| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Can someone touting for work afford to be rude? Thread poster: Tony M
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| Being rude ... | Nov 2, 2014 |
Are some of us now running the risk of being rude about being rude?
| | | | | I don't think the letter was exceptionally rude. | Nov 2, 2014 |
It might have been naive.
This is what the Labor Department tells people here, if they are looking for any type of work--send your resumes or information to as many companies as possible: perhaps not as bulk mailing, but still it is legit. You can simply ignore some of the mailings that you have no interest in.
If your e-mail is public, it becomes like your phone or a business address in a phonebook.
If you do not want any mailings, keep your e-mail pr... See more It might have been naive.
This is what the Labor Department tells people here, if they are looking for any type of work--send your resumes or information to as many companies as possible: perhaps not as bulk mailing, but still it is legit. You can simply ignore some of the mailings that you have no interest in.
If your e-mail is public, it becomes like your phone or a business address in a phonebook.
If you do not want any mailings, keep your e-mail private--do not advertise it anywhere. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tony M
France
Local time: 04:36
Member
French to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER SITE LOCALIZER | Just to coment on Lillian's post... | Nov 2, 2014 |
Thank you all for your many interesting and helpful insights; I wish I had time to respond at greater length to some of them, but I shall confine myself to commenting on something Lillian wrote, as I can actually do so in sequence in this thread.
LilianNekipelov wrote:
I don't think the letter was exceptionally rude.
It might have been naive.
No, I totally agree, the original letter wasn't rude at all — I classed it as 'pushy', though Sam dismissed it as merely a template; but when I use a circular letter based on a template, I do make sure it fits the people I am sending it to. What I found 'pushy' — or shall we say 'presumptuous? — was the false impression given that we knew each other, and the clearly-stated implication that we might have already worked together.
If your e-mail is public, it becomes like your phone or a business address in a phonebook.
If you do not want any mailings, keep your e-mail private--do not advertise it anywhere.
That is the whole point: my e-mail address is NOT public, and I work quite hard to ensure that people cannot find it out more or less at random. Clearly this person must have written to me at some time in the past via my ProZ.com profile, and she would have harvested my e-mail address when I politely responded to her initial contact; which I always do, since in my view, and as others have said, it is the minimum of courtesy to at least acknowledge someone's letter
I do receive quite a lot of enquiries for EN > FR translations, so I was initially interested in this person's application; this is why I felt it was worth explaining to her why certain elements of her CV were not really doing their job properly. Had I not been interested at all, I should certainly have given her a much shorter negative response. And of course, minor errors in informal communications like e-mails between peers are of no great importance — but in a freelancer's marketing documentation, they are raher to be deplored.
I recently had to translate a quality policy statement document for a large and well-respected organization; I was quite horrified to find how many spelling and grammatical errors it contained even just in the first few pages!
Oh, and by the way — I learnt my English grammar a long time ago, and I fear I have remembered the 'rule' wrongly; so apologies for my missing apostrophes above and elsewhere.
[Modifié le 2014-11-02 20:27 GMT]
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:36
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Tony M wrote:
....I learnt my English grammar back in the days when the rule still being taught was that you don't use apostrophes for the possessives of pronouns — the classic (current) example being "its"; but I was also taught not to use it in 'ones' either.....
Well, that was wrong. It was always wrong.
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Tony M
France
Local time: 04:36
Member
French to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER SITE LOCALIZER | Thank you for that correction | Nov 2, 2014 |
Tom in London wrote:
Well, that was wrong. It was always wrong.
I mustn't blame my English teacher — it's probably just my memory playing tricks again; it WAS 46 years ago, so please be indulgent and forgive me for getting that wrong.
| | | | | Most mysterious | Nov 2, 2014 |
Tony M wrote:
I do receive quite a lot of enquiries for EN > FR translations, so I was initially interested in this person's application; this is why I felt it was worth explaining to her why certain elements of her CV were not really doing their job properly. Had I not been interested at all, I should certainly have given her a much shorter negative response.
