Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Linguistic Mystery


Today a coworker showed me an email she got from a reviewer waiting for his payment. Now you and I know how slowly the wheels of bureaucracy turn, and it takes weeks for checks to be generated around here. Apparently this guy did not like that answer, and he was bombarding my coworker with emails that got continuously stranger. This one just said something about how he was wondering where “my who’re” was. Now if that’s a typo, it’s sure a weird one. Who’re literally means “who are,” but if you take the apostrophe out, we all know what it means. My coworker wasn’t sure if this were an insult aimed at her, considering her gender and the reviewer’s ire, but she gave him the benefit of the doubt that it was just a really random typo until talking to another coworker. He said this reviewer is, well, rude. And considering that he was using it as a noun in the sentence, it seems highly unlikely that he meant the contraction. It seems on the surface like he was asking about his check, but what word for check or payment would be anything like who’re?

Famous Hat

2 comments:

Hardingfele said...

I am going to say a victim of autocorrect. Did she reply and ask exactly what he meant

Famous Hat said...

No, she didn't want to make him more upset.