Learning
Tact With Microsoft Word
By
Pamela Fridie
Pamela Fridie is the sole proprietor of Fridie Editorial Services. You can see why she doesn't often take on the formatting role in addition to her usual editing and indexing roles.
Pamela is also a Signature copyeditor.
I'm learning
tact in dealing with my employee, M.S. Word. When he refuses to fetch
a picture to place on the page (he is in fact being cantankerous, hiding
the one I had already placed there), I say "All right, maybe later,
maybe tomorrow."
When he blinks
stupidly at my polite request to open a document, I say, "Take a
break," and I ask his clone to do it. (Sometimes his clone is naïve
enough to actually do the job!)
Being tactful
with my employee is not easy, though. Word is tricky and deceitful. He
promises to leave things where I've placed them, but when I return in
the morning some subtle change has been made—the drop cap has mysteriously
grown an invisible beard, pushing lines out of place; three paragraphs
have gone back to their SME's full-justified format; every other page
number has a larger twin in its place.
Of course
I do lose my cool when these things happen. Who wouldn't roar at such
an employee and angrily beat him into submission? Then just when I'm ready
to go to print, someone is bound to look over my shoulder and say, "There's
no chapter number for section seventeen." There was yesterday. Ooooh,
it's hard to be tactful!
I don't know
how he even thinks up all these pranks. You'd think my office was a class
of unruly kindergarteners!
But it's
not. Word can get really mean. Occasionally, when he thinks he's being
overworked, this guy manages to clone himself en masse, and the whole
army of them rise up invisibly and demand the closing of the store, saying
there isn't enough room for them to work. No amount of reasoning will
subdue them. If I yield, they'll insist I fire every other employee. So
down come the shutters and off go the lights. It's time for me
to take a break. Sometimes it takes the whole night for the uprising to
be suppressed. So much for tact.
As if that
isn't enough, he seems to be building a file on me behind my back. Sometimes
he leaves an ominous message that he's adding to the "Normal"
file, whatever that is, but I never see it.
So why do
I keep the guy? I hear there are employees out there who are really intelligent
and reliable. (One's name is Frank, …or is it Frame?) But they take
a lot of breaking in. I'd fire Word with gusto, but the thought of interviewing
all those candidates and then retooling the store for the new employee….
I sigh, shake
my head, and open Word again. Maybe he'll behave better this time.
Are there classes one can take on learning to be tactful with Word?
