It’s simple. It’s so simple no one ever suspects it.

So simple that real programmers would laugh at it. The program is a macro. It modifies the way Microsoft Word behaves. Of course, I have access to all the computers on the network, since I’m the admin. When I determine someone needs to be taken down a peg, I deploy this laughable little program.

It changes the way your spell-checker works. It identifies words that are commonly misspelled by people when they type. And a certain percentage of the time, when you spell that word the right way, it tells you that you’ve got it wrong. It puts that little red line under the word. You see that, and you think to yourself, “I knew it either had one ‘l’ or two ‘l’s. I guess it’s the other way.” So, you change it. But now you’ve really got it wrong, so that little red line is still there. Eehhh! Wrong! Try again. You can’t think what else it might be. You delete a letter you know should be there, you add an ‘e’ at the end… still wrong. Hah! What’s the answer? How can you make that taunting, little line go away? Can you ever get it right?

If you spell it right three times, I take away the line. You could swear you tried that spelling before, but you guess you were wrong about that, too. Boy, you can’t even get the simplest things right today, can you?

That happens to you a few times, it starts to shake you. It happens just often enough every day for a week, and you get kind of unsteady, self-doubting.

You might not even notice how this affects you. But the next time you complain about the service in IT and I have to meet you in person, you’re raw meat for me.