I was sitting at the fulfillment desk after everyone had gone home, piddling around while software installed on Mr. Potts’s computer. I shifted some of JP’s papers around, looking for a scrap to write on, and came across a CD case. It had a large sticker on the front; in red magic marker, the sticker implored: “MASTER COPY — DO NO SEND OR SALE IT IS THE LAST COPY”. I opened the case: yup, it was empty.
The message on the medium
June 18th, 2010 by The mouseA letter not sent
May 6th, 2010 by The mouseDearest Honcho-poo:
When you have a hard copy of a report, and you tell me you’ve marked all the pages that you’ve made changes to with a paperclip on the corner, and then you have failed to mark half the pages you changed with paperclips, it makes the baby Mesus cry.
In related news, Mesus-crying results from you making those changes on a copy of Version 4, despite my having printed out Version 6 for you, and my having previously pointed out to you that the version you’re using is outdated.
Love,
Mesus
Poetry in programming
March 29th, 2010 by The mouseMy friend IM’d me the following title of a bug report:
E/E XYZ Data: XYZ Result Code Field is 30 Characters and Cuts Off Result Descr
Whether the submitter did it accidentally or snarkily on purpose, the world will never know.
Memory lane
March 23rd, 2010 by The mouseIn a conversation with Clarence, I mentioned the Senate parliamentarian. It’s a thankless job, with high turnover because you spend your time telling the senators that they can’t do whatever stupid, against-the-rules thing they want to do, which in turn tends to make the senators cranky. Clarence said, “Sorta like our company’s accountants.”
I said, “You know, that’s really an excellent analogy.” Head Honcho is a shoot-the-messenger kind of guy; he yells at our accountants more than he does at any other employee, especially when the account du jour tells him that he really does have to pay this bill or that one. Our accountants don’t tend to stay long.
Clarence continued, a la HH, “What do you mean there’s no money? Business is booming! Where’s the revenue from our 63 international offices? You must be a Stalinist!”
My reflexive thought was, “But wouldn’t he be a fan of Stalin?” That’s ridiculous, of course: even dictatorial bosses don’t like Stalin. But as Stephen Colbert would say, “It feels true.”
And I remember Mary Thomas. She was the biggest bully in my second-grade class. Still, she wasn’t always mean, and I tried to be friendly when she was in a good mood. At lunch one day, we were talking about “The Dukes of Hazzard.” (What can I say, it was the South in 1979.) She recounted with glee the latest episode, the way that the Duke brothers had defeated Boss Hogg. And I was stunned; I couldn’t believe that she didn’t root for Boss Hogg.
Coffee
March 5th, 2010 by The mouseA long, long time ago — at least three or four years — there were several people in the office who drank coffee. Mr. Potts would start a pot in the morning, and people would have most of it, and then… it would sit there, on the hot burner. All afternoon. And sometimes night, because no one remembered to turn it off. I believe at some point, the coffee evaporated completely and the carafe cracked. Whether that was the reason or not, we got a new coffeemaker, this time with a timer to turn off. Dunno what happened to that one, but it got replaced by a smaller one after Head Honcho had to swear off coffee and not enough people drank it to justify a full pot. We still have Coffee Pot Version 3.
I was searching through boxes Wednesday night, stuff that still hadn’t been unpacked from the move this summer. I came across some kitchen supplies, including Coffee Pot V. 1. Don’t need it, no carafe, no one there to see me throw it in the dumpster. So I took it out of the box, and the filter cup opened:
Yum!
Apologies for the blurriness, but well, you probably don’t need a high-res shot of 3-plus-year-old desiccated coffee brick.
I wonder what’s in the other boxes.
Word choice
February 25th, 2010 by The mouseI was in the office yesterday, the first time I’ve been in since Head Honcho’s “cardiac event.” I was in the small conference room where the interns are set up, talking to them about something, and HH came in and sat down. He started off with something that related to all of us, which took all of 30 seconds, and then he started going off on the interns about something that didn’t involve me at all. He was being quiet for him, which mainly means my ears weren’t bleeding. More unpleasant for me is just being in the same room while he’s berating someone else — like, by being there, I’m somehow complicit, or agreeing with him, or something. Survivor’s guilt. I would have gotten up and excused myself, but the small conference room is, well, small, and when he sat in the chair by the door, he pretty much took up the entire path of exit. So I just kind of stared at the bookshelf behind and to the right of him, concentrating on not screwing my face up into a rictus of sympathetic pain for the interns, while he followed his usual script of telling them what they’d done was stupid, and then telling them again, and again, using the same words and phrases.
It’s good I was concentrating on having no facial expression. I think all I did was blink an extra time when he bellowed, “because that’s just mental masturbation!” I kinda lost the train of the conversation after that.
Glad to see he’s fully recovered.
Speaking ill of the — “I’m not dead yet!”
February 23rd, 2010 by The mouseI took a “vacation” a few weeks ago, which meant I was visiting friends in another state, but still doing work as usual. As Head Honcho was on his way out the door the evening before I left, I reminded him that I wouldn’t be in the office the next week. He has a tendency to be taken by surprise when I go out of state, despite my usually sending him at least three emails in the previous month reminding him. But this time he just said, “Well, I’ll be away, too.”
Two days after I arrived at my friends’ place, Mr. Potts emailed me; he added as an aside that HH had had knee surgery the day I left. First I’d heard of it. And that it was supposed to be outpatient, nothing major, but HH had, as Mr. Potts called it, “a cardiac event.” I still don’t know exactly what that means, but HH was in ICU for a few days, then a regular hospital room, before transition to a cardiac rehab facility, and finally getting to go home.
