A: Because Village Idiot Season confused the Village Idiots.
La Mondaine is trying to do some Christmas shopping while she works and seems surprised when the corporate intranet informs her that the website she's trying to visit is a Restricted URL and continuing may breach the organisation's Code of Conduct.
"Oh! Why did it do that?"
The website? Well, I don't know exactly where she was trying to go, but she was looking for a Playboy housecoat and it's not a big leap to work out what search terms she was using and where they were likely to take her...
20 December, 2010
13 December, 2010
Nature only abhors a vacuum because she doesn't have co-workers
Ted E. may be gone but, in a fine example of office Darwinism run amuck, La Mondaine (who, I'd like to point out, was trying to convince us earlier today against all evidence to the contrary that Ted was actually a really nice guy) rushes to fill the newly-vacant niche in the office ecology.
In other words, every village must have its idiot.
La Mondaine: "How did Ted know about this?"
Stress Fiend: "Because he'd read every email the rest of us were sending so he could tell us what we were doing wrong."
La Mondaine: "He what?"
Me: "He'd read all the sent emails."
La Mondaine: "What would he read?"
Me: "The emails."
La Mondaine: "But why would he do that?"
Next up, the global economy...
"Why do we always have to follow America? Why does our housing market have to follow theirs?"
"Because they have, what, 25% of the worlds' wealth, and our markets are greedy?" offers the Stress Fiend.
"Who has the rest? Australia must have at least that much! Who has all the rest of the money?"
"Asia will have a fair bit. I think China by itself owns a lot of the US debt..." without thinking, I blunder into the madness. Even as I say it I know I'm going to regret entering the conversation - the only question is exactly how - but it's been a long, slow day and the words are out before I can stop them.
"So why can't we be more like China?"
I pause. Surely she can't ... no, wait. Yes. Yes, she is perfectly serious.
"Because they're a repressive, totalitarian regime with a terrible human rights record?"
La Mondaine opens her mouth, closes it, and blinks in surprise. Presumably this is what happens when she tries to accommodate more than one idea at a time.
Then she gives up and goes home, which is a surprise win.
In other words, every village must have its idiot.
La Mondaine: "How did Ted know about this?"
Stress Fiend: "Because he'd read every email the rest of us were sending so he could tell us what we were doing wrong."
La Mondaine: "He what?"
Me: "He'd read all the sent emails."
La Mondaine: "What would he read?"
Me: "The emails."
La Mondaine: "But why would he do that?"
*****
Next up, the global economy...
"Why do we always have to follow America? Why does our housing market have to follow theirs?"
"Because they have, what, 25% of the worlds' wealth, and our markets are greedy?" offers the Stress Fiend.
"Who has the rest? Australia must have at least that much! Who has all the rest of the money?"
"Asia will have a fair bit. I think China by itself owns a lot of the US debt..." without thinking, I blunder into the madness. Even as I say it I know I'm going to regret entering the conversation - the only question is exactly how - but it's been a long, slow day and the words are out before I can stop them.
"So why can't we be more like China?"
I pause. Surely she can't ... no, wait. Yes. Yes, she is perfectly serious.
"Because they're a repressive, totalitarian regime with a terrible human rights record?"
La Mondaine opens her mouth, closes it, and blinks in surprise. Presumably this is what happens when she tries to accommodate more than one idea at a time.
Then she gives up and goes home, which is a surprise win.
07 December, 2010
A fool even Mr T would struggle to pity
While we slowly drift towards not bringing La Mondaine in anymore, we've been finding work for her that keeps her away from touching any of our systems. At the moment this means we have her tidying up our storeroom, a task so simple even ... actually, no, that's not quite right. I was going to say even Ted could do it and, on a purely theoretical basis, he probably could. In practice, he'd lose interest after five minutes and either try to palm it off on someone else or begin throwing random items into the bin in protest at being asked to think about something.
Come to think of it, that's exactly what he started doing the last time he made a fuss about the state of the storeroom and it was pointed out there was nothing stopping him from doing something about it...
Anyway, La Mondaine is fumbling and panic-attacking her way through the storeroom. Yesterday she found a batch of duplicate items that came with useless obsolete bonus material and wanted to know if she should file the useless obsolete bonus material away.
"No," I tell her, "Just get rid of it all."
"All of it?"
"Yes."
"Just get rid of it all?"
"Yes."
"The useless obsolete bonus material, you mean?"
"Yes."
"You don't want to keep any of it?"
"No. No-one here has ever used it, it's not applicable to how anyone here actually works. Hence, 'useless' and 'obsolete'."
Today she comes across more of exactly the same material.
"What should I do with this? It's the same as the stuff you told me to get rid of yesterday."
"Uh, get rid of it?"
"But it's the same as yesterday's stuff. Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Not even keep one copy?"
... which is almost enough to convinces me she's just doing this to provoke me. It's not just that no-one could really be this stupid: it's because we're not even in the realm of functional stupidity anymore. This is carrying some dreadful terminal illness and subtly begging to be euthanised before quality of life becomes a serious issue.
