The Learning Cliff

Manager (in search of Ted E.): "Where is he? Has he gone home already?"

Me: "Well it is ten past three..."

Manager looks at me, trying to tell if I'm joking.

"Did he tell anyone he was planning to leave early?"

Remaining workmate and I confer briefly. "Yes ... yes, he did. At about quarter to three."

"Oh. I needed to ask him about something. There's also an e-mail I needed to talk to the two of you about, following on from what we were discussing earlier ... only now I can't find it."

"It's been filed!" I pronounce ominously. Ted E. has taken to filing e-mails, using a hidden formula known only to himself and Dan Brown.

"No, it hasn't," says our manager, "That's what I thought, too, but I tried a global search and it didn't turn up."

The global search apparently doesn't encompass the "deleted" folder, because that's where I find it a few minutes later.

"Found it," I announce cheerfully.

"Where? No, don't tell me." There's a pinched look of pain on my manager's face that I haven't seen before, but which is oddly familiar from the Cow-orker workplace. "I think I need to talk to Ted E. about this in the morning."

My manager hasn't so much hit the Ted E. learning curve as smacked straight into the Ted E. cliff-face.