Re: "The new way to 'office'"???

[John Posada <jposada -at- NOTES -dot- CC -dot- BELLCORE -dot- COM>]

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Have any of you noticed the new Kinko's ad slogan -- "The new way to office"?

"Office" as a verb? I guess it's just an advertising thing, and it did
catch my attention. I'm generally in favor of verbizing nouns where a
useful purpose is served, and I am part of their "small office, home
office" target market.

But, this new verb they are proposing sounds so odd. I suppose you could
argue that it is specific to white-collar work, while the verb "work" is
non-specific.

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  But what does "office" as a verb mean? Does it mean "to photocopy stuff?"
  Maybe "send memos and letters?" If using a noun as a verb is just an
  inventive way to get a point across, I might not squirm too much. But
  that! "The new way to office" doesn't mean a darn thing to me.

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To be honest, I really didn't have a problem understanding what this means...or
at least what I think it means.

I take it that "to office" is to do the things that I'd do at my company office.

To use Kinko's for the things that I know they do is to use them for
photocopying, faxing, scanning, DTP, word processing, sending and receiving
mail and packages, direct mail programs, mailing list maintenance, etc.

It's kind of a takeoff on the verb to work.  However, "to office" would mean
only the type of work that you would perform in an office environment as
opposed to a factory or manufacturing setting.

I MAY have a little more understanding of the concept than some since except
for my current situation, I worked in home offices for more than 10 years...and
that's the target audience.  If you've (and I'm not refering to you as "you",
but to the collective you) never used a home office, then you aren't going to
use them as much as home office users would, so they don't care if you know
what they are talking about or agree with their terminology.

Besides..it's advertising.  The goal is not to use correct terminology.  The
goal is to use terminology that gets the point across.  The goal is to have you
remember the name and discuss it with others.

They've succeded...no?

John Posada
Technical Writer
Bell Communications Research, Piscataway, NJ
(908) 699-5839 (W)
jposada -at- notes -dot- cc -dot- bellcore -dot- com  (W)
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