Hafta say, I find it a bit odd that after two-n-a-bit pages of comments, no-one twigged this fairly obvious factor as a reason why one might respond in this way to an unsolicited email of this type. Seems perfectly reasonable behaviour to me. Still, we're all different. As this thread amply demonstrates. I would have thought the utter absurdity of sending an unsolicited email and demanding in the next breath to be moved from the recipient's address book alone would have been enough to brighten anyone's weekend, albeit fleetingly. Perhaps not.
Edit - When I say anyone, I mean anyone reading this thread, not Tony He was entitled to feel peeved first and foremost.
[Edited at 2014-11-02 20:57 GMT]
| | | | | Step 2.2: Report as Spam | Nov 2, 2014 |
Robin Levey wrote:
Step 1: Delete
Step 2: Block sender's e-mail address
Step 3: Move on - life's too short!
Step 2.2 should be report the person as spammer in blacklist services. This way they will think twice before they make other people lose their valuable time and even lying as part of the message (i.e. the part where she said she had colaborated with you in the past, etc.etc.).
| | | | | Assumptions... | Nov 2, 2014 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: Robin Levey wrote:
Step 1: Delete
Step 2: Block sender's e-mail address
Step 3: Move on - life's too short! Step 2.2 should be report the person as spammer in blacklist services. This way they will think twice before they make other people lose their valuable time and even lying as part of the message (i.e. the part where she said she had colaborated with you in the past, etc.etc.).
Or could it be that the person was not lying, but just mistaken the OP for somebody else? If I were in the position of the OP, and if I were not interested in a collaboration, I think I would have not responded to the mail at all. But if I would respond, I would just say I don't think I had worked with the person before and that I was not interested in doing so. I.e. I would not react based upon assumptions, but upon what I knew for sure.
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Tony M
France
Local time: 04:36
Member
French to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER SITE LOCALIZER | Circular mail-out | Nov 2, 2014 |
MO-TS wrote:
Or could it be that the person was not lying, but just mistaken the OP for somebody else?
No, it was obvious from the use of the 'BCC' address option that this person was sending a mass mail-out to numerous recipients
If I were in the position of the OP, and if I were not interested in a collaboration, I think I would have not responded to the mail at all. But if I would respond, I would just say I don't think I had worked with the person before and that I was not interested in doing so.
As I pointed out above, I consider it a minimum of courtesy to reply to all such enquiries.
And as I also pointed out above, the whole reason I replied in some detail was because, at the outset, I was interested in the possibility of collaborating with this person.
I have since discovered how she got my e-mail address — it was as a result of an earlier e-mail exchange we'd had in which I had helped her with a number of terms asked on KudoZ; all the more reason therefore for her not to react in such a bristly fashion!
[Modifié le 2014-11-02 20:33 GMT]
| | | | Kay Denney 
France
Local time: 04:36
French to English
| Agree with Helen | Nov 3, 2014 |
Helen Shiner wrote:
It seems to me, based on what Tony has written here, that his reply was unnecessary. The woman wrote asking if he required her services. He could simply have responded that he did not. Had she written asking for her CV to be proofed, then his response would have been justified. Rather than speaking colleague to colleague, he decided to take the role of teacher or person with superior knowledge. However justified his comments might have been in another context, they were not called for here. I'm not surprised he would come across as arrogant and pedantic, whatever his true intent was.
Alternately, as others have suggested, he could simply have ignored her apparently unprofessional and possibly rude approach.
Tony, I think you brought it on yourself! Even if you meant well.
Exactly how I feel.
I've had it up to my teeth being lectured.
Just yesterday at the swimming pool, a guy bashed my head really hard while I was back-crawling (having looked carefully to check that nobody was swimming down that line). He stopped me to explain that I was out of sync with everyone else (Actually, I was just in his way, nobody else was following what he claimed was a rule). I'm pretty sure he thought he was just being helpful, as he even smiled at me, whereas in fact he came across to me as a patronising, bullying know-all who ought to have started by apologising profusely if he wanted me to listen to him.
