The Broken Soldier

… is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we’d probably go to war.”

Etiquette.  I used to think it was something most people just understood.  I was mistaken.  Below is my simple and straightforward contribution to fixing the problem.

You don’t rub poop on your face, or those of your fellow queuees, in the breakfast buffet line at the local Bob Evans.  You don’t laugh out loud and point when you see a man in public wearing a fashionable pink shirt with the collar cocked up.  And you don’t send files in unusable formats, especially when those files contain documents necessary for initiating important processes.  Like those involved in getting injured soldiers on orders for example.

But time and time again, even after alerting the people involved, that my wife and I are a) Mac users, and b) don’t have Office, we still receive important, time sensitive documents in MDI or XFDL or password protected or whatever formats.  Without the necessary software, we can’t touch said documents, and there’s nothing we can do, short of purchasing said, often obsolete software, to fix the problem on our end.  I ask each time it happens, please send files to us in a usable format, and somehow I’m the asshole.  One barbarian had the audacity to suggest Sarah and I purchase the full MS Office Suite so as to make things easier.  Translation, Sarah and I are to drop $X on software we a) don’t like, b) don’t have the money for even if we did like it, and c) to spare the farouche genius making the suggestion the laborious task of pressing CNTRL S and choosing to save the file in PDF or Tiff or the like.