Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Friday, December 08, 2006
Monday, December 04, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
One of Those Whole "You Can't Go Home Again" Deals
The main flight attendant for his section of the plane, Vincent discovered, had a buoyant sense of humor.
That’s all I need now, he thought. All he really wanted was an uneventful flying experience. Get settled and buckled, ignore the safety announcements, keep his eyes on his book, get his complimentary snack and beverage, and rest his eyes if he was that lucky.
Now he had an amateur comedian announcing the rundown of basic safety concerns. She wanted everyone to rivet their attention to her litany of bland rules and instructions, and she wasn’t afraid to misuse both her brassy voice and the very concepts of comedy to achieve this. Vincent was now certain that he was being punished for a string of unknown sins.
“In the event of a loss of cabin pressure,” the woman said, “oxygen masks will automatically descend from the panel above your seat. Simply place the mask over your face…” She mimicked the action, putting the yellow section of a sample mask she held close to her mouth and nose. “…adjust the straps…” She pulled at the pale rubber band that hooked onto either side of the mask. “…and pull on the tube to start the flow of oxygen.” She demonstrated, straightening the clear plastic tube in front of her. “Not much of a fashion accessory, but it gets the job done,” she concluded. Many of the passengers chuckled good-naturedly. Vincent made an effort not to mold his expression into more of a scowl than it already appeared.
“Now if you’re assisting someone with a mask, make sure you put on your own mask before putting on theirs,” she continued, smiling broadly at her captive audience. “You’re not going to do them a lot of good if you conk out, now are you?” More polite laughs. Vincent focused on the book he held in his lap and offered a silent plea to heaven to deliver him from this soon. Even if that deliverance necessitated the activation of the emergency oxygen system. At least then the flight attendant would be forced to shut up.
After making jests about seat cushions serving not only as emergency floatation devices but also as excellent stadium pillows, warning that smoking in the restrooms would be caught on hidden webcams, and promising that the beverage service would be delivered that evening by cart, not flung from the ends of the aisles, the routine ground to a conclusion. Vincent realized he had been reading the same sentence for the past two minutes, and closed the book for a few moments to rest.
He felt members of the cabin crew passing by his shoulder as they hurried about their duties. Vincent had recently concluded that they in fact had no real duties, apart from the little speeches and the bartending. All the hurrying, he believed, was just filler. Busywork. Justification for their salaries. Oh, wait. They also closed the overhead bins and fetched the occasional pillow. Still, Vincent thought he might prefer it if they’d just sit down and relax.
In the bag tucked under the seat in front of him, Vincent had a variety of reading materials, but the one that most obsessed him even though he hadn’t read through it in over a week was a tight stack of letters written in a familiar loopy scrawl. These were the dispatches he’d received from Pancakes over the past year or so, scattershot details that she dashed off every so often. They were always impressionistic. Pancakes didn’t much enjoy composing formal letters, but she frequently felt a desire to jot down ideas and stray thoughts for an hour or so, and then she scrawled out a quick salutation and signature and proclaimed these as letters. Most of these went to Pastina, but when they didn’t go to her, they went to Vincent or to Pancakes’s father, Emiliano.
Despite the fact that her letters rarely had much more than a general mood or theme, the trend of those he’d received over the previous dozen months was unmistakable. As rare and as unlikely as it seemed to those who knew her best, Pancakes was in love. Vincent could almost feel himself sneer as the phrase floated through his head.
Pancakes was in love. Vincent felt cheated by it, even though he thought he’d put the idea of her ever being in love with him out of his mind years ago. But then this new guy had come along, this guy Claude, and it was as if all the years he’d spent dutifully being Pancakes’s platonic friend faded in a few moments. He was jealous and he was obsessed. And he still had to go and be just her friend. He considered ordering a cocktail when the time came, but he knew it would probably just make him sick at this point. His stomach hurt already.
Vincent remembered one particular line from Pancakes’s letter back in September. It wasn’t that details about Claude flooded out at him. They didn’t, actually. Claude was mentioned only twice. But the whole personality of that letter stood in sharp contrast to the usual Pancakes Dunst missive. The tone was, Vincent realized a few weeks after reading it (after reading it, in fact, fourteen times) completely unexasperated. That, he concluded, was shockingly new for Pancakes.
