the company i work for is fairly progressive i'd say, one good example being that the office embraces and encourages the use of instant messaging as one method of intraoffice communication. (this may not seem so advanced to people in the tech industry but it's miles ahead of my last employer, which was large enough in size to really benefit from it)
now i've been IM'ing since my later years in college, going on about six years now, and consider myself a pretty civilized IM'er. sure, i've picked up the normal habits like scattershot capitalization of the first letters of names and words at the beginning of sentences, but the departures from the more rigid formal letter format are fairly benign in the realm of everyday conversation; most importantly i remain conscious of what i'm typing to people and how i'm typing it.
some people at this office, though, SEEM TO HAVE THE COMPULSION TO YELL AT ME BY TYPING IN CAPS LOCK ALL THE TIME. SINCE 99% OF THE CONVERSATIONS IN WHICH THEY ARE TYPING IN THIS MANNER ARE NOT DISCUSSIONS OF AN ANGRY NATURE, I CAN ONLY ASSUME THAT THE OTHER SIDE OF THEIR CONVERSATION/OFFICE-WORK MULTITASKING IS SOME SPREADSHEET OR SOMETHING IN WHICH THE FORMAT FOR ENTRIES IS ALL-CAPS; I CAN ASSUME THIS BECAUSE I MYSELF SOMETIMES WORK IN REPORTS AND SCREENS THAT, AS OFFICE CUSTOM DICTATES, REQUIRE USE OF ALL-CAPS TYPING TO MAKE THINGS LOOK NICE AND UNIFORM.
WHERE I GET MY SENSE OF MORAL SUPERIORITY HERE IS THAT I have the presence of mind and dexterity of digit to hit the Caps Lock button and revert to lower-case letters when typing in an IM window to a coworker or friend; when i'm finished typing 'hehe, no shit? lol that r0xoRz' to my friend i can easily tap the Caps Lock button to return to my work screen and enter "RECLASS FUNDS TO PREPAID ACCOUNT".
Whether it's a case of my shouting coworkers not grasping the concept of 'yelling' on IM or if they're simply too lazy to Caps-lock and Caps-unlock, I'LL NEVER KNOW BUT IT GRINDS ON MY LAST NERVE I THINK I WILL GO APE-POOP IF THEY KEEP DOING IT TO ME YEARRGGGGHGHH
3 comments:
MAY I SUGGEST YOU CALL THEM ON THEIR "ALL-CAPS"-USING-WAYS BY ASKING THEM IF THEY ARE ANGRY?
THEY WILL ASK, "NO, WHY?"
AND THEN YOU CAN SAY "Oh, usually ALL-CAPS is used to indicate shouting".
All you can do is ask. If they take the hint, bully for them
a superb idea, though i think i may have missed the window of opportunity for it. i've let it go on for so long that it would seem a bit out-of-the-blue.
actually i heard our IT guy make a wry comment about the bad habit to one of the main offenders, though his input seems to have had little lasting effect.
Ah, the IT guy.
We are a brotherhood.
Steven
( an IT Guy )
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