing, but people say it was a terrible thing to do. What did I do wrong?" is a useful question. It shouldn't be downvoted simply because the voter doesn't agree with the OP's attitude.

Jane S

@MaskedMan Yes, exactly :)

Masked Man

@JaneS I recall there was a question here long ago where someone asked if he should get a female coworker's mobile number from the company's database, and use that to ask her out. It got downvoted to the ends of hell, simply because people were offended by what he was about to do. IMHO, it was a *very* good question.

It is worthy of upvotes simply for that fact that the OP actually considered asking for advice before actually doing it. Also, he surely wasn't the first or the last person who would have this idea.

Jane S

@MaskedMan It's hard to separate the emotional reaction to the question from the fact that it's a well thought out and asked query.

Lilienthal

12:14 PM

Because it reads like a rant (because it is one, even if contains the seed of a question), is overly verbose and at its core is

a duplicate of either the linked question (or one of the many other questions on the topic), or of this classic.

enderland

1:16 PM

@MaskedMan ooooh I remember that one...

@Lilienthal probably the title..

Lilienthal

2:24 PM

@enderland yeah it showed up in the network list so I'm guessing a lot of people clicked it open, upvoted and went straight for the answers and skipped reading the question

enderland

2:54 PM

@Lilienthal but hey it's going to repcap me at least two days so whatever :)

I want to get the legendary badge, which is nearly impossible

Joe doesn't even have that yet

Lilienthal

To be fair, Joe seems to go for quantity over quality. :)

enderland

Hmm I have no silver tag badges

Lilienthal

Or he just has a lot of free time I guess.

I think I've seen Joe and mhoran_psprep answer every single new question that wasn't instant-closed last week. :)

enderland

data.stackexchange.com/workplace/query/321365/most-answers

I barely crack the top 10 for answer count!

Lilienthal

I started modifying that query to find my count before I realised that I could just check my profile.

#data_analyst_things

enderland

3:06 PM

lol

Lilienthal

:)

Ah, I'm nr 162 :)

data.stackexchange.com/workplace/revision/356399/459977/…

Ugh, that's it. I'm not getting anything useful done any more. Time to head home.

enderland

Hah, still 10am here :(

Lilienthal

Well my weekend's starting now, take comfort knowing that mine will also end sooner? :)

enderland

lol

Lilienthal

And if it's any consolation I have to suffer a 1.4 hour commute first :|

enderland

3:18 PM

mine is 45 minutes, hopefully you can at least take a train or something

Lilienthal

sadly not, driving my amazing Peugeot 208 for the whole 60 miles :)

if I drive at 90 an hour on the freeway I can shave off some time but with September on the horizon traffic will spiral out of control again so it'll be more like 1h40"

better enjoy relatively calm roads while I can I guess

enderland

dang, thats awful. my 45 min commute is horrible enough...

Air

> I want to boost my career, I want to become a better software architect, I want to work in agile contexts where quality matters.

Lilienthal

It's pretty brutal :)

Air

I want to run an agile project

►

enderland

3:28 PM

@Air yeah, I just skilled over that

Lilienthal

the one upside is that I'll hit the max km of my lease quicker so I get to pick an actually decent car :)

right, time to head off, ttyl

enderland

@Air this is hilarious

> No, I want to run an Agile project

Air

Today is my wife's last day on her job with an 8 mile one-way commute on surface roads that take her right past my workplace/my son's daycare, so that we can all happily carpool. Next week she starts her 20-mile freeway commute that goes over a causeway with bad traffic and frequent accidents, and I start bike commuting again.

Commutes, man. I need to get a job near her new job so we can move to a neighborhood with no commute.

enderland

In a few months we're going to move, one of my goals is to be able to bike to work long term

Air

I'm crossing my fingers that a position opens up where I interned in school, because it's right across the street from where she's starting next week.

enderland

3:35 PM

I have spent a lot of money/time on commuting over hte past years :(

Air

It's also an office of only about 2 dozen people instead of a state agency with thousands of employees, and it pays better, and it involves work that's more varied, more relevant to professional certification and less glued to the unholy monitor screen

But I know all the engineers and none of them are retiring any time soon. =/

enderland

That's a bummer

I'm able to work from home ~2 days a week now

But it's going to be really nice when I can have a much shorter commute...

been way too many years of this

Air

3:58 PM

I don't know if I could work from home effectively, unless I had a really isolated and focused home office - maybe in an outbuilding or a granny unit

Right now I've got a 5'x13' room that comes right off the living room, with a built-in bookshelf, basic desk, trunk full of files, coffee table printer stand, and a whole lot of junk that needs to be donated/sold/trashed

enderland

I like it, though we only have a 1BR right now - if I did this longer term I would want a dedicated space

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