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'They lost the $1.2M funding too': Fired employee asked to write instruction manual for their future replacement with "zero experience," so they write it in insultingly simple terms

In writing, both for entertainment and for technical purposes, it's important that your reader be able to comprehend the meaning of your words. For example, if you happen to be writing a snazzy and engaging introduction to a discussion about a story that someone shared online, it would be foolish to begin using words that your reader is likely not to understand. In fact, it would be perspicacious for the author to eschew using a myriad of archaic verbiage that obfuscates the meaning of what they're trying to portray to their audience. 

Of course, as with everything in life, there's a balance to be struck, and it's easy to go too far in the other direction to a point where your writing begins sounding like one of those books you read in the first grade… The writer writes well. The writer writes good words. People enjoy reading the writer's words. The writer's words are easy to read. Yeah, you get tired of it pretty quickly. Like I said, there's a balance.

Well, when the survival of your company is dependent on a bunch of descriptive words that other people can read and comprehend in order to replicate essential processes or procedures, it's important that the line of simplistic yet descriptive be tread very carefully. 

When this worker was asked to write a technical instruction manual for the role that they were being fired from, the stipulation was that it be written at a level that someone with "zero experience" could understand. They decided to write it at such an insultingly simple level that it probably wouldn't be all that helpful to anyone at all. Hey, at least they tried… Right?

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Posted by Brad Dickson
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employment job fired jobs work workplace technical difficulties getting fired malicious compliance workplace-stories workplace discussion in the workplace workplace malicious compliance

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