From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume IX

Introduction

This is the ninth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, and Volume XIII is here. (The different volumes have little or nothing to do with one another.)

As with other installments, these are taken from emails to various friends and family members, back when I archived them as simple text files for posterity. Who know that posterity would come in the form of a blog? I sure didn’t, as the Internet was (almost) entirely unknown in those days…

January 15, 1995

I filled out a W-2 the other day and was about to check “Single” as I’ve been doing for about 15 years, and then realized, “Wait a second—I’m married!” Then, I had to look at all the worksheets to see how many deductions to claim. I was shocked to realize that as far as the IRS is concerned, I do not qualify as the Head of the Household. Just what in the hell is going on here when a man doesn’t automatically qualify as head of the household?

July 6, 1995

We have some houseguests from Holland. In their honor we just ate “Gourmet,” a Dutch culinary tradition (you might even say celebration). I got the Gourmet set from my brother. You have these little burners, that burn Sterno, with little 4-inch non-stick pans on a cage above them, and you throw in little pieces of meat and vegetables, kind of like fajitas. It takes forever, and it’s a lot of fun, like a great movie that you don’t want to end. You get to try all kinds of different combinations—I ate at least ten different pans of food. It’s great. The only problem is that the flame goes out every so often and it’s kind of scary relighting it. I’m sure after doing this dozens of times I’ll get overconfident, squirt Sterno right into the dying flame, and blow up my kitchen.

July 30, 1995

I had an epiphany recently. I was going to brush my teeth and I noticed that E—’s toothpaste tube wasn’t rolled neatly from the end, but was squeezed in the middle. This shouldn’t have bothered me too much, since we have separate toothpastes (not really by design, but because I accidentally bought tartar control, which she doesn’t like). But I figure I’d roll her tube up for her. Well, not really for her, since she doesn’t give a damn, but for me. I can’t stand to see the toothpaste tube disfigured like that. Well, when I rolled it up, I realized the cap was open. I realized this because toothpaste squirted out. It was a big mess, all over the cap. This is the kind of stupid modern cap that has a little flip-top. The top was all coated in goo. I reflected meanly that it was probably pretty gooey even before my little mishap. I removed the cap and rinsed it carefully in the sink, which is when I had my epiphany that I’m really a totally absurd person. Actually, it’s not really an epiphany, because this fact has been dawning on me frequently, possibly due to the tendency one has to compare his behavior to that of his spouse. E—’s lack of attention to such details amazes me. “Amazement” perhaps don’t cover her responses to my own quirky pedanticism, and to the obvious torture that entropy inflicts on my life. We’ve had a certain amount of marital friction along these lines.

So, are you the same way? (I think I’ve seen signs that you are.) If so, does [your wife] mind? Only moments ago, I halted my train of thought, noticing a bit of lint on my keyboard, and plunged into my desk drawer to retrieve a little nylon brush, perfectly suited for cleaning out a keyboard. It’s the brush that came with the Norelco electric razor I bought in 1985 to shave my legs with. The razor wore out in six months, and the replacement blades cost more than a new razor. I sure wasn’t going to buy new blades, on general principle, but I couldn’t bring myself to replace the whole razor and throw away the almost perfectly good old one. So I took the only possible remaining option: I began using a Bic. Before retiring the electric razor to some special burying place (or perhaps I still have it somewhere), I inspected the nylon brush that came with it, and determined that it would be excellent for cleaning the keyboard of my typewriter. Well, that little brush has lasted me four keyboards since then, and I always know where to find it instantly. I even brought it on the bike tour. Does that make me ridiculous? [2023 update: I still have, and use, that little brush.]

September 12, 1995

[Trigger warning: the following anecdote involves heavy drinking. Let me just say, before you proceed, that these days, as a responsible salary man, husband, and father, I appreciate quality beverages and enjoy them responsibly. I haven’t drunk recklessly in ages, and my kids can vouch for me in that regard.]

We went down to Ventura to participate in D—’s blowout 30th birthday party. P— drove us down there, with [his wife] L—, and even got us a motel. (I’d envisioned just passing out on a sofa or something at the party, but a motel was entirely welcome.) The only problem was, once we got to the party, P—, who is a very starchy sort, given to extreme temperance, seemed determined not to have a good time. He and L— sat by themselves on a sofa and watched—and in fact judged—the mêlée unfolding around them. It was one hell of a party. All kinds of people were there whom I hadn’t seen in ages, such as B—. Well, the more fun everybody else began to have, the more visibly annoyed P— seemed to become. By 9:30 he had his jacket on and was making noises about saying our goodbyes and heading to the motel.

