As our department’s sole technical writer, I have to vet a lot of internally-generated documents.

Many of them just plain suck.

I’m sorry, but frankly, I don’t know how some of the people who work here were able to submit job applications with a straight face, considering that, like everyplace else, "excellent written communication skills" is listed as a requirement on all our job postings. Obviously, these people are having Mommy retype their résumés, assuming enough snot and sticky handprints can be wiped off them so that the crayon and finger paint underneath is legible. The fact that they hold even high school diplomas (though here I must admit I am only guessing at their level of academic achievement) is a stunning indictment of our public school system.

There have been cases escalated to our engineering group that have been literally incomprehensible, the kind of stream-of-consciousness babble that makes you wonder if they’re not dropping acid in between phone calls. Some of the engineers have actually had to send cases back because they simply can’t discern what the fuck some of these people are talking about. Having never spoken so much as a word to many of the newer people on the call floor, I wonder if their verbal skills are equally abysmal. God help our customers if that’s the case; they might begin clamoring for our jobs to be shipped out to Hyderabad so that they’re able to talk to someone who is at least deliberately trying to speak English.