Not that she sounded content. If she had, Vincent would have called immediately to ask Pastina exactly when their friend had been kidnapped and replaced with an alien drone. Instead she mentioned feeling “idiotically optimistic, and totally ashamed of it.” She called Pastina “painfully hell-bent on having good intentions even while considering what it might feel like to strangle me.” She even suggested that her mother “almost sounded like she was thinking of talking sense for a change.”
Something had most decidedly come over Pancakes. And right now, Vincent imagined, that something was looking forward to ringing in the new year with her. Unless something happened in the next few hours to make the flight attendant’s emergency warnings suddenly pertinent, Vincent would soon arrive at his destination so he could pretend to be happy for them.
That’s all I need now, he thought. All he really wanted was an uneventful flying experience. Get settled and buckled, ignore the safety announcements, keep his eyes on his book, get his complimentary snack and beverage, and rest his eyes if he was that lucky.
Now he had an amateur comedian announcing the rundown of basic safety concerns. She wanted everyone to rivet their attention to her litany of bland rules and instructions, and she wasn’t afraid to misuse both her brassy voice and the very concepts of comedy to achieve this. Vincent was now certain that he was being punished for a string of unknown sins.
“In the event of a loss of cabin pressure,” the woman said, “oxygen masks will automatically descend from the panel above your seat. Simply place the mask over your face…” She mimicked the action, putting the yellow section of a sample mask she held close to her mouth and nose. “…adjust the straps…” She pulled at the pale rubber band that hooked onto either side of the mask. “…and pull on the tube to start the flow of oxygen.” She demonstrated, straightening the clear plastic tube in front of her. “Not much of a fashion accessory, but it gets the job done,” she concluded. Many of the passengers chuckled good-naturedly. Vincent made an effort not to mold his expression into more of a scowl than it already appeared.
“Now if you’re assisting someone with a mask, make sure you put on your own mask before putting on theirs,” she continued, smiling broadly at her captive audience. “You’re not going to do them a lot of good if you conk out, now are you?” More polite laughs. Vincent focused on the book he held in his lap and offered a silent plea to heaven to deliver him from this soon. Even if that deliverance necessitated the activation of the emergency oxygen system. At least then the flight attendant would be forced to shut up.
After making jests about seat cushions serving not only as emergency floatation devices but also as excellent stadium pillows, warning that smoking in the restrooms would be caught on hidden webcams, and promising that the beverage service would be delivered that evening by cart, not flung from the ends of the aisles, the routine ground to a conclusion. Vincent realized he had been reading the same sentence for the past two minutes, and closed the book for a few moments to rest.
He felt members of the cabin crew passing by his shoulder as they hurried about their duties. Vincent had recently concluded that they in fact had no real duties, apart from the little speeches and the bartending. All the hurrying, he believed, was just filler. Busywork. Justification for their salaries. Oh, wait. They also closed the overhead bins and fetched the occasional pillow. Still, Vincent thought he might prefer it if they’d just sit down and relax.
In the bag tucked under the seat in front of him, Vincent had a variety of reading materials, but the one that most obsessed him even though he hadn’t read through it in over a week was a tight stack of letters written in a familiar loopy scrawl. These were the dispatches he’d received from Pancakes over the past year or so, scattershot details that she dashed off every so often. They were always impressionistic. Pancakes didn’t much enjoy composing formal letters, but she frequently felt a desire to jot down ideas and stray thoughts for an hour or so, and then she scrawled out a quick salutation and signature and proclaimed these as letters. Most of these went to Pastina, but when they didn’t go to her, they went to Vincent or to Pancakes’s father, Emiliano.
Despite the fact that her letters rarely had much more than a general mood or theme, the trend of those he’d received over the previous dozen months was unmistakable. As rare and as unlikely as it seemed to those who knew her best, Pancakes was in love. Vincent could almost feel himself sneer as the phrase floated through his head.
