Dirty trick or fair play (was: RE: Honestly -- when an SME completely REWRITES your text ... GEEZ!)

["Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: McLauchlan, Kevin [mailto:Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 10:47 AM
To: Downing, David; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Honestly -- when an SME completely REWRITES your text ...
GEEZ!

[snip]

> When I first started here, I suffered a bit of culture shock
concerning
> dealing with an editor. When I do my own writing, I always wait until
I
> have what I consider a final draft to do the spell check because my
> first drafts tend to be prolix, and I don't want to waste time
> spell-checking a bunch of test that going to be cut. I didn't realize
> that when you're working with an editor, you CAN'T expect them to live
> with such an arrangement, and I caught it good.

I can understand their point. One can only compartmentalize so much when
doing a task like editing. Asking a person to ignore a major subset of
their instincts and skills is painful (to them) and also adds risk that
needful edits will be overlooked by the (painfully) muted filters.

---------------------------------------------

Well, I realized that once it was pointed out to me and I rethought my
egocentric orientation.

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.


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