On Jan 10, 2008, at 3:16 AM, Ted MacNEIL wrote:
Oh please... My greatest difficulty in moving to the USA is
learning how to spell so many words incorrectly!
I used to work, out of Mississauga, for a US-based company, where
everybody else was based in Buffalo, Dallas, & Santa Ana.
I was producing capacity reports on a weekly basis.
The title was: "Processor Utilisation".
My manager told me to change the spelling of "Utilisation", so I did.
"Usage".
-
Too busy driving to stop for gas!
Ted:
I think I have told this story on here, but seeing that this thread
won't die I will repeat it. Back in the early 80's I was hired at a
company that (I didn't know at the time or I would never have
accepted a position there) they were extremely cheap. By cheap
meaning leaving tiles missing in the computer room so they didn't
replace them when they were broken and people would fall into the
holes. In any case The problem was that we were hired to bring up
MVS. They had been using CICS & Pan for everything. We found out
that the CICS PAN would not work in MVS. So we did a proposal to get
TSO. With TSO came ISPF and a few other products. To make this story
short we handed the proposal in and about the next day the VP came
back and tossed the proposal back on the desk and it scattered all
over the place. The words he said I will almost never forget: "You
used the British spelling of utilization ". I was so mad I could have
spit. We went over the document word by word and that was the *ONLY*
issue in the document. So we got the secretary to correct it and I
walked into the VP's office and handed it to him and said its been
fixed and walked out. He thought by throwing it back at us it would
go away we did not take no for the answer and I walked a copy to the
then President of the company and asked that he read it and see what
he thought. A few days later I got a call from his secretary asking
that I come over to see him. When I walked into the room the VP was
there and I thought this is it and I am out of a job. Much to my
surprise the President said he had read the proposal and was
impressed with it. He was somewhat concerned about the money involved
as he said the budget was tight. He also said that he was going to
have to go to the members to get more money (story deleted) but that
the paper was pretty good with the financial's and that he would
only add a cover page when he gave them the pitch.
Bottom line he got the money and they didn't even squeak about it.
His page that he added said that the request for the money would only
cost the members a penny a trade (option traders). The VP looked like
a jerk he was in front of the President over a small "misspelling".
Ed
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