Pancakes was in love. Vincent felt cheated by it, even though he thought he’d put the idea of her ever being in love with him out of his mind years ago. But then this new guy had come along, this guy Claude, and it was as if all the years he’d spent dutifully being Pancakes’s platonic friend faded in a few moments. He was jealous and he was obsessed. And he still had to go and be just her friend. He considered ordering a cocktail when the time came, but he knew it would probably just make him sick at this point. His stomach hurt already.
Vincent remembered one particular line from Pancakes’s letter back in September. It wasn’t that details about Claude flooded out at him. They didn’t, actually. Claude was mentioned only twice. But the whole personality of that letter stood in sharp contrast to the usual Pancakes Dunst missive. The tone was, Vincent realized a few weeks after reading it (after reading it, in fact, fourteen times) completely unexasperated. That, he concluded, was shockingly new for Pancakes.
Not that she sounded content. If she had, Vincent would have called immediately to ask Pastina exactly when their friend had been kidnapped and replaced with an alien drone. Instead she mentioned feeling “idiotically optimistic, and totally ashamed of it.” She called Pastina “painfully hell-bent on having good intentions even while considering what it might feel like to strangle me.” She even suggested that her mother “almost sounded like she was thinking of talking sense for a change.”
Something had most decidedly come over Pancakes. And right now, Vincent imagined, that something was looking forward to ringing in the new year with her. Unless something happened in the next few hours to make the flight attendant’s emergency warnings suddenly pertinent, Vincent would soon arrive at his destination so he could pretend to be happy for them.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
A Very Pancakes Thanksgiving
Emiliano looked up as Pastina pushed open the swinging door from the kitchen and came into the living room where he sat near the fireplace. Her arms were crossed defensively, and she had left the kitchen in such a hurry that she still wore the full apron protecting her holiday dress against the messes involved in helping prepare the holiday meal. The girl looked annoyed, and Emiliano knew, as he often did, that his daughter Pancakes was the cause. “What’s she saying?” he asked.
“She’s on the phone with them right now,” Pastina said. She shook her head. “I had to walk in here before I hit her with a meat tenderizer.”
“She really told them not to come?”
Pastina’s blue eyes widened in momentary exasperation. “Not exactly. I think she knows better. You don’t just tell somebody they’re uninvited for Thanksgiving.”
“So how did she put it?”
Pastina adopted a mock-pleasant tone in imitation of her friend. “Well, they’re perfectly welcome to come to dinner, but she can’t promise there’ll be anything for them to eat.”
“What?” Emiliano knew that his daughter was opinionated and headstrong and sometimes a little bit self-righteous. Plus, she was fifteen now, and she often let her emotions get the best of her. But he liked to believe that she knew better than to be rude. “What does that mean?”
“That’s what she said! ‘I just can’t promise there’ll be anything to eat.’ As if there’s a shortage. As if we’re having to use up ration tickets.” Pastina sat heavily in an armchair and hunched down in passive defiance. It was all too much for her. Pastina’s sense of hospitality was, once again, being trumped by Pancakes’s sense of outraged personal justice. She wondered why she didn’t find herself a new best friend.
“But … but why wouldn’t there be enough to eat? We have plenty of food here.”
“It’s a technicality she came up with. Since she decided she’s mad at Will and doesn’t want him and his friends to come over, she got a couple of the others to agree with her. So now she thinks she’s doing right by everybody.”
Emiliano stepped over to the kitchen door and listened. He could hear Pancakes’s voice. The words weren’t clear, but he recognized the tone. It sounded remarkably like her mother’s when she was mad about something but didn’t want to admit it.
Pastina continued. “I think Pancakes does kind of want Will to come over, but who can tell? They break up so much that I never know if I’m supposed to like him or not. Anyway, the situation in the kitchen is out of control. Thanks to Pancakes, Emily’s decided all of a sudden that she has a backbone. And the first issue she decided to use it on is this holiday stinginess.”
“Emily? What happened to the neurotic we knew?”
Pastina shrugged. “New meds? I don’t know. Even when she’s her normal self, I don’t get her. Or any of Pancakes’s friends from the reading group, really. They’re like her little cheerleaders or something. And now they’ve got Vincent siding with them.” Pastina shook her fist. “Sometimes I just want to punch him in the eye. “He’s the lamest boyfriend on the planet.”
