This really happened to me. It was 1983 and I was teaching a small class on IBM DisplayWrite2 software. That app was rife with "Press this..", "Press that..." and "Press any..."

This person kept pressing me on what was a safe key to hit at that dialog. I didn't want to blow off her question because, on reflection, I didn't want her getting in the habit of hitting Esc or Enter ....so I told her "J".

One day her boss is using her computer while she's out and she comes back and is looking over his shoulder. He gets the prompt "Press any...." and taps the spacebar. She bitches him out royally about not pressing "J" ... he writes a nasty memo to my manager and I get reamed.


>In 1984 I had made and gave out, as Christmas gifts to clients and friends, bright red IBM PC replacement keycaps with white lettering -- that said "Any".
>
>Still have a few of them floating around somewhere...
>
>>Kind of like the secretary asking me where the "any" key was when looking at a "Press any key to continue" message 20 years ago when all of this was very new.