Pet Peeves

One of my biggest pet peeves is people with really poor grammar or who badly mispronounce words. I work for a fabric company and we take orders over the phone. Some of our patterns do have some funny names that can be mispronounced very easily, but others are so basic that people make more difficult than they are.

The one name that most people can't pronounce is "effervescence." Most people try two or three times and then just start spelling it. Is it really that difficult? So many people say buffet (pronounced buffay) with the "t" sound at the end. It always reminds me of Don Knotts character, Mr. Ferley on "Three's Company." He would always talk about going out for "escarGOTS." I think the one that made me laugh the most was when someone asked for the pattern "ElemenTARy" as opposed to, elementary.

Another big pet peeve of mine, is when people pronounce the word "pattern" as if it was a three syllable word, pronounce "patterin." I really, really can't stress how much I hate that. This is probably because I hear it so much!

One time, I customer called in to check stock on some fabric. I asked for the pattern name, and he tried to say it a few times, only to give up and finally spell the word, "EQUESTRIAN." Really? Seriously? Have we really become so ignorant and lacking in vocabulary that we don't know a word like equestrian?

It is days like that, that I come home and have my daughter get out as many books as she would like us to read together. If I have one goal in life, it is for my daughter to grow up to be a well rounded, educated and articulate person. I want her to love books and reading and everything it has to offer. She will know the difference between chatting/texting abbreviations and the real spelling of words. At least, I hope she will.