Anyway, it was a reminder that he’s not a spring chicken anymore; I think he’s near 75. If he were a nicer guy, maybe I’d be more altruistic, but as it is, I’m mainly thinking: If he dies, I’m out of work. It think the company is a limited partnership, but the other partner or partners is/are one or more of his children. None of them lives in the same state, none of them has any interest in running the company. He’s been talking about selling and retiring since the tech bust, but, well, it’s kind hard to sell a company that is bleeding money. (Let’s ignore the fact that most of the money it’s bleeding is because of various schemes HH has had that he was sure would make thousands of bucks.) So when he dies, I presume his kids will cut their losses and dissolve the company as soon as rules and regulations allow.
Well, I’ve been wishing for more time to work on my second novel.
But for now, he’s back at work, making brilliant executive decisions and banging his fist on whatever table, desk, or filing cabinet is nearby to emphasize his points.
And for some reason, I feel the need to say: Get well soon, Dick Cheney.
Edsel
January 12th, 2010 by The mouseWell, we finally hit the point where we had fewer computers in the office than we had workers. That took some doing; when the first tech bubble burst in 2001, it took most of our customers with it, and we never really rebounded, because Head Honcho has no clue how to find new customers. Which is fine: he’s not a marketing guy. But the actual marketing guy quit around the time of the whole bubble-burst thing, and we never replaced him, because we had no money. Besides, any idiot can do marketing, right?
Anyway, other people left after the marketing guy, and we never replaced them, either. Periodically a computer would stop working, but, hey, we had more computers than people, so whoever was using it would (well, after trying for several hours sometimes to revive it, and then finally dissolving into a cursing fit because of the work they’d lost) just call JP, and JP would put it on top of one of the filing cabinets in the back room, to be repaired “someday,” and then replace it with a working computer from an empty desk. We eventually ran out of filing cabinets to put computers on, so he put the last one on the fridge. For quite a while, we had only one more computer than we had people, and a computer would die, and we’d think, oh crap, but then someone would quit, and we’d be fine.
But now we were getting an intern. Marketing major, fresh blood, fresh ideas, and the price is in line with what HH likes to pay (jack). Intern Guy was going to work at the last free computer. Turned it on. Went to log into his new email account. Couldn’t connect. Tried to connect to the office network. Nope. Swapped out Ethernet cords. Nope. I’d seen this before with other computers in our office; we have Macs, and it just means Apple Sharing is turned off. Opened the control panel. Yup, it’s off. Click the checkbox to turn it on, wait a few seconds, and … well, I don’t remember the exact error, but I’d never seen it before. I called Clarence. (Did I mention that our I.T. guy now lives in a different state? And that he’s never even been in the new office?) He’d never heard of the error, either, so he looked online and basically said, “You’re screwed: it’s hardware.” No Ethernet port. No Internet, no office LAN, no printer connection over office LAN. Useless.
I wasn’t there when Mr. Potts told HH we needed a new computer. I gather there was yelling. Then there was talk of repair that ended when Clarence compared the price of repair with the value of the computers all in a row on the filing cabinets and fridge. We needed a new computer. At some point, HH quit yelling and went to go buy one. Mr. Potts said HH actually came back happy; he’d gotten a deal, gotten a new computer for what it would have cost to repair the old one.
I knew it had to be bad; the last time he crowed about getting a deal was over the Christmas presents last year.
When I was next in the office, Mr. Potts said I’d need to set up a few things on the new computer, like the database program, and figure out how to connect it to the network. He took me to the desk, where there was a new, glossy black Compaq. HH was nearby at the copier. He fairly ran the three paces to the desk, smiling. It’s scary when he smiles; unfamiliar and out of place. “Whaddaya think? Isn’t it a beaut?” He sounds like a man in an old sitcom who just bought a new car.
“Umm. Sure. But I don’t know how to set up a PC.”
“Brand new! Only 286 bucks!” I realize he’s not processing what I just said. “Look how shiny it is!” Did he just say that? Seriously?
“Yeah.” I try to sound enthusiastic. “It looks great.” I remember to make eye contact with HH and smile, then I turn to Mr. Potts. “So, I don’t really know how to set up the database on a PC. Didn’t you set it up on your home PC?”
“Yeah, but that was XP. This one doesn’t… Well, Vista doesn’t do it the same way.”
“It’s Vista?”
He glances at HH and quickly back to the computer. “Yeah. There was a sale…”
HH runs his fingers along the surface near the trackpad, which leaves streaky tracks in the shinyness. “286 bucks! Doesn’t it look great?!”
High-tech Honcho
December 15th, 2009 by The mouseI got an email this morning from Head Honcho:
—-
Mouse:
Enclosed is message I sent to you but it was sent to to a potential customer.
HH
—-
As Clarence pointed out when I shared with him: “But I do dig the passive tense.” He also noted, “Well, considering he sends me personal correspondence to potential dinner companions as replies to my e-mail to him I can’t say that I’m shocked.”
I’m just hoping someday he gets one of those emails where the sender used cc instead of bcc, and hits “reply all” before telling me, “It’s a goldmine of names!”
And a Merry Christmas to you, too, HH
December 26th, 2008 by The mouseAfter our company lunch a couple of weeks ago, Head Honcho gave us all gifts. Identical boxes, so I knew that at least there was no attempt to get us each something personal; kind of a relief, because the idea of HH putting thought into what I might actually want is… kinda creepy. I asked at the time if we had to wait till Christmas, and he said of course. So I dutifully waited until yesterday to open mine.
It’s a 7-piece corkscrew set. The part of the tag with the price is gone, but I can still see that it’s from Linens-n-Things. This is a chain that is going out of business and is in the midst of getting rid of everything in stock. And of course not taking returns. Did I mention that I don’t drink alcohol? Nothing moral, I just don’t like the taste. None of my friends drink, either.
So, yeah: gift I have no use for, that I can’t return. But it’s the thought that counts, right?