TOLD OFF!

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I have an aspie friend who likes to correct people's grammar....even strangers.
We went shopping yesterday and some other shopper stared a conversation with us that was full of bad grammar. I found the woman to be rather fun and personable. BUT my crazy friend went and corrected her grammar. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn't listen. The woman tore her a new one. Profanities galore! She was very old too. It was a harrowing event. My poor friend cried the whole way home. Most people ignore her but this woman took it personally. Thank goodness she didn't follow us out of the store and kick our behinds. She was old but she probably could of if she wanted to with a mouth like that! This was bound to happen someday. For you aspies who do this: Well, don't do this. Just let it go. If you know what a person is talking about, why correct them? It's not very nice to do this unless you're talking to a student and you are their English teacher.

I can't believe the nerve of that old woman. I've dealt with many old people like that. I've volunteered at an old folk's home at one time. I had to quit the position, because there was a 99 year old woman who kept on picking on me, and telling me off. Seniours are just plain nasty to me, sometimes.

What a trashy woman you encountered. I bet she lives in a trailer park.

Trailer trash at its finest.

Many seniors are nasty to everyone, I work in a grocery store where the majority of our customers are seniors. In the past three years I've:

Nearly been run over in the parking lot by a pissed off customer
Almost fired when an old lady sued the store for 10 grand (and won) because I lightly bumped into her
Had a coworker who got a store handbasket literally thrown at her when she politely said "excuse me"
The other day I greeted a customer who was walking down the isle that I was working in, and he started demanding to know when I was going to be gone and would go completely silent afterwards and refuse to answer when I asked how he is doing or if he would like help. He does this every day he's in the store.

There is also a lady of about 50 who will refuse to carry her own groceries out of the store even if the only item that she purchased was a pack of gum (she herself told me this word for word each and every time I helped her out), would not touch her groceries from the time she leaves the register to the moment everything is unloaded in her car. She wasn't really that rude to me, maybe not chatty and friendly, but simply neutral... but this is ridiculous.

Many old folks are just mean and spiteful people who feel the world owes them because of their age, or so I've been told.

But there are many extremely nice ones as well. Quite a few of them would stand there and talk to me for an hour (it's still customer service so I couldn't get in trouble), plenty of great conversations came out of these experiences. I was walking one day, and an elderly lady who I had only spoken to once on the job had recognized me on the side of the road and drove me to where I was heading as I had been walking all day. Not exactly the most brilliant idea she could have come up with, but she insisted and it was a great burden taken off of me. She obviously took a liking to me.

Yeah I agree some people don't like being corrected by those who have no business doing so. I would find it rude as well if some stranger came up to me and started correcting my grammar and I would probably go off as well. Hopefully your friend will learn that you can't just go up to random strangers you don't know and start correcting them because their reaction most likely wont be a friendly one.

What can I say. A lesson well learned for your friend, who was being obnoxious and weird.

I used to correct people's grammar all the time when I was a teen. I thought I was being "helpful." I didn't mean it to be mean in any way. I stopped when a therapist no less asked in the middle of a group session in front of everyone, "WHY do you DO THAT?!?!"

These days I work as a proofreader, so this has translated into a valuable job skill. But when someone shows me an article that they've already had published, I am able (although it is unsettling) to NOT mention the typo to them that I see.

Your friend might stop doing this now, although it was personally painful for her to have to go through that.

What do you mean she tore her a new one? What did she say to her?

She probably said a lot of swear words.

I can understand people don't like to be corrected but swearing at someone you barely know is no way to act. She should be old enough to know what manners are.

I'm sorry, but your friend deserved it. Frankly, had someone lit her up months/years sooner they would have been doing her a favor. Basically, she's been looking for trouble for a long time, and she finally found it.

For those of you who have the mystifying idea that the young woman being corrected by the older woman is innocent (or innocent enough that she didn't 'deserve' what the older woman apparently gave her)....this is where being Aspy has nothing to do with what happened. The cause-and-effect chain and personal-responsibility chains here are pretty clear: Had "A" not transpired then "B" would not have ensued. B's occurrence is/was completely dependent upon A's transpiration. Whether B is/was bad or good or whatever, B would quite simply not have occurred had A not brought it into being.

Can't blame the cup of coffee for wetting and staining the carpet, ya have to instead determine how/why it ended up there to begin with.

Put another way: you and I, dear reader, can control one thing and one thing only in this world: ourselves. We cannot hope to control others, we cannot hope to control all or even most circumstances, etc etc etc. What we can control is US--our thoughts, our words, our actions, and our reactions. By searching out which nail or board we personally represent in any given construct--rather than assessing our position/function by first judging everyone else's position/function--we can key in almost every time on where the "Start here" button is.

It's a buddhist thing---by one mechanism or another, WE are the primary cause of our own happiness and/or unhappiness. It's incredibly empowering and uplifting to realize and embrace this simple fact and it chucks the all-too-common notion of Everybody Is A Victim But Nobody Is A Perpetrator right where it belongs--into the bin.

Be well...

whoa.

going up to a stranger and correcting their grammar is not appropriate. what are you their english teacher or something?

I feel like I would have told her to f*&k off if I were that old lady.

+1.

People don't want to feel stupid, and certainly don't want to look stupid in front of others. So when your friend corrects people she doesn't know like that, they might take it as having their flaws purposely exposed. She had this kind of reaction coming. Let her know that most people might be quiet and polite about having their grammatical errors pointed out, they're probably thinking the kind of profane things that the old lady actually said out loud.

I don't like it when people do that with me. It's like "thanks, but lay off."

wooow.
i can't believe she took it so personally (the lady) i think it's more like the lady's fault, sorry.
but yeah, if people know they're not the brightest tools in the shed, something like that can really piss them off. i feel bad for your aspie friend... that's sad that she was so hurt.
i actually appreciate someone making me aware so i can self-improve... but i'm just another overly logical aspie.
i used to do this a lot too when i was a little kid and nobody liked me because of it so i stopped.
but anyway, yeah, tell your aspie friend why it offends people if you haven't already so she doesn't keep embarrassing people and irking them.

Maybe these are the reactions your friend needs in order to stop doing it. She won't like it, but it will help her in the end.
Old lady +1, you shouldn't go about correcting people's grammar. It's annoying.