New terrorist weapon: punctuation marks

It would seem that the Perils of the Nebulous Foe extend beyond peace slogans in Arabic and are insinuating their way into our own hallowed tongue.

Joe had to meet a colocation customer earlier this week at one of our variably annoying colo facilities so that said customer could perform some maintenance on his machine.

Joe signed in with his name and our company name on the appropriate fields on the sign-in log.

The customer signed in with his name, directly below Joe's entry, and put in ditto marks under the "company" field.

Quoth the reception jockey: "Oh, no, I can't accept a ditto mark there, you have to write it out in full. Terrorists, you know!"

rrrrrr

I feel like someone's taken sandpaper to my nervous system. Could be coffee, could be lack of aikido, could be only having had 300 calories so far today (but I spaced them out!). Whichever, it's taking a lot of effort not to go randomly ballistic about stupid things.