What to do when you are an expert, in this case — writing — and an English as Second Language (ESL) comes along and says you can’t write? I should have known when he criticized my first submission and I couldn’t find anything wrong. Right then and there it should have been exit stage left. But retrospect is golden.
The plot thickened when I edited a 16 page, horrible document that he wanted in three days. He also wanted me to do it using Word’s Track Changes feature. And so I did. However, as I went on, his meaning was so obscure that I did what I could highlighting those areas in yellow. As I trudged on, I told him that we would definitely need to make another pass because of the number and complexity of changes.
Let me add that also in the course of this business liaison that this creep had one of his employees get into my computer (admittedly I did allow it), but the guy wreaked havoc with it and now it has been in for repair for two days. The repair techs tell me the problems are a direct result of what they did.
Back to the 16-pager. On a Saturday evening, while relaxing with my family, I got an absolutely unbelievable email ripping my work apart. I ran his email by my partner and several friends and they were, as I, appalled.
Okay — examples, buddy, I want examples! I got the examples and I flipped out. There was nothing wrong with two of them — he said they were wrong, and the third was an error on his part in downloading and dealing with the Track Changes feature.
So, here’s the deal, I think we writers should test clients before we take them on. And especially beware of ESLs who think they know it all.