Mad Bra!

Maddy worked in Tech Support, but if you were new, and she was in a cheeky mood, she might’ve introduced herself as Mad Bra—her nerdy joke on the way addressing in R-Mail worked, where you could type just a few letters to get to the person you wanted.

     So, Mad Bra gave you Madeline Bradley.

     Rub Sin was Ruby Sinclair. Dam Fog, Damien Fogerty.

     And maybe it’s commonplace now, but back then it seemed nothing short of miraculous, especially if you worked a lot with Glad Jim, better known to her family and friends as Gladys Amalia Jiménez Cárdenas.

Inspired a bit by Instructions, but mostly by a long week of data entry, where I got to dust off this sweet little trick that I learned in the ’90s. Illustration by ChatGPT.