Emiliano tried to think of something fatherly to say, but he came up empty. His daughter was spreading bad holiday cheer, the kitchen was full of Pancakes’s oddball friends, Pastina was uncharacteristically angry and sarcastic, and somewhere in the house his mother-in-law was clucking over the fiasco that the Dunst Thanksgiving was becoming.
Suddenly Pancakes came out of the kitchen, the swinging door nearly hitting Emiliano in the shoulder. She still held the mobile phone loosely in one hand. “I told them that it wasn’t going to happen,” she announced to them both, “so that’s three fewer places we’ll have to set.” She looked at both of them in turn, as if expecting a response. “And I don’t want anybody bugging me about it anymore, okay? I swear, if Torvald in there doesn’t shut up, I’m sending him home without any turkey at all.”
Emiliano adopted his sad-dad look and put a reassuring hand on Pancakes’s shoulder. “Honey, you didn’t really tell those boys not to come over, did you?”
“Dad!” Pancakes yelled, brushing his hand away. “In the first place, I only invited Will! Then last week he said, no, he had these other guys he was hanging out with for Thanksgiving, so fine. And then yesterday they suddenly leave me this message, asking when they should be here. We didn’t plan on their coming.”
“But has there ever been any Thanksgiving meal in your memory where we didn’t have twice as much food as we really wanted?”
Pastina rolled her eyes upward toward the vaulted ceiling. “Does ‘Happy Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown’ mean nothing anymore?”
Pancakes looked at both of them in disbelief. “What? Are you telling me that I’m wrong? I should just let anybody crash our party?”
Emiliano looked troubled. He didn’t want to arbitrate this. He’d told Pancakes she could host Thanksgiving this year. He should have expected a few bumps. “Pancakes,” he said at last, “I’m just saying that it’s Thanksgiving. You’ve seen the TV specials. It’s supposed to be kind of a free-for-all.”
“God, Dad, whatever!” Pancakes yelled, turning on her heels and heading back into the kitchen. “I’m just trying to make everybody happy!”
“Congratulations,” Pastina muttered as the door swung shut.
Emiliano sat down again and picked up his book. “I’m just going to stay out of this,” he said. “There’s no winning with this today. I guess at least we can be thankful that her mother’s not here this year, or then my precious daughter might start throwing giblets at people.”
“The night’s still young,” Pastina said. She stood up reluctantly and followed Pancakes into the kitchen.
“She’s on the phone with them right now,” Pastina said. She shook her head. “I had to walk in here before I hit her with a meat tenderizer.”
“She really told them not to come?”
Pastina’s blue eyes widened in momentary exasperation. “Not exactly. I think she knows better. You don’t just tell somebody they’re uninvited for Thanksgiving.”
“So how did she put it?”
Pastina adopted a mock-pleasant tone in imitation of her friend. “Well, they’re perfectly welcome to come to dinner, but she can’t promise there’ll be anything for them to eat.”
“What?” Emiliano knew that his daughter was opinionated and headstrong and sometimes a little bit self-righteous. Plus, she was fifteen now, and she often let her emotions get the best of her. But he liked to believe that she knew better than to be rude. “What does that mean?”
“That’s what she said! ‘I just can’t promise there’ll be anything to eat.’ As if there’s a shortage. As if we’re having to use up ration tickets.” Pastina sat heavily in an armchair and hunched down in passive defiance. It was all too much for her. Pastina’s sense of hospitality was, once again, being trumped by Pancakes’s sense of outraged personal justice. She wondered why she didn’t find herself a new best friend.
“But … but why wouldn’t there be enough to eat? We have plenty of food here.”
“It’s a technicality she came up with. Since she decided she’s mad at Will and doesn’t want him and his friends to come over, she got a couple of the others to agree with her. So now she thinks she’s doing right by everybody.”
Emiliano stepped over to the kitchen door and listened. He could hear Pancakes’s voice. The words weren’t clear, but he recognized the tone. It sounded remarkably like her mother’s when she was mad about something but didn’t want to admit it.
