
Adobe support tells teacher to “get a better job” - nerdy
https://twitter.com/ESOL_Odyssey/status/874677669492817920
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matthewmacleod
Have people always been this uncharitable?

This quite clearly reads like a clumsy phrasing by someone who is not a native
English speaker. I'd wager one of the earlier messages was along the lines of
"I can't afford higher prices because of my job" or something, and it seems
obvious how this then gets kind of mangled in response. That an ESOL teacher
would not make this assumption is frankly baffling to me.

The world would be a much nicer place if we assumed good intentions in people
we dealt with. Maybe I'm just naïve. But it kind of pisses me off that some
poor support worker could quite conceivably lose their job because someone
took out-of-proportion offense.

~~~
bykovich2
I didn't even process that the poster literally teaches ESL -- that's mind-
boggling.

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bykovich2
The support tech seems like she was being genuinely caring, even if she shoved
her foot in her mouth a bit. Thanks to this poster, she'll lose her job. Good
work, lady!

~~~
munchbunny
Here's the exact wording: "And I wish you will get a better job soon."

I'm used to hearing tense/mood mistakes in verbs (especially would vs. should
vs. will) coming from people who have English as a second language. For
example, I'm used to hearing something like "I wish you will do well on your
test", which in context clearly means "good luck with your test" and not "why
can't you do better on your test?"

Maybe the support person actually said something cruel. But based on my
experiences with ESL speakers, it feels much easier to believe that the Adobe
support person meant well but lacks a native speaker's grasp on the
connotations of English verb conjugation.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
So you're saying that Adobe's English language support should be provided by
native English speakers. Many would agree. But it's obviously not the case
here.

~~~
munchbunny
I wasn't saying that. I was just pointing out why this might be a
miscommunication of good intent rather than a malicious statement, which is
the subtext of the title of the post and the accusation in the actual tweet.

I personally think that, since English is an international language, Western
native English speakers (myself included) should learn to forgive a certain
degree of linguistic foreignness when talking to English speakers in general.
Many English speakers have a perfectly good grasp of English for professional
work, including support problem solving, so they are fluent enough to be
competent and polite even if they might miss social nuances in casual or
personal settings.

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metalliqaz
She didn't include enough of the conversation to provide context. It's
possible the support person was responding to her own complaints about the
profession.

~~~
naravara
Ditto. I read it more as a "good luck moving up in the world" sort of comment
rather than a "Teachers suck!" comment.

~~~
thenanyu
I read it (being an Asian ESL student once myself) as "Best of luck, I hope
you get a promotion"

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mproud
Maybe the support agent just didn’t fully think the statement through, or just
didn’t do a good job writing in his/her second language. However, we might be
missing the full context. Could she have joked about not receiving a huge
salary? Could the agent have misinterpreted her comments as being serious as
opposed to being farcical?

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quantumwannabe
The tweet appears to be deleted. If anyone would like to read it, here's an
archive: [http://archive.is/T9tNh](http://archive.is/T9tNh)

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zhyan7109
Wow, shame on this Adobe support person. 50 bucks a month is no trivial
amount. Plus, with teachers paying school supplies out of pocket and not
getting paid for the extra hours marking and prepping. The least this person
could've done is to show some respect!

~~~
xxSparkleSxx
Why is it admirable to plug holes in capitalism? They're literally keeping
afloat a broken system instead of allowing it to fail. Like I get that they're
helping individual children in the here and now, but the morality of
sacrificing from oneself to ensure governments can keep underfunding programs
is not so cut and dry.

I do believe in many situations it is more moral NOT to help, NOT to take that
underpaying job, etc. These crappy situations are made possible by people at
the top. By giving into the situations and sacrificing of yourself you are
helping the poor decision makers at the top to keep making poor decisions.

At some point a failure and rebuilding could ensure no child goes without
school supplies. Continuing to sacrifice of yourself so a few extra kids each
year can have school supplies may mean less kids get school supplies in the
long-term. In some sense teachers aren't sacrificing for the children, they
are sacrificing so the shitty administrators and government policy makers can
keep their jobs.

~~~
TylerH
This is akin to killing off a huge portion of the population to combat
overpopulation. AKA it's a joke.

~~~
xxSparkleSxx
I would say it's more akin to a huge portion of the population choosing to die
than to sacrifice so those above them can live luxurious lives.

The only power the average worker/teacher has is their ability to say "No, I
won't do that" and even then there is only power there if many are willing to
stand and do that together. Sacrificing more and more so those above you can
continue to say "see, it works fine. I can continue to extract as much capital
out of this system as possible, because the teachers don't really need it" is
a really terrible solution.

More workers need to say "NO", not bend over backwards because they are more
empathetic than those at the top. The ones at the top count on that empathy
and do use it against you.

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pc2g4d
That's unfortunate. I hope Adobe reaches out and apologizes.

~~~
floatingatoll
They did reach out an hour ago on Twitter.

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xiaoma
Time to switch to Vectr? It's free, great for students and works on
chromebooks.

Autodesk sketchbook is a good quality freemium tool to, though a bit crippled
and the lowest tiers are still too much for schools.

