help re: subordinate superior

["Delaney, Misti" <ncr02!ncr02!mdelaney -at- UCS01 -dot- ATTMAIL -dot- COM>]

From: Price, Becca; Delaney, Misti
Subject: help re: subordinate superior
Date: Tuesday, August 08, 1995 1:31PM

HELP!  we are two contractors in a department of 3; the 3rd is the only real
employee in our group.  this person had about 14 month's. experience before
he came to us (transfer from another part of our organization) - I believe
but can't prove that he misinterpreted his qualifications.  He is the sort
of person who believes so firmly in team work that if a member of his team
did something, he feels justified in passing it off as his work, for
example.

after over a year of working with us, this person is still turning out
sentences like "Then a you can press a button to display the data windows."
 BTW, this is not only the full sentence, it is the complete text of step 4
in a formal procedure.

another example, the purpose statement for a program screen: "The Report
Generation data window allows you to generate of a report regarding a
previously run collection job."

We edit this person's work ferociously, for all the good it does - these
examples are both are taken from the second draft of a document.  Also, we
only can edit work that is done on projects we work on with this person;
there are several other projects that are worked on solo, and we never see
those.

We have no authority over this person.  HELP!  (we do have our mutual boss'
ear, and his support, but nothing has come of this yet).  Any suggestions on
how we can get this person up to speed and turning out useful prose?

 -becca and misti