Pastina continued. “I think Pancakes does kind of want Will to come over, but who can tell? They break up so much that I never know if I’m supposed to like him or not. Anyway, the situation in the kitchen is out of control. Thanks to Pancakes, Emily’s decided all of a sudden that she has a backbone. And the first issue she decided to use it on is this holiday stinginess.”
“Emily? What happened to the neurotic we knew?”
Pastina shrugged. “New meds? I don’t know. Even when she’s her normal self, I don’t get her. Or any of Pancakes’s friends from the reading group, really. They’re like her little cheerleaders or something. And now they’ve got Vincent siding with them.” Pastina shook her fist. “Sometimes I just want to punch him in the eye. “He’s the lamest boyfriend on the planet.”
Emiliano tried to think of something fatherly to say, but he came up empty. His daughter was spreading bad holiday cheer, the kitchen was full of Pancakes’s oddball friends, Pastina was uncharacteristically angry and sarcastic, and somewhere in the house his mother-in-law was clucking over the fiasco that the Dunst Thanksgiving was becoming.
Suddenly Pancakes came out of the kitchen, the swinging door nearly hitting Emiliano in the shoulder. She still held the mobile phone loosely in one hand. “I told them that it wasn’t going to happen,” she announced to them both, “so that’s three fewer places we’ll have to set.” She looked at both of them in turn, as if expecting a response. “And I don’t want anybody bugging me about it anymore, okay? I swear, if Torvald in there doesn’t shut up, I’m sending him home without any turkey at all.”
Emiliano adopted his sad-dad look and put a reassuring hand on Pancakes’s shoulder. “Honey, you didn’t really tell those boys not to come over, did you?”
“Dad!” Pancakes yelled, brushing his hand away. “In the first place, I only invited Will! Then last week he said, no, he had these other guys he was hanging out with for Thanksgiving, so fine. And then yesterday they suddenly leave me this message, asking when they should be here. We didn’t plan on their coming.”
“But has there ever been any Thanksgiving meal in your memory where we didn’t have twice as much food as we really wanted?”
Pastina rolled her eyes upward toward the vaulted ceiling. “Does ‘Happy Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown’ mean nothing anymore?”
Pancakes looked at both of them in disbelief. “What? Are you telling me that I’m wrong? I should just let anybody crash our party?”
Emiliano looked troubled. He didn’t want to arbitrate this. He’d told Pancakes she could host Thanksgiving this year. He should have expected a few bumps. “Pancakes,” he said at last, “I’m just saying that it’s Thanksgiving. You’ve seen the TV specials. It’s supposed to be kind of a free-for-all.”
“God, Dad, whatever!” Pancakes yelled, turning on her heels and heading back into the kitchen. “I’m just trying to make everybody happy!”
“Congratulations,” Pastina muttered as the door swung shut.
Emiliano sat down again and picked up his book. “I’m just going to stay out of this,” he said. “There’s no winning with this today. I guess at least we can be thankful that her mother’s not here this year, or then my precious daughter might start throwing giblets at people.”
“The night’s still young,” Pastina said. She stood up reluctantly and followed Pancakes into the kitchen.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
SPAM
Tracy? Oh, I’ll tell you about Tracy. She can’t go a day without getting six or seven e-cards from her boyfriend. I don’t know what he did, but someone should tell him that it might say more if he’d spring for a stamp once in a while. Doesn’t stop her from opening them, though. And then, great, those cheap e-card sites just attract more and more and more spam. More work for me, basically.
You’re actually better than most users. At least I’ve never had to mumble you a warning about porn being against company policy even on weekends. Only to get ignored, for all the good it did. Yeah, keep your eyes open. See who makes a trip down to HR in the next day or two. You’ll know what I mean.
I’m just glad the holidays are over, you know? How many years have some of those desktop Christmas light programs been going around? Doesn’t everybody have them by now? Or the dancing reindeer. The elf bowling. Snow on the desktop. Build your own snowman. Digital snowglobe. And then it doesn’t matter how many damn virus warnings I send out, people are clicking on every idiotic attachment they get.
