17 November, 2005

Cow-orker: Careless Talk II

Talking to the Crazy Man. I mention that we might soon be accessing our primary database through a different system (one that has an unenviable reputation for being a little less than reliable). He seems surprised. The Cow-orker was e-mailing me back at Death Spiral to complain about it, so I figured he must have heard about it. Apparently not.

I fill him in. According to the Cow-orker, our database has to be migrated to another system and we're to be given no choice about it because two other section heads have said so. Quite what these two have to do with it isn't actually clear, though, and the Crazy Man wonders how they got involved. The poor man. He really doesn't seem to know.

"The Cow-orker told them we were doing some development work on the database."

"Why would she do that? It's got nothing to do with them!"

I shrug helplessly.

He clutches his head in the traditional gesture of pain*. "God, I'm going to have to talk to her about this, aren't I?"

*(Clutching of the head is a gesture my former manager used to perform a lot when trying to understand the Cow-orker's motives. The Crazy Man has developed the same tendency independently after managing the Cow-orker for the last six months. At first I thought it was some kind of ritual gesture used by managers to ward off evil spirits, but it's hard to see how a ritual could survive in the face of such obvious and consistent failure. Now I figure it's just a reflex action, because curling into a fetal position is too socially awkward).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what you need, correct me if I'm wrong, is a ritual that *works*.

Have you tried voodoo? Perhaps wearing crucifixes or other talismans? An exorcism?

Anonymous said...

Sacrificing a virgin, perhaps? Or an intern?