Last modified on June 3, 2012 by Brad Phillips

Funny: PowerPoint Can Actually Bore You To Tears

On Friday, I highlighted a terrific article about PowerPoint published in the May 28, 2012 issue of The New Yorker.

I chuckled at one of the anecdotes in the article, and wanted to share it with you.

“A woman we can call Sarah Wyndham, a defense-industry consultant living in Alexandria, Virginia, recently began to feel that her two daughters weren’t listening when she asked them to clean their bedrooms and do their chores. So, one morning, she sat down at her computer, opened Microsoft’s PowerPoint program, and typed:

FAMILY MATTERS: An approach for positive change to the Wyndham family team

On a new page, she wrote:

  1. · Lack of organization leads to confusion and frustration among all family members.
    · Disorganization is detrimental to grades and to your social life.
    · Disorganization leads to inefficiencies that impact the entire family.

Instead of pleading for domestic harmony, Sarah Wyndham was pitching for it. Soon she had eighteen pages of large type, supplemented by a color photograph of a generic happy family riding bicycles, and, on the final page, a drawing of a key—the key to success.

The briefing was given only once, last fall. The experience was so upsetting to her children that the threat of a second showing was enough to make one of the Wyndham girls burst into tears.”

 

The article in The New Yorker, which also offers a fascinating history of PowerPoint, is worth reading in full. You can read it here.

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