'GLAD TO HAVE YOU ON THE TEAM SIMON! YOU WERE MAYBE A LITTLE HESITANT TO START OUT WITH, BUT I'M SURE WE'LL GET TO BE GREAT FRIENDS!!!' John blurts
'Yes' I say, concentrating on remembering where I put my coffee
'YES. NOW COME ON, BUCK UP!!!'
'I'm sorry?' I whisper, instantly in attack mode – the boss freezes in terror
'BUCK UP!, YOU KNOW, MOTIVATION!!'
'Oh, `BUCK' up..' I relax
The boss giggles nervously and resumes his exit waddle.
'YOU KNOW SIMON WHENEVER I HAVE MOTIVATION PROBLEMS I SAY TO MYSELF `IT'S A DAY TO CELEBRATE, 'CAUSE TO DAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE!''
'I see. So it'll be a double celebration for you today then?'
'I'M SORRY, I DON'T GET...'
The boss `GET's allright, and hurriedly drags him from the room. I decide its time to get some real work done, and call an ex-operator trainee of mine who works at the National Security Information Centre. A good trainee too, passed with flying colours. You can tell, he's still alive.
'HELLO!' he shouts 'WADDAYA WANT!'
Old habits do die hard.
'SIMON HERE' I shout back
'SO?'
I compliment myself on a job well done.
'I want some information on a John Stern'
'Stern. Isn't he that Motivation guy?'
'The very same.'
'Yeah, I don't have to look him up, but I will anyway. He came here three weeks ago for a motivation retreat. I got a non-specific disease those days'
'Tragic. But what did I tell you about problems? CONFRONT THEM HEAD ON! DON'T AVOID THEM!! It's bad for your rep.'
'Yeah, you're right. He's coming back in a couple of weeks for a refresher and I can't back out those days because we're updating vetting info on some national politicians and I'll want a copy for... backup purposes'
'I'm sure you do. Well, what can you tell me?'
'Well, I'm afraid I can't tell you anything Simon. As you know all our information is carefully monitored for compliance with the Data Security and Privacy Laws, and there's no way to extract information without it being monitored'
We laugh, and he emails everything to me. I look through the data and find that Stern is cleaner than the Watergate filing cabinet. A great shame.
Motivation O'Clock arrives and I wander to the seminar room. John's setting up some display on his laptop, no doubt with lots of cartoon characters depicting co-operation and unity. Nothing turns my stomach more...
'SIMON! GOOD TO SEE YOU!!' John spurts. He slips his hand into mine with a non-threatening orientation. I grab it in such a manner that his ends up on top of mine in the classic repressive Body-Language manner. He immediately notes this, loosens his grip and starts to remove his hand, all according to plan. A squeeze and twist later and John's morale is a little less than 100% with two dislocated fingers.
'Oh! I'm sorry!' I gush, helping John back to the nearest available seat... which unforunately has his laptop with it's fragile liquid crystal display.
Tragic.
>Whumph!< The room is plunged into darkness, the cause of which I can only guess at. Today's guess is the campus climate control computer started every heater and fan at the same time instead of one by one, resulting in a massive load on the campus power supply, popping all breakers. Just a guess of course.
'Nobody Move!' I call 'It's dark and we don't want any accidents!!'
Everyone in the department freezes, knowing what this means. The god of computing wants a sacrifice, and volunteers are being called for.
'HOLD ON EVERYONE, I HAVE A TORCH IN MY BRIEFCASE!' John calls
If John were telekinetic, he would be reeling back from the mental shouts of 'DON'T DO IT!'. However, he obviously, and sadly, is not.
>WHOP< >WHOP< >WHOP<
Or should I say, WAS not.
Two minutes later the lights come on and the tragedy is revealed. The police are called.
'...apparently, fell forwards, head first into his briefcase, the spring-loaded lid of which slammed down upon his neck three times, snapping it like a twig'
I nod. The boss nods. The flock nods. One big happy family once more.
The Bastard Celebrates Christmas 95
It's a slow day on the systems front following a network outage that's chopped the site in half. No-one seems to know exactly what's happened to the backbone except that it's completely dead.
In fact the whole day has been rather slow. So slow I passed some time earlier in the morning helping one of our buildings people hang the annual executives portrait photo in a place designed to inspire confidence and team spirit in the workers. Sure, using a nailgun just to hang a photo was a little excessive, but the was some obstruction in the wall which was difficult to nail through. An obstruction which was concidentally thickwire ethernet shaped. Anyway I hope they find that outage soon..
Meantime I kill a little time by trolling the offices of the Network Team for Xmas pressies. You know the sort of thing, 'Thank You' bottles of Wine, Xmas Food Parcels, etc, from grateful suppliers. It's not like they'll report them missing, for to do so would be tantamount to admitting that you hadn't handed them over to the boss for him to 'reapportion' as he see fit.
So I'm in the department Brown-Nose's office when the phone rings. What the hell, Xmas Spirit and all that, time to bury the hatchet.
'Hello'
'Hi, how long will the network be down'
'Should only be a couple of days'
'But I have to get these invoices rectified by the end of tomorrow!!'
'No Chance. I'm sorry, you should have thought about that before now. Honestly, we can't be expected to make allowances for your personal shortcomings'
'B..'
'No Buts, Maybes or What-ifs. It's your own fault.'
'Do you know who you're talking to?'
'Well, my Caller-Id tells me that you're Charleston, Head of Accounts – and I would have to admit that you do have that whiney, beancounter telephone voice that denotes a white collar worker desperately in need of a good ten minutes alone with me and a staple-gun'
'WHAT?!'
'Oh, you're a DEAF whiney beancounter?!?'
'I. I..' he splutters
Hatchet FIRMLY buried, I hang up. I'm about to leave when I notice that he's left a privileged session open to the router. A quick >clickety click< later and the router reboot he'd forgotten he'd scheduled takes place. A quick >scrawly scrawly< later and a note appears in his handwriting in his desk diary mentioning this was going to happen.
Five minutes later I'm back in the computer room, stashing my spoils inside the covers of some old-style