Silence is golden.
| | | | Tony M
France
Local time: 04:36
Member
French to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER SITE LOCALIZER | Apples and oranges | Nov 3, 2014 |
Texte Style wrote:
I've had it up to my teeth being lectured.
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Silence is golden.
I do sympathize with your unpleasant experience.
However, with all due respect, I do think the situations are totally different: you were partaking in a communal activity in a public place, where some interaction with other users (positive or negative!) is only to be expected. Sadly, one cannot do much about antisocial behaviour by certain people.
In my case, this person invaded my privacy by sending me an unsolicited mail, to which it was only courteous to reply. And I certainly wasn't 'lecturing' her — simply giving feedback about her marketing techniques; had she written back in a positive fashion and shown herself to be flexible and responsive, I almost certainly would have given her some work.
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 04:36
French to English
| lecturing, sloppiness and courtesy | Nov 3, 2014 |
Tony M wrote:
However, with all due respect, I do think the situations are totally different: you were partaking in a communal activity in a public place, where some interaction with other users (positive or negative!) is only to be expected. Sadly, one cannot do much about antisocial behaviour by certain people.
In my case, this person invaded my privacy by sending me an unsolicited mail, to which it was only courteous to reply. And I certainly wasn't 'lecturing' her — simply giving feedback about her marketing techniques; had she written back in a positive fashion and shown herself to be flexible and responsive, I almost certainly would have given her some work.
I'm not saying that you lectured her, just that she probably saw it that way (as in my example, which of course was a totally different situation, not least because you couldn't put anything down to lack of body-language cues).
And I don't actually understand why you could have been even slightly interested in working with her. If she can't be bothered to make sure her marketing blurb is top-notch, there's surely precious little chance of her producing a top-notch translation?
I also fail to see how it can be discourteous to ignore someone who invades your privacy. All in all, I would simply have disregarded her mail completely.
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| Report as spammer... based on facts | Nov 3, 2014 |
MO-TS wrote:
I would not react based upon assumptions, but upon what I knew for sure.
I completely agree. What we have is:
- A person who uses BCC. This points to mass email.
- Lack of addressing to my person in the email. Again, points to mass email.
- A reference to an alleged relationship that does not exist, clearly aimed towards making you consider the proposal, where you would normally discard the email immediately.
Based on things we know for sure, reporting the person as a spammer in blacklists is the sensible way to go in order to help protect others from spam.
| | | | | The elder stateman syndrome | Nov 3, 2014 |
Over the years, large number of well-reputed translators have either stopped working, left the site or taken such a back seat that we never see them anymore. A new generation of "elder statesmen and women" is therefore emerging.
I hope I never achieve that status because one of the main signs is a tendency to pontificate and even teach grandmothers to suck eggs.
No names, no pack drill but trying to put others back on the straight and narrow is open to misinterpretation... See more Over the years, large number of well-reputed translators have either stopped working, left the site or taken such a back seat that we never see them anymore. A new generation of "elder statesmen and women" is therefore emerging.
I hope I never achieve that status because one of the main signs is a tendency to pontificate and even teach grandmothers to suck eggs.
No names, no pack drill but trying to put others back on the straight and narrow is open to misinterpretation. This is one of the main (but not only) reasons why I refuse to contribute under my own name, refuse to accept proposals of work or whatever and prefer simply to answer questions, and then only from people who do not systematically use this or any other site as a crutch.
The higher you raise your profile, albeit for potentially good reasons, the more you are open to this sort of encounter.
Yours anonymously,
P/G ▲ Collapse
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Post your response to her here, Tony, as you quoted parts of her email. Let us see exactly what you wrote, and then we'll be in a better position to judge the tone of your message.
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