Reason #32-34

Reason #32

You gave me a receipt for your expense report – a receipt for your lunch with John Doe, Bill Jones’ music attorney.  Now, I know that expense reports don’t have to be too detailed and if I write “Lunch with John Doe, Bill Jones’ music attorney” nobody is going to give a crap and Accounting is not going to write that entire thing on their books.  So I abbreviated it to “Lunch with Bill Jones’ music attorney.”

Not only did you correct it to include John Doe’s name, but you changed Jones’ to Jones’s.  Upon seeing this I diplomatically asked, “Oh, is that how you like to do it, apostrophe S?”  You informed me that that was the “right way” to do it so I informed you that both forms are actually correct.  But since I had to walk all the way back across the office to fix the report to include John Doe’s damn name (unnecessarily, because again, Accounting doesn’t give a damn), I was going to fix your little apostrophe S crap.

Reason #33

When you happened to be near my desk later, you jokingly said to me, in reference to the whole apostrophe catastrophe, “I’ll have to check Strunk & White about that one!”  Which is your way of saying, “I don’t believe you so I’m going to double check.”  Well listen up bitch – it’s right.  Strunk & White prefer to use Jones’s but Jones’ is grammatically correct as well.  If you didn’t believe me, you should have just checked, but to go out of your way to make a condescending remark to me in the guise of a joke is just fucking annoying.

Reason #34

Recently you said something to me like, “I don’t know why I bother to proof anything, you’re a much better proofer than I am.”

First, you suck at proofing so bad that I honestly think you don’t proof things and I’m worried about the crap you might be sending out without letting me proof it first.  Oh wait, I saw the retainer letter you sent wherein you didn’t even get the case name caption correct.  Secondly, if I’m a better proofer than you are (and I am, because let’s face it, I’ve seen your work), then stop second guessing me when I write things like Jones’.