How to Brainwash Your Co-Workers (. . . maybe)

Having trouble at work? Want your colleagues to like you? Do you want to make ornery co-workers become your bidding slaves? The follow these easy instructions to send subliminal messages to your co-workers:

(1) Open Microsoft Word

(2) Go to the "Watermark" feature, usually in the "Format" menu of the latest versions of MS Word.

(3) Choose "Add Watermark". Then type in the subliminal message you want to give, e.g. "GIVE RAISE". I prefer using all caps, and one-syllable words.

(4) Custom change the color of the watermark to a very faint gray. I find that (253,253,253) is the safest, yet most latently visible.

(5) Print out a few hundred copies of these "blank" pages which have the faint watermark -OR- Print out groups of 20-30 pages several times over the course of the day.

(6) Put the blank pages back into the printer tray. NOTE: Depending on how your printer rolls off documents, you may have to put the watermark in face down so that the watermark is face up.

(7) Now, whenever your co-workers print out a document, their subconscious will absorb the phrase.

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Opinions vary on the effectiveness of subliminal messages, or if this form of subliminal messaging works. The best empirical evidence of subliminal messaging I've seen comes from the new book Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, where he cites the successful efforts of a professor to make his test subjects feel old, polite, or rude by carefully placed words in a red-herring test. However, this form of subliminal message takes a completely different form the kind I suggest.

However, I knew a guy who did the experiment. For a week week, in the above described process, he placed the subliminal message "WEAR ORANGE" on everyone's paper. Before he started, he noticed virtually no one wearing orange. Later, some of his co-workers wear orange, or colors like orange, such as certain browns or yellow and red together. For me, it's evidence, but not conclusive evidence. Personal observations could be biased, or the phenomena may be explained by an upturn in the temperature that week.