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I'm going to take this opportunity to tell you the two work stories about this and why this particular grammar rule drives me crazy.

First, I work in communications so I write for a living and for that reason people ask me writing questions all the time and 90% of the time the answer is "well, this is a style question and here's my advice based on what the relevant style guides currently advise."

But then there are the rules that are just the rules and those aren't nearly as plentiful as people think they are. But when something is a rule and you work for the organization I do (which is a place that takes "being correct" very seriously), then FOLLOW THE RULE.

Story one: A fundraiser came to me with something she had written that a volunteer had told her was incorrect -- "I hope you can join the President and me" -- and had told her it should be the "President and I." I said "No, you're right. Two tricks -- if you remove "The President" it immediately is obviously not "I", it's "me". Also, if you would replace this with "us" then it's "me." If you would replace it with "we" the n it's "I."

Ok, great. No one says "Please join I" so it's obviously not correct.

She goes back to the donor and the donor -- who had specifically said it would be embarrassing for our institution to send out a grammatically incorrect email -- insisted "and I" was right and added "I asked my daughter, and she's a lawyer!"

Lawyers have no special grasp of grammar! That's not the thrust of that degree!

Story Two: We had an intern working with us. She was sending out a letter to donors and told me it bothered her that the letter had some grammatical errors. I was confused – it was prepared by our communications and marketing team – so I asked what the concerns were. She pointed out a phrase that included “Professor *** and me” when she felt it should be “Professor *** and I”. I looked at it – the sentence was pretty convoluted so it was hard to map – but then said “Oh, no. That’s right. It’s me, not I.” She disagreed. Since this is one of those grammar things that is a hard and fast rule, I explained why it should be “me” and not “I” and she said “No, it's 'I' because of the order. If you put the name first, then it’s ‘and I’.”

“No, order has nothing to do with it. If you were to remove the other name it would be 'me' and 'I' is clearly wrong.”

“But adding the name changes that.” And then she looked at me like ‘let me explain’ and said “I used to teach English in Spain. I did a whole lesson on this.”

My bafflement was now growing. “Ok, but… This isn’t… I mean, I get it. People think ‘and I’ sounds right, but it isn’t right. It’s why people will complain that The King & I is grammatically incorrect.”

At this points she fully BACKED UP from me and said “Oh, I STRONGLY disagree with that!”

“It’s not something to be agreed with or not agreed with! It’s a rule.”

At this point we looked at each other and it was just clear that the conversation had to wrap up for the sake of continuing to work together in some degree of harmony. She was SO certain, though, that it really threw me. I ended up Googling to make sure I wasn’t out of my mind and then asked my friend who is an ESL specialist “is this a thing you teach?” – she said no, you teach the ‘remove the name’ to see which word to use system and was a little horrified by the “order” rule. But she also said, very dismissively, “they’ll let anyone teach English overseas.”

So I guess there’s a bunch of people in Spain who don’t understand the subject/object pronoun relationship. But there’s also a lot of people all over the English speaking world who don’t, either. I do smile at “I taught English” apparently trumping the fact that I write for a living – as does the team who wrote that letter, and her boss, who approved it. I admire her tenacity, though. It’s a bit amazing to meet someone who is THAT sure of herself.