On meeting days he brings his lunch. Today, the insulated, monogrammed, lunch box his wife custom ordered for him on eBay contains a veggie sandwich made with avocado, sprouts and Swiss cheese, a bowl of vegetable soup, a pack of peanut butter crackers, a guava smoothie in a seethrough thermos, eating utensils, a large linen napkin and half a Toblerone chocolate bar wrapped with the note — "Yummy, but not as yummy as you. Don't forget to pick Anna up from music at five. Call me if your meeting runs late. Love, S."
He carefully spreads the napkin over his chest to cover his tie and shirt, tucks a large portion of one corner under his collar. With a sandwich in one hand and his mouse in the other he opens his inbox. The first email reads:
Ray,
Notwithstanding the maxim, Never put anything in writing. Always make the other guy put everything in writing, I have to tell you something. Don't trust Ted. Don't trust anything he says. Don't trust anything he does. He is not to be trusted. Ever. He thinks too much about all the wrong things, which is just another way of saying he is crazy. If Ted were a Star Wars character he would be Jar Jar Binks to everyone but himself. When he looked into the mirror of his own imagination he would see Qui-Gon Jinn. That's how crazy he is. He has no real understanding of the universe or his place in it.
I'm not poisoning the well. It's already poisoned. It's full of Kool-Aid and Ted's the Kool-Aid pitcher, running all over the place on his short, chubby legs, waving his short, chubby arms, luring children to their artificially sweetened, cancerous doom. He even has the same painted-on smiley face. (Please note that I am not making derogatory statements regarding obesity. Obesity is a serious issue in our society and not something to be taken lightly.)
I'm telling you this both as a friend and a software engineer.
Lewis
P.S. If I see this email anywhere, I will deny writing it. I will tell everyone it was spoofed by hackers in Yugoslavia. As a matter of fact, perhaps it is.
He writes back:
Lewis,
I believe that you are one of the best developers this company has, although right this minute I'm not sure what that says about you, me or the company.
Ted is fine. Forget about Ted. Concentrate on locating your code, wherever it may be.
A note from Dennis:
Leon Sykes is coming to the meeting.
From Human Resources:
To: Ray Hammond, Director of Special Projects
Subject: Change in personnel review reporting requirements document number HR-31-A-023.
Section 41.2 of Human Resources document HR-31-A-023 has been changed from:
41.2 An annual performance review will be completed at least two weeks prior to an employee's date of hire by the employee's immediate supervisor.
to:
41.2 An annual performance review will be completed at ten business days prior to an employee's date of hire by the employee's immediate supervisor.
Training is available. To register for training, sign in to the Human Resources web portal and select Meetings->Training->HR-31-A- 022.41.2.
He is about to write a reply when he sees a follow-up email from Human Resources. He clicks on it.
Subject: Re: Change in personnel review reporting requirements document number HR-31-A-023.
Section 41.2 of Human Resources document HR-31-A-023 has been changed from:
41.2 An annual performance review will be completed at ten business days prior to an employee's date of hire by the employee's immediate supervisor.
to:
41.2 An annual performance review will be completed at least ten business days prior to an employee's date of hire by the employee's immediate supervisor.
Please update your records accordingly.
Another email from Lewis:
Subject: Why I am so clever
I found my code. Just as I suspected, it was in a tesseract. It's a fully functional prototype of our project minus the requirements. If you want to take a look, it's on the test server, pkdick.
"Not merely to endure that which happens of necessity, still less to dissemble it — all idealism is untruthfulness in the face of necessity — but to love it . . ."
— Nietzsche
An email that somehow dodged the company's anti-spam, spoof-proof network appliances:
From: Evan Adams
Subject: I seek for your consent
Hello,
I humbly crave your indulgence in sending you this mail, if the contents do not meet with your personal and business ethics, I apologize in advance. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly "CONFIDENTIAL". Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will by its very nature make anyone apprehensive and worried, I am totally confident in assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day.
Let me start by introducing myself properly to you.
I am Mr. Evan Adams, of Dept of Bill and Exchange with Barclays Bank in the United Kingdom. I need your consent to handle this transaction because it entails a large amount of funds ($24.6 Million USD) deposited by a deceased client of our bank who has an open beneficiary mandate on his account. Though we have spared no expense and effort, we have been unable to locate anyone from his family or genealogy to make claim on these funds.
THE PROPOSITION:
I wish to know if we can work together. So that we can resolve this issue to the benefit of all concerned, I would like you to stand as next of kin to our deceased client. Through our research, it appears that you are related by virtue of your name. If you are willing to assist in resolving this most delicate matter, contact me by return email so that I can provide you with comprehensive details on what must be done.
As a well-informed and intelligent citizen of the United States, you are probably aware of the fact that some third-world countries have become a leading source of email schemes designed to defraud first-world countries of their citizens' money. This email is not from Nigeria. It is from the most prestigious bank in the most prestigious country in all of Europe, a country that is both a friend and ally to all Americans, especially since World War II.
Your participation in this matter will be considered an act of patriotism and goodwill by the financial institutions of both our nations.
I urgently wait upon your response.
Best regards,
Mr. Evan Adams
He marks it spam and forwards it to the mailserver administrator. On a whim he opens his spam folder and browses the recent entries:
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He knows that all of his spam is analyzed by the company as part of project to sell the spam filter information back to online advertisers. He wonders if the overall process generates more or less spam.
He returns to his inbox where he reads, ignores, replies to, forwards and/or deletes several dozen additional emails. He take a few minutes to examine Lewis’s fully functional prototype of the project for which the team is currently developing requirements. When he is done he pushes himself back from his desk and spins his chair around to look through his floor-to-ceiling window at the wide expanse of office park below. The world is an amazing place, he thinks as he carefully sips his smoothie. How anything can be connected to everything and still be its own thing is beyond me. Even on psychotropic drugs I could never have thought any of this up. Not the smallest part of it. Not even the Toblerone.
