Friday, October 23, 2015

The "Royal We"

Several folks at work, are fond of using what the dictionary refers to as "the editorial or Royal we". And, although we know that they are using "we" because they want to appear less demanding and/or dictatorial it, never-the-less, drives us crazy.
We would like for our peers and boss-types to say, "Nancy" will you please call, clean or fix whatever they would like accomplished. When someone chooses to say, "we need to call, clean or fix something",  we are fairly certain that we are the person that has been selected to do the job. But, we do not work with royalty. "We" should be reserved for use by the queen and not for one of our co-workers, who might be walking around with a case of multiple personalities or a mouse in his pocket!
Imagine, as a parent, if we had said to our messy boys, "we need to clean your room". Those boys would have replied......"Go right ahead, mom". Or, to our husband, "we need to mow the lawn". We would, for sure, find ourselves riding on the John Deere.
So, please be clear in your choices of pronouns, dear people. Be specific when asking us to do something. We promise we will do it to the best of our ability.

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