Removing gnome-office but not gnome

[stud rocket <stud.rocket@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

I have lots of experience with administering Linux servers, but I've
never had a home machine to put Linux on until now.  I put Debian
Sarge on it and want to use OpenOffice.org instead of gnome-office. 
However, when I try to remove gnome-office, Synaptic tells me gnome
itself depends on gnome-office.

I understand "gnome" is a metapackage, but I still hesitate to let
Synaptic automatically remove it.  This seems like a bug to me because
it gives the impression that gnome itself depends upon "gnome-office"
applications which are seperate applications.

A word of caution: I'm a recovering Slackware admin, so I'm not used
to packages performing all manner of magical actions.

Thanks in advance!