For I am Master of Word and Excel. And well on my way to becoming a glorified secretary. Huzzah for office testing, and huzzah for staffing agencies.

I was wondering during the test, though — why should a situation ever come up where something that is already typed, printed out, and lying in front of me needs to be re-typed and re-printed out? It’s obviously already come from a computer. Why not just leave it on the damn computer and e-mail it to me? Stupid management. Perhaps I’d type faster if only I didn’t think the effort was so completely pointless. Or not. I really don’t type that fast at all, for somebody who’s been using computers for eighteen years.

So I am only a Good typist.

But I am an Exceptional proofreader. Despite having no idea what specific style and formatting preferences the nonexistant memo assumed that I would automatically know and agree with. At least I figured that they’d want to do punctuation the dumb way and put it inside the quotation marks. Which makes no logical sense to me, unless the punctuation is part of the quotation. Stupid North America. But how the hell do I know whether they want AM or am or A.M. or a.m.? Hm? I guessed AM.

(P.S. — If it’s correct to use a question mark at the end of a sentence that ends with an abbreviation, why shouldn’t I use a second period if it’s not a question? Rubbish, I think.)