AH, PROGRESS!

I remember, sometime in the 1970s, when my company issued a memorandum that "employe" would be used in all Company correspondence rather than "employee" and stated that it would save the company millions of dollars by deleting ONE "e".  Nowadays, as a stockholder, whenever I receive literature from the Company and I see the word "employe" used, I wonder how much it actually benefited the company. 

By 1979, the Company had eliminated Department Secretary positions and created a "secretarial pool" and any correspondence from us in Production Management would be submitted--hand-written or dictated-- and after being typed by a pool typist, the materials would be returned to us for distribution.  

One time, after I had submitted a hand-written letter to be typed, when I received the typewritten material from the secretarial pool, I noticed that my wording had been changed.  I returned it to the typist and told her she would need to retype it.  She asked why and I explained that her typing made it ungrammatical.  Obviously miffed, she stated that she had "simplified" it for me.  I replied that it was now incorrect and I could not possibly issue the letter.   She replied that she was sure the person receiving it wouldn't know the difference.  I asked, "You're sure?  Then obviously you know this employe."  She replied, "He's just a factory worker."  I said, in a very condescending tone, that the intended recipient held a master's degree and would definitely notice the error;   I reiterated that I could not present it with the mistake and that I, myself, was perfectly capable of typing the response if I could use her typewriter.  She told me that I wasn't "allowed" to do that.  I was, of course, offended that I, as a member of Management, even needed to have the conversation with her.  

I told her that I needed to talk to her Supervisor.  Unbelievably, rather than just agreeing to re-type the letter, the Supervisor said that the employe wouldn't be able to tell the difference.   I told her that was "very patronizing" and I would wager that the intended recipient was far more educated than the members of her department.  I also said that it could have been re-typed in the amount of time we had wasted discussing it and that I obviously needed to speak to her Manager.

Only then did the Supervisor ask the nature of the problem.  I stated that I had properly used a transitive verb and the typist had changed it to an intransitive verb.   The Supervisor yanked the paperwork from my hand and said she would re-type it.  After that, my submissions were typed exactly as I presented them.

Within a few years, the secretarial pool was gone, we all had computers on our desks, and we all had to type our own responses.  

Ah, progress!