I love words. They have been my weapon of choice for almost 2 decades. I am great with them. I have the ability to express myself in a clear and concise manner, with attone that nearly always ensures I will prove my point. I have been great with spoken words for years, but I have recently acquired the ability to excel with the written word. I am not talking about what I write hear but rather what I write when dealing at work. I received an email from my company today that really made me mad. Here it is:

"Scott,

I noticed today that you have submitted session summaries for Clark Springs from December. I honestly am disappointed in the session summaries. We use these to do reports for the school systems and with session summaries such as these, we are not able to submit a complete report with details that they need. I am still waiting for an email from you that tells me when you were tutoring at Cl@rk Spr*ngs to find you a replacement. Obviously, you are not there any more and I need to bring in a replacement ASAP, so please get me that information right away.

Thank you,
T$$$$$"

Did I mess-up? Apparently. But did I deserve an email with that "Obviously" line? I think not. So I responded. The choice lines are in bold. As you shall see I should never have received the main part of this email in the first place.

"T$$$$,
I sincerely apologize for the unacceptability of the session summaries for Clark Springs. I will be more than happy to resubmit them with more detailed information, but regretfully I never accomplished very much during my time at Clark Springs. I tended to do a lot of photocopying and correcting papers. I figured that writing more general information about the summaries would be better than writing: "corrected papers for Mr. Sch@effer or made copies for Miss H@wkins," as neither is my duty but that seems to be much of what the faculty of Clark Springs expects from their instructors. Please let me know what you would like me to do with the summaries, however I would like to mention that my summaries have been similar in the past and I had never heard anything negative about them, thus I did not take corrective action.

With regard to my hours at Cl&rk Spr!ngs they are as follows:
Tuesday $$$$-$$$$
Thursday $$$$$-$$$$$

I recommend discussing future placement of an instructor with Miss S!mms the assistant principal at Cl@rk Spr!ngs, as my particular assignment was not very productive and you might be able to avoid future unproductiveness. The full details were discussed in your office last time we spoke a few weeks ago. Unfortunately I didn't send an email with my hours for Clark Springs because we had discussed the matter in your office, which I assumed would suffice. Sorry.

Lastly, I was wondering if you had a chance to read my email regading my interest in the NCLB program.

Again, I apologize for the summaries and please provide me with detailed instructions of what you would like me to enter. As stated previously I assumed that generalities might fare better than the truth, and considering little was accomplished I am sure that you can recognize the lack of specifics in the summaries.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Scott @ @@@@."

I also need to mention the following. I CCed the owner of the company on the email. He and I have worked closely in the past and I felt obligated to let him see that I did not drop the ball, she did. One last note; the hours I worked at the school were on the reports she is complaining about. Victory tastes sweet.