Showing posts with label grammar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grammar. Show all posts

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Grammar's influence on your food safety

Just to be clear, I am not trying to be the grammar police here.  I don't care if you use "thru" in an email.  I'll receive "R U gonna B bak b4 we need 2 leeve" in a text and get over it eventually.  I understand sacrificing grammar and spelling at the altar of efficiency.  As one of the least patient people in the world, I get it.  But when people either don't see what they're doing or just can't bother to give a damn on something more official, like a letter, or, say, signage inside a restaurant bathroom:
Well, that just pisses me off.  Why does only one, singular, employee need to wash their hands?  Excuse me for being a prude but I want ALL the employees to wash their hands after shitting.  Actually, strike that, I want EVERYONE to wash their hands after shitting, whether you are being paid by this particular establishment or not.  And none of this "wash hands" business.  Just wash your damn hands, no quotes, no sarcasm needed.  Now, I am not expecting nor wanting to walk into a restaurant bathroom and see a sign taking up half the mirror saying, "Please pardon the interruption kind sirs, but we, the ownership of this establishment, kindly request that all employees of our business, once they have thoroughly completed their activities in the restroom, do diligently wash their hands with hot water and soap, so as to reduce the risk of food born pathogens and bacteria making their way into the delicious food of the restaurant.  We thank you for your time, attention, and aid in this endeavor."  But somewhere between that and Employee Must "Wash Hands" I think we could find a happy medium.  And while they're changing the sign, do you think they could also ask this mystical employee with the "clean hands" to maybe wash the counter?  It appears the colony of bacteria living in the corner is making an excursion outward, looking to conquer more of the countertop.  Nice.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Oxford Comma

My wife, the love of my life, apple of my eye, gin in my tonic, is pretty much the only person who reads my blog with any frequency.  As such, she also functions as my editor (unpaid, though she has been threatening to unionize.  I'll bring in scabs like THAT!).  As such, she has been constantly fixing my "issues with ands and commas."  I always just accepted it, since she is smarter than I (I know, damned by faint praise.  She's also prettier, skinnier, sexier, and better at most everything except biking and eating).  But last night she elaborated that "you always put a comma before the 'and' in your lists, why do you insist on doing that?"  I was shocked.  Gobsmacked.  Awestruck even.  My wife, the woman I've chosen (I choo-choo-choose you) to spend the rest of my life with, the mother of my baby girl, doesn't use the Oxford Comma, aka the Harvard Comma, aka the Serial Comma.  Instead she is firmly in the camp of the University of Phoenix Online Non-Comma, aka the Bob Jones University Anti-Comma.  I am crushed.  Here I was thinking I had lucked out in life, finding a perfect woman who had deigned to marry a schlub like me.  Now I realize that it was all a charade, a clever ruse to trick me, finally undone by her comma usage.  Now I see through her deception to the truth beneath, and this, kids, is why grammar is important.