Occupational Hazards

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Have you ever found, when you watch a movie about a cop or a spy or a superhero that you feel slightly jealous of all the excitement in their lives? But then you console yourself with the fact that at least with your everyday job – your life is completely safe from evil, dangerous forces.

Because we all have super menial, safe, normal, boring jobs that don’t come with any risks, right?

I disagree! Don’t we all have some occupational hazards in our jobs? Some might be physical like getting hurt working heavy machinery, while other could be psychological like becoming a little bit crazy from working in the psych ward. For secretaries it’s sexual harassment. For wrestlers it’s a broken neck. For musicians it’s drinking and drugs. You get the idea.

My occupational hazard is – I’m a Grammar Nazi! 

I found the best description of my condition so far on Uncyclopedia: “Grammar Nazis are people (or cats) which use their freakishly and/or annoyingly powerful understanding of and compliance with grammar and spelling to attempt to “correct” others, usually the blissfully-oblivious-to-the-outside-world members and users of the Internets, who only understand the grammatically genocidal text-speak.”

Yep. That’s me. I just can’t help myself. And it doesn’t help that I’m surrounded by bad grammar and spelling everywhere I go! Luckily most of my friends and family have all learned to accept it and love me for me (those that really matter anyway) – and try really, really hard to suppress their annoyance when I correct them.

But I think what bothers them the most, is that I’m constantly pointing out mistakes everywhere, not necessarily their mistakes. If we’re in a grocery shop and the signs on the walls have mistakes in them – I point it out and lament the death of the English language! When we’re in a restaurant and I see mistakes in their menu, I point out how much I hope their food makes up for their bad language.  

I’d like to think that I’m quite polite about it all though. I found this handy guide on how to be a Grammar Nazi , and I’m doing quite well so far.

Just to explain where my realisation came from – I randomly felt the need to defend my behaviour to a friend the other day. I’m guessing it’s because deep down I feel guilty and/or mean when I’m always correcting people. I must admit that once in a while people make me giggle and I might mildly tease them – but that only happens with those closest to me that I truly love.

So anyway, I realised that this person has strange little habits that come with his job too. He’s in the lighting industry, and everywhere we go – EVERYWHERE – he has a good look at the lights and makes a very knowledgeable comment about it. I’m sure that the comments are really interesting (and sometimes even I find them interesting) and he really knows his stuff.

And that gave me the idea that just like that’s one of his little occupational hazards – my Grammar Nazi behaviour is one of mine.

Just a side note – it’s not always a hazard either. It actually comes in handy sometimes.

Friends can always check their spelling with me if they’re unsure at all. Of course – I’m not perfect either, which is why I have Dictionary.com saved as a bookmark on my phone!

PS – try to guess how many times I read over this post to make sure I didn’t make any grammatical errors. * Holding thumbs *

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