Plenty of the people I work either with or near read this blog, so they can vouch for the veracity of otherwise of this posting, but I thought I’d paste up an excerpt from a reader letter, received by our communal inbox from Chris of the password-protected Roffeys.com. It’s his vision of a day in the life of the MacUser office:

Nik Rawlinson, you were there, but not in your T-shirt as I am accustomed to seeing you in the image by Danny Bird. No, you were wearing a suit straight out of Asda’s “George” range. A grimy scowl plastered across your face, you prowled across a drab, grey room, pausing to irritably stub out a cigarette in an ashtray already piled to the brim, only to immediately grab another. Dell PCs lined the room, and yes, even cheap Dell printers (for anyone who has the good fortune never to have experience the wonder of technological achievement that is a cheap Dell laser printer: think Etch-A-Sketch, only without the charm). As you stalked past, the miserable-looking employees shrank back behind the monitors and stacks of paperwork covering their desks, barely visible behind a haze of sun-bleached Post-Its.

Just as I was thinking that this soul-sucking vision could get no worse, I was proven immediately wrong. Nik, you transformed before my eyes into a towering parody of J Jonah Jameson, ruthless businessman of Spider-Man fame, and began storming around the office shouting at the cowering underlings at your feet exactly what would happen if they did not meet their deadlines. The flecks of spit flew from the snarling mouth, which by this point had risen out of sight, leaving me gaping at the knees of the monster before me. And as I strained my neck to catch another glimpse of that fearsome visage, I was met instead by the ominous features of Bill Gates. All colour faded from the scene as he made his way painstakingly around the office, leaving a trail of slime in the wake of his boots. He explained in reasonable tones how each person’s job was essential and how hard everybody needed to work, but each time he passed a member of the MacUser team, it was as though he was releasing a silent-but-deadly gas that sapped any latent joy from each and every person in the room. “Fun,” he chanted, “is not for members of my staff. Our readers want facts; they want to know what is the cheapest solution to their problem. I want to see analysis; I want to see the facts and the figures. Flippancy–” – he pronounced the word with a snake-like hiss – “has no place in a respectable publication.” But it was too late. His slightly raised voice had no impact, for everyone was already comatose.

It was at this point that I woke in a cold sweat.

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