Facing some of the brutal facts of modern living

Ground Floor: One of my closest friends is a teacher in Britain and she went for a job interview last week, writes Sheila O'Flanagan

She didn't realise until the morning of the interview that she was scheduled to be there at all - owing to some postal snarl-ups her application had arrived late and they rang her on the morning of the selection process to ask if she could get to the school within the next half hour.

Clearly, when you're working in business, an interview with another company is something that is shrouded in secrecy and hidden by a sudden need for some time off or an unexpected dental appointment, but it's all up-front in teaching apparently and she rushed into the principal's office to ask if someone could cover for her while she went off to discuss her future. Because she'd been told about it rather late, she didn't have time to prepare a lesson which, the interviewer informed her, she'd have to take as soon as she arrived, but she stumbled through it all the same.

Immediately after the lesson, she then had to spend two hours on a paper in which she had to give proposed answers to letters which had arrived to the school from irate parents, as well as give her views on dealing with problem children and a whole assortment of other issues.

There were three other candidates and they had to do the same (although not in the somewhat rushed way of my friend whose late call to the proceedings meant that she was about an hour behind everyone else).

After the sample classes and filling in the various answers to the questions, the candidates sat around together chatting while the interviewers made their choice. An hour or so later one of them was offered the job and my friend was on her way home again.

This is, apparently, how teaching interviews are done in Britain. My friend hadn't really expected to get the job given her lack of preparation for the interview, and I've no idea how well qualified she was compared to some of the other candidates, but I was still shocked that they would all have to sit around and wait until the principal arrived with the job offer for one of them only a few hours after seeing them in action.

My friend says that they do interviews in more or less the same way at her own school and that the job offer is made on the day to the candidate they've chosen.

I'm still a little stunned by the brutality of it all - it's bad enough getting the little envelope thanking you for your interest and wishing you every success with your future career in private but to be told in public that you're not up to it, thanks very much, seems amazing.

And, although I certainly believe that better business practice can be used in almost any situation, teaching included, I'm amazed that the profession would think this is good practice at all.

I attended two very different types of schools when I was very young - one was the old-fashioned type with sloping desks and fold-up seats and the other was a modern school with group tables and brightly coloured chairs.

But both of them placed a strong emphasis on being able to read, write and spell.

My teacher friend says that she tries to instill an understanding of grammar and spelling into her students too but that more and more of their work is now morphing into a text-message style, so that she can often receive pages of essays that contain very few vowels and lots of numbers strewn throughout the words.

The children point out that if she can understand them then the job is done. Why should it matter whether you've spelled anything correctly once the recipient knows what you're talking about?

According to a recent survey by the Royal Mail, however, spelling and grammatical errors are costing UK businesses more than £700 million sterling (€1.1 billion) a year.

It seems that almost 30 per cent of customers have stopped trading with companies because of shoddy communications. This also includes receiving random emails and text messages.

Clearly An Post has more pressing things on its mind at the moment than carrying out surveys to see whether Irish people are turned off by bad spelling and terrible letters but it would be interesting to know.

I have to admit the company that sent me a letter promising a "truelly" different experience didn't see any custom.

Nor do any firms that send me letters that begin "Dear Sheila O'Flanagan". As far as I'm concerned, if they haven't managed to locate a computer program that allows them to address me as "Dear Sheila" or "Dear Ms O'Flanagan" their attention to detail is far too poor to make me want to be a customer.

Some of my younger friends think that it doesn't matter but I think that it does. Of course, this scares me a little as I now wonder if I have become old and cranky and am concentrating on the wrong thing.

But I've also found that when companies send well-written and grammatically correct mail, they also tend to be more efficient in carrying out their business.

Not knowing the difference between stationary and stationery may not be a crime but it indicates carelessness and I don't want a company with whom I'm dealing to be careless with my business.

Funnily enough, not all modern companies are terrible with their spelling and not all established ones stick rigidly to old rules.

Some of the most efficient companies I've dealt with are those that sell software products over the internet - the letters might be emailed but they're perfectly written and unfailingly polite.

Although, since most of them are American there's a whole different spelling problem there.

However, I can live with differences. Not mistakes.