Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

I work for one of the largest corporations in America, scratch that in the world. If you have never done business with my company, you at least know someone who has. So can someone tell me why people who work for us can't spell? Here are a few examples of the horrendous spelling I see on a daily basis.

1. There was an email sent to the entire department announcing that someone got a promotion. It read as follows: "Please join us in congratulating Mike Jones on his promotion to Assistance Vice President." When I first read the email, I glanced over it, not noticing the typo. But then they printed the email and put a copy on every one's desks. Putting aside for a minute the fact that it was a monumental waste of paper, whoever wrote the email wrote Assistance when they meant Assistant.

2. There is a dry erase board by the front door of my floor that management uses to write motivational messages. Last month, the board said "Push It Too Tha Limit" I didn't know which one bothered me more; the fact that they wrote "tha" instead of "the" intentionally or that they didn't know that "too" means also. It took everything in me not to just correct the spelling myself.

3. There is a sign on a manager's desk that reads "Quite please, I am on a call" I'm pretty sure they mean quiet, but she always looks so stressed out, I don't think I will ask.

4. Our internal internet sites are full of typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors. My favorite one was the high priority alert that informed us that "over-time avilable until farther notice"

5. And finally, the email we received from the Unit Manager, asking us to use spell check and double check our grammar before sending emails. She ended the email by saying "Please see you manger if you have any questions. "

I guess this is the English major in me being picky. Lord knows I can't spell worth a damn either. Maybe most people don't even notice this kind of stuff. I know I probably have a gang of misspelled words on my blog, but for something that's work related, they could at least take a second to proof read or use spell check. Is this isolated to my job or do you see these spelling and grammatical errors in your jobs as well?