I could send out an attachment entitled Dangerous Destructive Computer Virus.EXE, but as long as I put in a header that said “Check out Disco Dancing Santa!” it’d spread over half the globe in fifteen minutes. People just love Santa. They don’t care what happens to their computers.
Honestly, I don’t have to be even as nice as I am about all this. This isn’t what I was hired to do, policing people’s e-mails all the time. Network security? I’m like a hall monitor watching people pass notes in class all day. How does this company even stay afloat? When you look at the kind of junk that Leon is passing along to all his college buddies, it makes you wonder about just how much he deserves that salary of his.
No, he didn’t tell me. That’s against company policy, anyway. But if I happen to see mention of it just because I have to approve the gigabyte of vacation photos from when he went to Mardi Gras this year, that’s not my fault.
Anyway, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’ve met his wife, and that wasn’t the woman in those pictures. But that’s just between us, of course. Unless he wants to take it up with someone else. I can play it that way too.
I’ll tell you what’s really getting on my nerves, though: how paranoid everyone is about their e-mail. Like we’re here just to spy on them. Do you think I have time for that? Just think about how many messages you send on an average day. Now times that by everyone in the company. No way could I read that much e-mail, even if I wanted to! I’m just trying to stay ahead of the dangers, and the only way to do that is to check out the suspicious stuff. It’s not my fault if people can’t be smart enough to send messages without little movie files about office Olympics or pictures of dogs in Halloween costumes. That’s the stuff I have to review. If people would just write to each other about appropriate work stuff, then we’d have no problem. And if they’d clean up their language a little, I wouldn’t have to see the details of their trip to the doctor or the marginally illegal thing they did to their ex-boyfriend.
I mean, just as an example.
The paranoia, though, that’s just irritating. And everyone’s so nice to my face, of course. But I hear the whispering, and, come on, they have to know that if they’re writing e-mails to each other about it and using words like “spying” and “espionage” and “Spam,” I’m going to see that. Doesn’t that stand to reason?
Well, you’re right. I suppose maybe people don’t always know that, but that’s not an excuse. They should know it. So when they write stuff like that, it makes it all the harder for me to be nice about things. Someone writes an e-mail about how the whole IT department is a bunch of Nazis, and the next thing they do is write me some nicey-nice message about how they were expecting this document, and could I please see if something’s happened to it? Yes, please, ask the Nazis for assistance. The same evil people who are violating your rights are really going to spend half a day scrolling through mail queues to figure out if your drop-out, drug-addicted son sent his resume along for you to review. Or something like that.
I shouldn’t even be telling you this, but as far as I’m concerned, sending something in a company e-mail is about the same as putting it up on the bulletin board in the coffee room. The whole privacy thing is such an illusion. You’d think management would be above that … or at least that they’d know that the guy they barely have time to say hi to in the parking lot is the same guy who gets to see when they’re arguing with their wives about how late they’re having to work all of a sudden. And then at the same time has to approve some message from their college-age girlfriend … the one who likes to reveal whether or not she’s wearing underwear and always wants to know when they can get away to a hotel in the city for a weekend again.
Really, when I think about how much money gets spent on those little extracurriculars, it makes it a lot harder for me to deal with the crap salary they pay me. Because it’s not like they’re using their own credit cards to pay for that stuff. Their wives might see that. But I’ve asked Eva in Accounts Payable, and she’s seen a lot of suspicious weekend stays at the Four Seasons for a certain person whose title starts with “C” and “E.” I’ll let you connect the dots on that one.
Look, I’ve got to get going. There’s this whole new virus or something I have to check on, and if I know the people in this company, they’re probably going to cripple the whole network if I don’t keep on top of it.
All that stuff was in confidence, by the way. I mean, people still have a right to privacy, even if they don’t do anything to help themselves. So seriously, don’t tell anyone.
You’re actually better than most users. At least I’ve never had to mumble you a warning about porn being against company policy even on weekends. Only to get ignored, for all the good it did. Yeah, keep your eyes open. See who makes a trip down to HR in the next day or two. You’ll know what I mean.