06 December, 2010
It seems I was very bad in a past life
Oh, god. Apparently this is the week of hell. For some reason, The Invertebrate has decided to make Ted's last week an epic of suffering and woe for everyone else.
Firstly, we still haven't gotten rid of La Mondaine. It was looking promising a couple of weeks ago, but then the timing just didn't work out right and The Invertebrate lost his nerve at the last minute and we're stuck with her until at least the end of the year. In celebration of this (apparently), The Invertebrate has called a team meeting for tomorrow morning. On the plus side: no Ted. On the down side: no agenda, La Mondaine, and another hour of my life I won't get back.
(It's not vitally important to me that every hour of my life be worth something, but I do get irritable when my time is wasted by meetings that aren't actually about anything).
On Thursday, there's the team Christmas lunch. Because it's Ted's last lunch with us, both my predecessor and the previous team leader are coming along as special guests, thereby ensuring life-threateningly toxic levels of rose-tinted nostalgia and self-congratulatory trips down Memory Lane when, in reality, all three of them deserve to be pursued down Beaten-With-Sticks-For-Gross-Stupidity Lane by a stampede of angry bulls.
Oh. Joy. Apparently La Mondaine will also be in attendance.
I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to deal with this. There probably isn't enough time to have my dentist fit me with a cyanide-filled false tooth, and I'm positive there won't enough time to have him fit one to each of the Good Old Days Gang.
And as if that wasn't enough... on Friday, we have our last meeting of the year with our counterparts at other organisations, and Ted has decided he'll wander along to this, too, so he can say his farewells to a bunch of people he's studiously avoided having anything to do with because he didn't feel he was paid enough for it. Following that, the Invertebrate has decided we'll also have a farewell afternoon tea for Ted. Now, I'm good at keeping things civil and professional, but I feel this is starting to ask just a little more of me than is reasonable.
In fact with La Mondaine's announcement that now she'll have to come in Friday, too, I'm sure it is. We're entering "cruel and unusual punishment" territory here. If I was a particularly paranoid turn of mind, I think I'd have good grounds for thinking this was an elaborate, divine plot directed at me as punishment for sins in a past life ... in which case I hope my past self really had fun.
(On the bright side, though, this will almost certainly put a crimp in Ted's unspoken plans to sneak away even earlier than his normal Friday afternoon skive.)
Yes, his departure is cause for celebration. I'm not disputing that. I understand the need to make sure he's really leaving. I even understand that it's important that he be seen to be leaving so that his sudden absence won't raise questions about shallow graves, suspiciously shiney gardening tools, and alibis.
But if this is drawn out any longer it's going to rival the seventeen final scenes from The Return of The King ... without the benefit of a fast-forward control.
Firstly, we still haven't gotten rid of La Mondaine. It was looking promising a couple of weeks ago, but then the timing just didn't work out right and The Invertebrate lost his nerve at the last minute and we're stuck with her until at least the end of the year. In celebration of this (apparently), The Invertebrate has called a team meeting for tomorrow morning. On the plus side: no Ted. On the down side: no agenda, La Mondaine, and another hour of my life I won't get back.
(It's not vitally important to me that every hour of my life be worth something, but I do get irritable when my time is wasted by meetings that aren't actually about anything).
On Thursday, there's the team Christmas lunch. Because it's Ted's last lunch with us, both my predecessor and the previous team leader are coming along as special guests, thereby ensuring life-threateningly toxic levels of rose-tinted nostalgia and self-congratulatory trips down Memory Lane when, in reality, all three of them deserve to be pursued down Beaten-With-Sticks-For-Gross-Stupidity Lane by a stampede of angry bulls.
Oh. Joy. Apparently La Mondaine will also be in attendance.
I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to deal with this. There probably isn't enough time to have my dentist fit me with a cyanide-filled false tooth, and I'm positive there won't enough time to have him fit one to each of the Good Old Days Gang.
And as if that wasn't enough... on Friday, we have our last meeting of the year with our counterparts at other organisations, and Ted has decided he'll wander along to this, too, so he can say his farewells to a bunch of people he's studiously avoided having anything to do with because he didn't feel he was paid enough for it. Following that, the Invertebrate has decided we'll also have a farewell afternoon tea for Ted. Now, I'm good at keeping things civil and professional, but I feel this is starting to ask just a little more of me than is reasonable.
In fact with La Mondaine's announcement that now she'll have to come in Friday, too, I'm sure it is. We're entering "cruel and unusual punishment" territory here. If I was a particularly paranoid turn of mind, I think I'd have good grounds for thinking this was an elaborate, divine plot directed at me as punishment for sins in a past life ... in which case I hope my past self really had fun.
(On the bright side, though, this will almost certainly put a crimp in Ted's unspoken plans to sneak away even earlier than his normal Friday afternoon skive.)
Yes, his departure is cause for celebration. I'm not disputing that. I understand the need to make sure he's really leaving. I even understand that it's important that he be seen to be leaving so that his sudden absence won't raise questions about shallow graves, suspiciously shiney gardening tools, and alibis.
But if this is drawn out any longer it's going to rival the seventeen final scenes from The Return of The King ... without the benefit of a fast-forward control.
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