A PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH

The following story is reported to have actually happened in a well-known company (which shall go unnamed):

The director of communications (I'll call him Joe) was asked to prepare a memo reviewing the company's training programs and materials. In the body of Joe's memo, one of the sentences mentioned the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals.

The day after he sent this memo to the executive committee, Joe was called into the HR Director's office, and was told that the executive VP wanted him out of the building by lunch. When Joe asked why, he was told that the vice-president wouldn't stand for "perverts" working in her company. The director showed Joe her copy of the memo, with her demand that he be fired, with the word "pedagogical" circled in red.

Joe explained to the HR Director what the word meant. The director looked the word up in his dictionary to confirm it and then made a copy of the definition to send to the vice-president, and told Joe not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later, a memo to the entire staff came out, directing them that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos.

A month later, Joe resigned. In accordance with company policy, he created his resignation letter by pasting words together from the Sunday paper.