Outsourced Common Sense

My favorite Exec came by. The one that sends out these sort of emails. The one that sometimes uses me as a human favorites folder. "My email is so SLOW!" she said. "I click send and it just sits there! I have like five things in my OutBox!"

I have been down this path with her many times. It is a well-worn path. Well-worn by ME, I mean. I travel this path so often I feel responsible for it. I clear the branches out of the way and pick up trash from the other hikers. But the path is really just for me - the other I.T. people are too smart to walk this way.

So I begin our little play. The one where I say what I have to say and she doesn't listen to what I am saying, but keeps on talking as if I had not said what I had to say, which is an answer to her problem, because that is the way that she gets you to do something for her that she feels she doesn't have time to do.

It's amazing to me. I offer up the solution and she sort of... SCOOTS AROUND HAVING TO LISTEN TO THAT, and then keeps talking. I know we're really into outsourcing things now. Are we also outsourcing basic skills and common sense? I wish I could talk this way! That would be quite a skill-set to leverage!

God help me, then I pass the buck onto our poor email admin. I write a simple note to him, CCing her. And then I instant message him and beg forgiveness.

July 21, 2003

I Have No Leg-room and I Must Shift

I do not know what professional Asshole and Writer Harlan Ellison’s book “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” is about, but I’m going to assume it’s about my airplane ride to London.

He might also have titled it “I Have No Elbow Room and I Must Slice Brisket” or “I Have No Leg-room and I Must Shift” or “I Have no Surface and I Must Place This Cup of Scalding Hot Coffee Down.”

Maybe another title he considered was “I Have No Easy Access to the Aisle and I Must Pee,” or “I Have No Luggage and I Must Change.”

I have written elsewhere with many exclamation points and much bold type about the state of air travel for the economy class, a class that I find myself in steady belongingment to. But not here! So here it goes again.

MY UNITED FLIGHT TO LONDON WAS FANTASTIC!

THAT’S what I’d be claiming if only I’d been a miniaturized version of myself, say around three feet high! I’d have had all the leg room in the WORLD!

It really is incredible. How much more can they make per flight with that extra row? If they could just remove ONE ROW then I’d be able to walk right now. It’s simply beyond belief.

During the meal service everyone was asked to bring their seat up – except for the man in front of me. I had to eat my food with my elbows pressed into my sides. I was like a Tyrannosaur, with those tiny spindly useless arms trying to tear into prey. This man did not raise his seat the entire time. He was sleeping soundly, God bless him! In a delirium of leg pain, unable to sleep myself, I began to picture him as Michael Gambon from “Gosford Park,” cradling some little shit of a dog and keeping me in debt by refusing to entertain a business proposal.

DAMN YOU, Michael Gambon, DAMN YOU and your little dog too!