Remember when she said she’d gotten her dream job? Assistant to that big movie star.
No, not the one always adopting kids. The other one.
Yeah, that one. That’s him.
Didn’t even send flowers. That’s what he had her for, right? To make it look like he cared.
Never had time to date.
Never had time to settle down.
Never took a vacation.
Oh, sure, she traveled, but she never saw the world. Phone in one hand, her boss’ dayplanner in the other.
Did she schedule this, too?
Heart attack.
Die at twenty-six.
Put an ad in Variety: Assistant Wanted.
Tag: work
Blame Game
I work for a troubleshooting firm.
Companies hire our company to work on their bugs and errors.
Oh, we don’t actually fix anything. We just change the way it breaks.
Instead of a computer program crashing and throwing out a meaningful error message that they’d need to investigate and pay developers to resolve, we make it look like it’s the user’s fault for the crash so they have to buy a new computer or update other expensive components.
Car companies.
Food makers.
Schools.
Governments.
Religions.
They’re all our clients now.
But don’t blame us… it’s not our fault.
It’s yours.
Letters
Professor Troy crawled into the cave and looked around the debris.
Tattered bits and pieces, a few bones.
And a rusty oil lamp.
He looked closely at it.
Arabic letters… he translated… “RUB THIS.”
Lamps? Genies granting wishes?
He chuckled. What would he wish for?
More funding… a time machine to see the past as it was…
What was the last thing he wished for?
Oh. Right. He’d said: “I wish other archaeologists would treat specimens properly.”
So, he made a notation where he found it, snapped a few photos, carefully wrapped it in a plastic bag, and tagged it.
Verification
When customers call us, they’re supposed to answer a verification question.
If they don’t have a verification question on file, they need to log into our site and set one.
“But I’m not in front of a computer!” they growl.
I wonder if they pull this crap on people at the bank.
“I left my checkbook and wallet at home,” they yell. “I don’t know my account number. I have no ID. And I never let you put my fingerprint on file. Now give me my money.”
They are resellers, who are entrusted to other people’s stuff.
Seriously misplaced trust.
The Man Who Was Once In The Moon
They told The Man In The Moon he was no longer needed.
“Automation,” they said.
He had heard rumors of downsizing. The asteroid belt was already completely outsourced. Jupiter and Saturn were handling all their moons from a central dispatch. It was only a matter of time before he’d get the axe.
“What if something goes wrong?” he said. “The connection could go bad, and there’s some things you just can’t do remotely, you know.”
“We’ve got it covered,” they said, and they handed him a severance check.
Two weeks, plus unused vacation, and a little extra for good service.
Christmas Tree Cookies
Looking down the list of the Cookie Exchange at the office, I read through notes each person gave their gift cookies.
The gingerbread men were delicious.
The frosted snowflakes were wonderful.
But those green pine trees were absolutely disgusting, and they made people sick.
I looked down the list… green pine trees… was Lisa.
She was in her office, and she asked me if she could have her tray back.
“What the heck did you put in those things?” I asked.
“Don’t they smell like trees?” she beamed. “Pine Sol has such a fine aroma.”
Next year, she’ll bring Oreos.
Watch The Clock
When Christmas approaches, online retailers see sales skyrocket, and so does the load on their servers.
Those who added memory and processing power, or shifted to scalable cloud solutions are running smoothly.
But others running sloppy code on overloaded old servers are crashing constantly.
And screaming at us in Support.
I look.
The server’s fine. The platform’s fine. The hardware’s fine.
You’re just slamming the crap out of it.
They say they can’t afford to buy upgrades or suffer any downtime, but we have to fix it.
I don’t have a magic wand, I tell them.
And watch the clock.
Tasting Strawberry
I tear open two packets of instant oatmeal, pour them into my mug, and then wait for the kettle to boil… wait… wait… wait…
A watched pot never boils, right?
I should probably go get dressed. Or sync up my phone. Maybe use my ear and nose hair trimmers. Or…
I hear the quiet rustle of water, so I pick up the kettle and pour.
Stirring with a spoon… scoop out a bit of oatmeal.
Not too thick, not too soupy.
I tear the lid off of a cup of yogurt, dip it in the oatmeal, and…
Tasting… strawberry.
Perfect.
Resolution
The last step before releasing any artificial intelligence core out to the production line is to run it by Ted in Q&A.
Ted isn’t any kind of skilled cyberneticist or engineer.
He is a goddamned pain in the ass. And any robot brain that can put up with his stupid bullshit, well, it is ready to roll.
MegaThink Seven almost got a pass when Ted challenged it to make a New Year’s Resolution not to make New Year’s Resolutions.
The battletank blinked, looked at Ted, and pointed a cannon at him.
FAIL
“Can we load it next time?” I asked.
Rip Van Bob
Bob took naps during his lunch hour.
His coworkers teased him about it, calling him Rip Van Winkle.
One day, Bob napped, and his workers made an elaborate prank to make him think he was waking up in the future.
They sprayed his beard and hair white, but he was severely allergic to the spray dye and fell into a coma.
After 20 years in the coma ward, he woke up.
He looked in the mirror.
“GAH! I’M OLD!”
During his painful lengthy rehabilitation, he dyed his hair and beard black.
Same chemicals, but no coma.
This time, he died.