I’m just glad the holidays are over, you know? How many years have some of those desktop Christmas light programs been going around? Doesn’t everybody have them by now? Or the dancing reindeer. The elf bowling. Snow on the desktop. Build your own snowman. Digital snowglobe. And then it doesn’t matter how many damn virus warnings I send out, people are clicking on every idiotic attachment they get.
I could send out an attachment entitled Dangerous Destructive Computer Virus.EXE, but as long as I put in a header that said “Check out Disco Dancing Santa!” it’d spread over half the globe in fifteen minutes. People just love Santa. They don’t care what happens to their computers.
Honestly, I don’t have to be even as nice as I am about all this. This isn’t what I was hired to do, policing people’s e-mails all the time. Network security? I’m like a hall monitor watching people pass notes in class all day. How does this company even stay afloat? When you look at the kind of junk that Leon is passing along to all his college buddies, it makes you wonder about just how much he deserves that salary of his.
No, he didn’t tell me. That’s against company policy, anyway. But if I happen to see mention of it just because I have to approve the gigabyte of vacation photos from when he went to Mardi Gras this year, that’s not my fault.
Anyway, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’ve met his wife, and that wasn’t the woman in those pictures. But that’s just between us, of course. Unless he wants to take it up with someone else. I can play it that way too.
I’ll tell you what’s really getting on my nerves, though: how paranoid everyone is about their e-mail. Like we’re here just to spy on them. Do you think I have time for that? Just think about how many messages you send on an average day. Now times that by everyone in the company. No way could I read that much e-mail, even if I wanted to! I’m just trying to stay ahead of the dangers, and the only way to do that is to check out the suspicious stuff. It’s not my fault if people can’t be smart enough to send messages without little movie files about office Olympics or pictures of dogs in Halloween costumes. That’s the stuff I have to review. If people would just write to each other about appropriate work stuff, then we’d have no problem. And if they’d clean up their language a little, I wouldn’t have to see the details of their trip to the doctor or the marginally illegal thing they did to their ex-boyfriend.
I mean, just as an example.
The paranoia, though, that’s just irritating. And everyone’s so nice to my face, of course. But I hear the whispering, and, come on, they have to know that if they’re writing e-mails to each other about it and using words like “spying” and “espionage” and “Spam,” I’m going to see that. Doesn’t that stand to reason?
Well, you’re right. I suppose maybe people don’t always know that, but that’s not an excuse. They should know it. So when they write stuff like that, it makes it all the harder for me to be nice about things. Someone writes an e-mail about how the whole IT department is a bunch of Nazis, and the next thing they do is write me some nicey-nice message about how they were expecting this document, and could I please see if something’s happened to it? Yes, please, ask the Nazis for assistance. The same evil people who are violating your rights are really going to spend half a day scrolling through mail queues to figure out if your drop-out, drug-addicted son sent his resume along for you to review. Or something like that.
I shouldn’t even be telling you this, but as far as I’m concerned, sending something in a company e-mail is about the same as putting it up on the bulletin board in the coffee room. The whole privacy thing is such an illusion. You’d think management would be above that … or at least that they’d know that the guy they barely have time to say hi to in the parking lot is the same guy who gets to see when they’re arguing with their wives about how late they’re having to work all of a sudden. And then at the same time has to approve some message from their college-age girlfriend … the one who likes to reveal whether or not she’s wearing underwear and always wants to know when they can get away to a hotel in the city for a weekend again.
Really, when I think about how much money gets spent on those little extracurriculars, it makes it a lot harder for me to deal with the crap salary they pay me. Because it’s not like they’re using their own credit cards to pay for that stuff. Their wives might see that. But I’ve asked Eva in Accounts Payable, and she’s seen a lot of suspicious weekend stays at the Four Seasons for a certain person whose title starts with “C” and “E.” I’ll let you connect the dots on that one.
Look, I’ve got to get going. There’s this whole new virus or something I have to check on, and if I know the people in this company, they’re probably going to cripple the whole network if I don’t keep on top of it.
All that stuff was in confidence, by the way. I mean, people still have a right to privacy, even if they don’t do anything to help themselves. So seriously, don’t tell anyone.
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