As someone who went to school to be a writer, I honestly care a lot less about grammar than some of the people who went to school with me!

The mistake has to be especially egregious for it to really bother me. As long as I can understand what you’re saying, I’m good. That being said, I don’t mess with run-on sentences. Use a period!

But when this editor’s pay was docked because of minor grammatical errors made because of her American background, she pettily pointed out each mistake her boss made on a recent assignment!

Check it out!

Knock money off my paycheck for grammar mistakes? Let me point out all the mistakes on my bosses work.

Years ago I took a job in another country for a very small company that taught English.

My responsibilities included reviewing and editing lesson plans created by non-native English speakers.

Many of the lessons taught EU English while I am accustomed to US English, my boss (and the only other native English speaker) was from the UK.

And the subtle differences between American and British english ended up causing quite the problem for OP…

Therefore there were certain nuances that I was unfamiliar with. That being said, I was one of the better people on the team QAing but I wasn’t perfect by any means.

There were often glaring mistakes I saw slip through on lessons not assigned to me to review but I never purposefully called people out for them.

It was kind of a crappy company and had bad lessons to begin with. But if there were glaring mistakes I would quietly fix them.

But apparently OP’s grammar mistakes were such a problem for her boss that he docked her pay!

One pay period, months after I had been working there, I received a decrease in my pay.

The decrease came with a note explaining that the reasoning was because of X and X mistakes that had slipped through on my work.

I was annoyed as this was not a part of my contract but I couldn’t really contest it in this foreign country.

The note did however note that this decrease in pay for “mistakes” made on job duties was for all employees in my department.

If her boss wanted to play the petty game, OP was more than ready to play along!

I knew that there were tons of mistakes on other lesson plans that weren’t mine.

So I pulled up the first one and began sending messages in the group chat of every mistake I could find. And there were a lot.

I did this rapid fire until my my boss who was sitting across from me sent me a message that essentially said:

“Don’t worry I can assure you I am being held to the same standards and expectations” before he got up and walked away in a huff.

But ironically, OP hadn’t even realized this lesson was one that her boss had been working on!

After he walked out of earshot my other coworker laughed and said he had messaged her and asked how I knew that particular lesson was one he had QA’d.

I told her I didn’t know I had just pulled up the first one I knew there were mistakes on.

I didn’t get anymore money taken out of my paychecks after that but I left the company shortly after.

Hey, if you want to die on the grammar hill, so to speak, than you better make sure that your own writing is absolutely flawless!

Reddit loved to see her get her grammatical revenge, but many said that companies actually normally want American english, not British!

This person couldn’t get over the outright wage cut, and the fact that the company didn’t even try to disguise it.

And this QA said that sometimes, the grammatical differences between cultures actually made for better sounding sentences!

And finally, this user said it was good that OP got out of a company with such shady legal dealings!

What’s that people say about people in glass houses?

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.