If you're sitting on a plane at the gate and reading this column on an electronic gadget, you're about to hear eight dreaded words: "Please power down your electronic devices for takeoff".
Overall, my message to anyone looking at these transitions in the market with a sense of dread is to please come in to the light anyway.
Instead of warning me of the impending dread, during the holidays please just take time to join me for a coffee, share a story, and lend a shoulder if I need it.
It is generally the jaunty, instinctual swiper who gets the all-important Go message, rather than the annoying Please Swipe Again announcement, or the truly dread Please Swipe Again at This Turnstile alert.
In fact, my need to please is relatively mild considering many people dread ordering to the point that they'd rather go hungry or, even worse, go home and cook.
As part of the experiment, students were asked to write an answer to that dreaded but inevitable interview question, "Please describe your greatest weakness". Afterward they were asked to report how anxious they were feeling.
Complaints he has received from patients include: "Chemotherapy is bad enough without the blood-boiling irritation of muzak!" Another, describing the "dread, dread, dread" of "bloody TV soundtracks" on his shared hospital ward, pleads: "Heaven, please hear me and let my end come without music or TV".
And please don't get me started on the dread Subject Line.
The patient herself dreaded controversy and wished, wistfully, to please everyone.
I'd be very inclined to do exactly the same thing, and I know the subsequent fuckin' dread and all the other shit, so please, not at all".
Watch out for vaporware, and the dreaded asterisk that appears subtly on more than one analytics page: "Please note the following examples are for illustrative purposes only".
