They Agreed To Help Him Digitize His Application, Yet The Simple Favor Revealed Multiple Errors He Had Apparently Missed
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Supporting someone’s career ambitions becomes complicated when helping starts to resemble completing the application on their behalf.
A young applicant’s 30-page academy packet required extensive corrections from several adults before it could even be submitted.
Now another obvious mistake has surfaced after two reviews, leaving one family friend reluctant to rescue the paperwork yet again.
Read on for the full story.
WIBTA for not proofreading an important document that has already been proofread twice?
My best friend’s son is 20 and wants to join a law enforcement academy.
Our families have been extremely close since long before his birth.
I love this boy with all my heart, but I (and other members of his family) don’t necessarily think this is the right type of work for him but we have been supporting him.
The document he needs to submit wasn’t filled out very well.
His family doesn’t have a scanner and he has a huge (30 + pages) document to fill out and email in. He sent it to me to print out for him, then he completed it and gave it to my husband last night to scan.
The pages were out of order, several had missing information like previous addresses, his phone number was illegible, information entered in wrong places was crudely scratched out and he even forgot to put his NAME on it. (He was confused because it had a place for maiden name.)
He has ADHD and always had trouble in school with completing assignments and his handwriting is very childlike and practically illegible. These are just two of the reasons why we feel this isn’t a good fit for him.
We also found out last night that he had the email for a week before he sent it to me for printing. He said he didn’t get a notification that he received it.
They gave him a chance to fix everything.
We got it back in order and I started going through it, finding the errors. Called his mom and talked to her about it.
We reprinted the pages that needed to be redone, he picked them up after work and she stood over him while he fixed it all.
My husband scanned it today, emailed it to him and copied me on it.
I verified with his mom that she had looked over everything and I didn’t need to proofread it again.
She said yes.
They still found errors.
Problem: just glancing through I still found errors, including the date on the signature page.
I have opted not to say anything and let the chips fall where they may. Husband agrees.
Our thinking is: If he needs three other people to help APPLY for a position and still can’t get the paperwork right, it is on him.
The official email hasn’t gone out yet. WIBTA?
It sounds like they’re really good friends to help. I don’t think they would be in the wrong for letting him submit it as is. The mom said they don’t need to proofread it.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
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This person offers some advice.
This person thinks their help isn’t actually helpful.
This guy needs to fill out the application properly on his own.
It’s not like they’ll blame them.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman whose family says she’s selfish for not wanting strangers living in her trailer.
Another person thinks this isn’t the job for this young man.
After multiple adults reorganized, corrected, rescanned, and reviewed the application, OP spotted yet another error just before submission.
A clearer boundary would be flagging the remaining mistake once while requiring the applicant to review and fix everything himself.
When a job application needs a printer, a scanner, two proofreaders, parental supervision, and a family strategy meeting, independence has left the chat.
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