Bernie

Dear HR,

Despite the fact that Ms. Goodman will no doubt use the following information to her own nefarious ends to somehow undermine my credibility, I feel I must keep you informed.

I arrived home yesterday to an odd message from the Employee Assistance Line so I immediately called back.

I ultimately ended up speaking to somebody new – Bernie – who explained to me that there had been what was categorised as a ‘Workplace Related Incident’ during my last call with Jeremy. From what I could make out, it appears that he was in fact drinking on the job! What I originally thought was an asthmatic attack now appears to have been related to this drinking incident. From what I can gather there was some form of spillage the result of which damaged some equipment. Seemingly the nature of the issue was so severe that the Dell technicians refused to even look at the equipment.

Ultimately, Jeremy was fired for gross misconduct.

I said that I felt that the sanction was a little harsh – unless of course the beverage in question was alcoholic, in which case I could entirely understand. I’m a bit of a disciplinarian myself I pointed out. The next comment entirely confused me so I had to clarify – “Masticating?” I asked “I don’t think he was eating anything” – Bernie seemed to be puzzled by this response.

Once again, I find the quality of this service provided here less than ideal I’m afraid.

Anyway, I didn’t want to make too much of an issue of it, so I merely said that I’d like to send in a letter clarifying the service I received from Jeremy and asked to whom I should send it?

“My pronouns are They and Theirs and Them”.

Well you could have knocked me over with a feather.

I pointed out that this didn’t make sense syntactically or semantically, “They refers to a plural” I said – you may not be aware, but I worked as a Technical Writer at one point in my distant past so I know a thing or two about this – anyway ‘Bernie’ was less than polite when responding. “Madam” I said, “I am noted for my command of the English language”.

I’m trying to capture exactly how things developed from there, ‘apoplectic’ is probably the closest word that comes to mind. There followed a stream of expletives and personal attacks that is worse than when Delilah hits the Scrumpy Jack and codeine while watching Real Housewives of New Jersey. I was so shocked I had to hang up.

I think we need to reconsider our service provider to be honest.

Thanks again for all the support and consideration

Alexander