Shades of Grey
Shades of Grey Shades of Grey Home > Projects > Essays Shades of Grey

projectscircle1.jpg (3081 bytes)


 

Office Humor
12/15/03
horizline3.jpg (1454 bytes)
A great deal of paperwork passes over my desk (since my job as a proofreader involves proofreading documents).  Like many millions of Americans who work eight-hour desk jobs, I often find the work to be . . . somewhat less than exciting.  At times, however, the repetition and monotony is punctuated with bits of irony, sprinkled into the documents like prizes in a cereal box.    These usually come in the form of mistranslated words or phrases, caused when the optical character recognition software in the scanner didn't recognize a word or one of the many people who worked on the documents guessed at a handwritten passage.    Certain letters seem to give the computer more problems than others, and at infrequent intervals we encounter such humorous phrases as "pubic bonds" instead of "public bonds."  These are usually greeted with laughter and a quick tour around the office to show all of the other coworkers.

My employer upgraded to Windows XP some time ago, which left all of our customized manuals and materials outdated.  I had the opportunity to become a very close, personal friend of the company's new-and-improved XP manual (formerly known as the Windows 98 manual) over a period of some months, and found these gems lurking among the instructions for changing fonts and spell-checking e-mail.  Without further ado:


Jay's Top Ten Risqué Lines From the XP Manual

10. Users can search for individual experience within the Firm by selecting the "Experience" link from the Site menu.

9. Choose "Turn on."

8. Select the User Name link to view the profile of the individual with the desired experience. Select the heading in which you have experience. The "Rating" dialog box will display. Rate your experience from 1-6.

7. Get the full power of the Answer Wizard in an unobtrusive package.

6. Position the insertion point appropriately.

5. Mark the location of the insertion point to quickly locate a position.

4. Using the Office Assistant

3. By default, the Office Assistant is turned on.

2. Automatically updating styles is recommended for users who are experienced with using styles.

1. Hiding the Office Assistant does not prevent the Office Assistant from popping up again.

 

vertline2.jpg (1378 bytes)

links2.jpg (1630 bytes)

The Office Kama Sutra

I actually have this book.
It's quite funny.