Microsoft Office

Here are the Top 7 Microsoft Employee Bungles using Microsoft Office

1. Opening dangerous attachments. Viruses like Melissa (”I love you!”) were a huge problem at Microsoft. The kicker about it is that everyone acted flabbergasted and incredulous. “What sort of idiot clicks on these things?!” It’s like Hootie and the Blowfish: the best-selling debut album of all time has no fans. Have you ever met a single person who admitted to owning Cracked Rear View? Same with Melissa.

2. Forgetting to include attachments. This is the evil twin of #1: in addition to clicking on harmful attachments, we forget to include useful attachments. So when you see an email with the subject “Foolproof Plan for World Peace — Part Deux,” don’t get too excited. As awesome as the plan probably is, it’s almost definitely not attached to the email.

3. Replying-all to huge mailing lists. Any email to a large alias inevitably results in someone (no doubt a proud Hootie CD owner) replying to everyone. The threads are always the same. Something rather mundane or obscure is sent to thousands of people. Then the fan mail starts pouring in:
“Why am I on this list?”
“Unsubscribe.”
“Please also remove me!”
“Please stop replying to everyone — there are thousands of people on this alias.”
“Me too!”
“SERIOUSLY — STOP REPLYING ALL!”
“Why are you shouting?”
“We never talk anymore.”

4. The most famous of these threads at Microsoft started on a mysterious distribution list called “Bedlam DL3.” 25,000 employees, 15.5 million e-mails, 195 GB of bandwidth, busted network. T-shirts were printed to commemorate the event.

5. Putting aliases in the “To:” field in order to see who’s in them. To see names on an alias, you can put the alias in the “To:” field of an email and double-click it … if you’re a complete idiot. A friend of mine (”Jimmy”) almost got fired by an executive for doing this. A product that this executive was in charge of was getting cancelled, but her team didn’t yet know it. When Jimmy heard the scoop, he wrote his boss an e-mail that essentially said, “Hey there, so-and-so’s team is getting canned. Here are the only three people worth keeping…” He then proceeded to add so-and-so’s entire team to the “To:” line in order to find out the names of the “only three people worth keeping.” The rest of what happened is left as an exercise to the reader.

6. Projecting a PowerPoint presentation. The amount of time wasted at Microsoft sitting in conference rooms waiting for the presenter to get the slides to work is mind-boggling. Does the projector handle your resolution? Press Fn-F5! Click the little icon in the lower left to resume your slide show. Not that icon! The other one! Oh, the screen saver’s kicked in. Your laptop’s suspending!
Getting instant messages (IMs) during presentations. Once the presentation is going, IM notifications inevitably pop up on the screen. This tends to happen most when you’re presenting in front of hundreds of people. “Yo! How did the [blind-date/colonoscopy/armed-robbery] go?” “Hi, [term of endearment]! I can’t wait to [verb] your [adjective][noun] [now/tonight/again/forever]!” I’m told that the latest version of Office fixes this. Let’s hope so.
Note From the Editor: In 2007 Office system, Desktop Alerts for incoming e-mail messages are turned off by default when you run a PowerPoint 2007 presentation. See Turn Desktop Alerts on or off for more info.

7. Using Excel to cover up Unreal Tournament. Well, I’ve only seen this once, but it’s so eponymous that it deserves to be celebrated. A few years ago, one of my team members frantically maximized Excel as I walked into his office. As I began discussing a technical issue with him, sounds of gunfire, grenades, and general human suffering erupted from his speakers. I had a difficult decision to make while recovering from my brief initial confusion: Do I acknowledge what was already mutually embarrassing and awkward, or do I ignore the obvious? I decided to conduct our technical discussion with the idyllic calm of a wartime correspondent. To his credit, I now know that should push come to shove, my team member could calmly discuss a spec during Armageddon without batting an eyelash.

As you can see, Microsoft employees are often just as befuddled as everyone else. It would blow your mind if you could hear how frequently basic Office tips are shared in my hallway at work. Spend a day here, and you’ll find it impossible to believe that we’re all Office mavens marching lockstep towards a streamlined plan for world dominion.

Then again, Office 2007 is far easier to use. I’m impressed by the many improvements in its user interface. So in a funny way, perhaps we’re no longer as harmless as we used to be. World dominion may be within our grasp after all.

If we could only remember to attach our plan in email…