I needed to generate an electronic recommendation letter for a former student yesterday, and printing the letter on paper and scanning the paper copy seemed a little too… 1998 to be worth doing. As a result, I spent an inordinate amount of time fiddling around with Microsoft Word to come up with a template that looked like the official department letterhead.
Of course, there’s nothing in the many pre-installed templates that could easily be modified to suit, because Microsoft employees have the aesthetic sense of a syphilitic squirrel, but I was surprised to discover just how many absurdly specific templates they offer. Including one for a letter complaining about a teacher, which not only comes with blanks to fill in the addresses and salutation, but pre-written complaint text:
I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with the quality of teaching provided by my daughter Sarah’s fourth-grade teacher, Nancy Anderson.
When my daughter started the fourth grade, she was excited about learning and had already established a record as an enthusiastic and diligent student. Her grades last year were consistently As and Bs. Yet in the past three months, Sarah has become extremely negative about going to school. She has told me that she doesn’t like school anymore because she is confused by Ms. Anderson’s lessons and because Ms. Anderson becomes impatient when Sarah asks for clarification on difficult lessons.
It continues on in that vein for a while. I’m going to go out on a limb, though, and say that if you need Microsoft Word to pre-write your complaint letter for you, you’re probably not qualified to complain about your child’s teachers.
So, here’s a time-wasting contest for you, since it’s Rag On Microsoft Day here:
What is the most ridiculous pre-written template in the collection of pre-written templates in Word 2007?
“Ridiculous” can mean anything from “nobody with a functioning brain should need this pre-written for them” to “this is a stunningly poor example of the form it’s supposed to demonstrate.” Leave your suggestions in the comments (ideally, including a description of where to find it in the template selector, so I can verify it). The winner will get some fabulous prize that I’ll make up later.