editor chew out

One of my tasks at work is to respond to e-mails addressing errors in our publications. Most often they are about typos, misspellings and mistakes in the crossword puzzles. Usually people, whether they be students, teachers or parents, are pretty understanding. I go over their concerns, check them via my copies of the publications, note the needed changes, forward the changes to the designer, send information for an errata sheet to be posted on our Web site to the CSRs, and e-mail back to the complaint with appreciation for their input and assurance that the needed changes have been made.

Some of our publications are a little older and actually don’t get edited by me or the other editor. These are ones that have been brought into our company from other sister companies and the standards are, well, kinda lacking. Eventually all of the publications will be top notch but with about 80 of them, we can only focus on a few each year, which is kinda unfortunate.
One lady e-mailed me twice this month. She is a bit … well, over the top. My favorite comments from these two complaints:

“If my class handed in work that looked like the puzzle in this issue, I would have them start from scratch at recess.”

“Are your people asleep on the job? How can something as grossly wrong as this be missed by an editor when a 10-year-old kid can pick it out right away.”

We are currently addressing the issues. I'd be scared if I were in her class....