> I couldn't get the clerk at the store to understand what was wrong.

Not surprising. Tons of Americans are borderline illiterate. It's one of many things that makes it annoying to live here, especially as the amount of communication done in text increases with more advents in technology.

I recall reading somewhere that the standard reading level for the states is about sixth grade, and if anything that comes across to me as slightly generous. Honestly this is one of my few hopes with the proliferation of LLM: that it will make reading communications from other workers less utterly painful.