Author: 209english

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving weekend. I spent part of it viewing some of the recent blogs and have come to really enjoy the effort and in depth writing that many of you put into each post.

The posts that really stood out to me is the pet peeve workplace expectations and critics. Many of these negative traits or habits appeared in multiple blogs where many of you had experienced similar situations within the workplace if you had given detail. Workers that don’t take responsibility or take all the credit are the worst. Sheila included a picture of a constructive criticism sandwich, it summed everything up rather well.

The biggest and most common major group of criticism has to be the worker is not following protocol and expectations of the job. This could be coming in late, not producing an equal amount (or quality amount), not putting things where they belong, the list goes on. These occurrences affect the group, not just the individual; this makes everything seem purposeful and intentional to the others.

The best way to handle a situation like this is to address it to the person bluntly. Assuming its a consistent thing and you are not the only one who has noticed, your coworkers would appreciate it if you did talk to this person.

I really messed up on the recipient/sender idea and went too fast through the test leading to the question about whether the status or credentials of the sender were important being confused and wrong.

I had taken longer on this recall practice than I normally do, and I scored lower than I normally do. From what Lance mentioned in class the average was higher than normal and so, I read into the chapters rather than hope for the best.

In the closing of a routine information or request email, its best not to include an action or summary.

The answer is false. It is still proper to include an action or summary. My thinking that due to the routine nature of the email, most would disregard the ending was wrong.

“Please advise on your procedure for ordering photograph prints” is a better opening for a routine request message about ordering photographs than “I’m running a workshop for my classmates on basic photography techniques.”

I don’t get this one still, from what I understand these are two completely different ideas and therefore would have different expectations for the rest of the email. the “please advise” email would be more for how do you order photograph prints while the second is a statement on photography tips.

Situation: you are currently the best worker in your division. Everybody else is lazy, incompetent punks or a mixture of all three. You end up doing a fair amount of the rest if your division’s work. But your boss doesn’t know this. You ask for a 10% raise.

Response:

To:Mr. Boss

I would like to personally thank you for the top notch equipment that you have provided the fish department. You motivate me greatly and I believe that the quality and speed of our production is evident of your values and have raised the bars that you have set for our department.

While our department is performing well, the quality of the workers is not equal. I come in earlier than the rest of the department as well as leave later to compensate for the department’s less qualified workers. Some of the workers are habitually late or fail to perform at the expectations that you set for us. I do my best to take over the work that is deemed too hard or that they do not fulfill to expectations to ensure that our department’s quality and standards are upheld.

I believe it would be in the best interest of the department if I was appointed a higher position along with a raise of ten percent to compensate for the increased responsibility. I will continue to follow the values and expectations that you have appointed for my current position, along with the additional responsibilities that we can negotiate.

I believe that I am capable to do all parts of the project after reviewing the assignment. I have no preference for part and would be comfortable with doing multiple parts if the team requires it.  I prefer to communicate through email or some messaging application (whatsapp, slack, groupme, discord, g+, etc.) since it is most organized for me, but text/call is fine with me. Due to my scheduling I should be able to meet before 1 on MW and 10 on TR, but afternoons are booked most days.

Proper scheduling and a timeline are the most important part for me and I believe should be established first day.

My only goal is to get a good grade. If that means doing extra work, ahead of schedule I am more than willing to allow that to happen.

This recall practice took me a bit longer than the others and I do believe that it was harder for the majority of the students. Lance did not give the average score, so that assumption comes from that. I did not do as well as the others and so I felt compelled to write about this question in particular.

I had gotten this wrong (choosing A over D). While I believe the reason I got this incorrect lies within the question’s wording (first sentence opposed to objective or overall end result of the situation), there is validity to the “correct answer D”. What makes this answer correct is what I believe to be what makes it wrong. The answer is too extraneous and solves the whole issue in the first sentence renderring the rest of what you would write to be nothing but BS fluff that could be smelt a mile away.

In class, we discussed how a short answer to these situations is normally not the correct approach. If you give the whole solution in pone sentence, is that not too short? All refund notices I receive from companies seem to be rather lengthy and begin with an apology, something this answer lacks.

I found the class’s reaction to the direct approach rather interesting. While the textbook and what can be viewed as the “popular opinion” and mindset (especially here) is that there needs to be a buffer and a pillow to everything rather than simple “yes/no” statements; the class seems to be mostly okay with being so direct.

While I always believed there is no real “too direct” approach to most situations, professional writing seems to push for a less “aggressive” approach.