Cringeworthy Email

I spent a lot of time away from computers, smartphones, and other devices this weekend with the weather being as nice as it was. It's not quite spring yet, but Mother Nature was doing her best to push that idea upon us with the double-digit positive temperatures seen at times. Usually after a few days of not checking, there are a pile of emails that need to be read, so that was my task tonight as I prepared for work life on Monday morning. One email, though, stood out for its grammatical correctness despite how wrong it was.

I'm not here to embarrass anyone or shame anyone, but it seems clear that this public relations person doesn't have a lot of experience with hockey. While this person does a decent job of conveying the true reason for sending the email, the opening paragraph reads,

The NHL season is well underway, and Canadian teams continue to dominate the North Division. The Maple Leaves, Jets, and Oilers currently sit at 1, 2, and 3, respectively, and they provide entertainment and inspiration to tens of thousands of fans every time they play.

Any self-respecting fan knows that the Maple Leafs never get the pluralized version of "leaf" when talking about the Toronto-based NHL team, yet here's PR Person dropping a "Maple Leaves" in the opening paragraph of this pitch.

What makes this error worse is that PR Person uses that grammatically-correct-but-oh-so-wrong team name again later in the email, and it's used to describe PR Person's client in the email. While I'm sure that this could be considered an honest mistake to most people, selling a client's services by incorrectly identifying the team he played for isn't a good way to gain my support.

The company that PR Person works for describes itself as being "in the media relations business for over 50 years" and "excels at getting our clients attention across the media spectrum". This PR firm representing this specific Maple Leafs player is actually located in Chicago, but not being local to Toronto doesn't let PR Person off the hook with the rich hockey history in Chicago. Most Chicago hockey fans would know "Maple Leaves" is entirely wrong, so I'm baffled how one would make a mistake of this magnitude working in public relations.

Regardless of the mistake, the offer or service that was being promoted is something I'd never need or use, so the likelihood of me promoting that offer or service was already closer to none on the slim-to-none scale. However, making egregious errors in the email to convince me to look into the offer or service has a polar-opposite effect in prompting me to look further into the offer or service.

Needless to say, I "Maple Left" this offer in the Deleted Items folder where it belongs after "Maple Leaving" those errors in the email. Seeing that team name properly spelled in terms of the grammar rules in the English language "Maple Leaves" me baffled how this email got past the proof-reading step of the process.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!