Re: HUMOR: Stupid instructions

[Win Day <winday -at- home -dot- com>]

At 02:58 PM 12/21/99 -0500, Paul Branchaud wrote:
><off topic>
>The holiday season and the imminent birth of my first child finds me
>spending much of my time dreading the words "some assembly required". I have
>seen all manner of assembly and handling instructions. Some are good, most
>are adequate, and several are nothing short of heinous (leaving me to
>contemplate making bids to overhaul their laughably called "instructions").
>The worst instructions I have read, though, are from my wife's desktop
>calendar. The December 19th entry from the *365 Stupidest Things Ever Said*
>(Workman Publishing) reads: "To avoid breakage, keep bottom on top. Top
>marked bottom to avoid confusion"
></off topic>
>
>Trying to steer my message onto something resembling a valid topic:
>
>Has anyone ever contacted the manufacturer of a product with poor
>instructions and offered their professional services?
>

Yup. Bought a little indexing program a number of years ago.  It was really
a database that would reformat your entries into standard indexing form.
Useful for editing and revising indexes before you actually enter the nasty
codes into a Word document.

Their manual was abysmal.  So I rewrote one piece of it, and sent it off to
the company, offering to rewrite the whole thing, ad to work with them on
the GUI should they ever decide to port from DOS to Windows.

Never heard anything back.  You can still buy the original DOS version (I
think; I haven't checked lately).  They never moved to Windows, and never
changed the manual.

Win
---------------
Win Day
Technical Writer

http://www.wordsplus.net

mailto:winday -at- wordsplus -dot- net