The next piece of this story requires some background. At your wedding, I became somewhat inebriated, perhaps as the result of obliging half a dozen old friends who wanted to drink a shot with me. (I’m not sure what the origin is of this strange custom.) Well, I began talking to S—’s sister. She asked me what I did for a living. My response, as I began, threatened to ramble out of control, since I really didn’t have a good answer. So I backed up and started over by telling her the highlights of my day: getting home, changing my shoes, and hanging up my suit jacket. From here my logical faculties completely broke down and I circumnavigated, in tedious spirals, what would have been the point of my story if there had been one. My shoes featured prominently, for reasons I cannot recall. I do not believe that my story was very interesting. However, I believe S—’s sister was at least somewhat amused, because she giggled through my little monologue. It’s always at least somewhat amusing, in a voyeuristic sort of way, to watch a drunk person trying to make sense, his rhetoric completely disintegrating and being replaced by loud, doggerel emphasis. If nothing else, my rambling was benign.

Anyway, the next time I saw P— he recounted at length the foolishness of my drunken oration, which he’d witnessed at the wedding. (I had actually half forgotten it, until he mentioned it to me, at which point I remembered every detail with complete clarity.) P— expounded with much emphasis on what an absolute idiot I had been, and how glad he was that he wasn’t me and doesn’t have to live anything down. I didn’t (and don’t) quite get his point, though he took pains to make it.

Okay, that’s the background. Now we’ll return to D—’s party. P— grew increasingly vexed with me, since I was ruining everything by having a good time and enjoying the company of not just my friends but of complete strangers. For example, I got to chat with M—, a former star rider on the cycling team I’d never before met, whom I gather P— was kind of intimidated by. Well, while I was chatting with M—, about who knows what, P— came up to us and said, “Hey Dana, why don’t you tell him about your job, and your shoes.” This annoyed me, encapsulating as it did his general piss-poor attitude, and I am curt even when sober as you well know. I responded, as one does, “Why don’t you blow me.” Well, M— was drunk enough to find this the funniest damn thing he’d ever heard. This annoyed P— further, and he decided it was time to leave.

It wasn’t even 10:00 yet, and D— and I hadn’t even yet shared the sophomoric delight of travelling naked. To this day I regret having squandered the opportunity to bike naked through Isla Vista with D— years ago (having chosen instead to do something else with R—, which only seemed like the better idea at the time). This time I wasn’t about to leave before accomplishing that, so with the clock running out, D—, B—, and I ran out of the house, out the back door, as if escaping. As we abandoned our clothing and ran across the beach, mooning the moon as it were, I could hear L— and P— harmonizing: “We’re leaving!”

Now, the ocean was a good 200 meters from the beach house, and we aren’t great runners, and it seemed to take an eternity to make it to the surf. Then, for some reason the water felt merely cool, not icy cold as it truly must have been, and hence our swim was not rushed. Nor was the ensuing sand fight. To make matters worse, by the time we returned to the house, our clothing had been stolen. By now it was going on 10:30 and P— was livid (in the silent, tense, purple style that is so much more annoying than if he’d spewed profanity or something). It should be noted that nobody else had even thought of leaving the party. In fact, there was a cake fight in full swing. By the time I had recovered my clothing and put it back on, P— himself had become an innocent civilian caught in the crossfire: he’d had a giant wedge of brown/blue/pink birthday cake ground into his jacket by one of the blessed Dionysians. P—, the party atheist, dragged me out to the car, our wives following along, and we left behind a party that was still in full swing. Fortunately, once we got to the motel P— treated us to a live reading from a book of fine literature by Laurence Sterne. This seemed to revive his good spirits and was a nice way to wind down the night.

December 10, 1995

My new job begins tomorrow. I gave my old employer  a whole month’s notice, so that I would have time to tie up all the loose ends and train my replacement. We hired a good guy, looks like Uncle David did as a young man. Good academic credentials, including a law degree. Made it kind of odd training him: “Well, I’ve no use for this job anymore, but I’m sure you’ll be great!”

The new job is about five blocks closer to home than the old one. It’s on the edge of the Financial District near Chinatown. The building is a newer one than my old one, but slightly less spacious. If my old building was a giant Buick, this one is more like a nice new Nissan Sentra. The furniture is more modern (Star Trek ballistic nylon, coated steel) than the stuff at my old building (opulent leather, cherry wood). And this is the kicker: a cubicle rather than an office. Did you ever see my old office? Probably not. Well, it was sweet. Great view, great chairs (high back, ergonomic chair for me, a sumptuous black leather chair for my guest), great lighting. A door I could close. Vertical blinds. Framed Ansel Adams print on the wall. Now I’ll have a cubicle. I haven’t seen it yet, but I envision the kind of fabric-covered partitions I can stick notes to with thumbtacks. Surely buzzing fluorescent lights overhead. It’ll be an unimpressive task chair (like the dumb-looking webbed chair Spock had to sit on in the Star Trek movies). These are my fears. The reality could be nicer, but still . . . a cubicle. O, what I’ll sacrifice for job security, unlimited growth potential, stock options, vision benefits, and cool people to work with!

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All I Need to Know About Corporate America I Learned in Team Time Trials - Part 2

Vlog

What could be more embarrassing to my teenage daughters than my blogging? Well, vlogging is probably on the list. For that reason alone I’m providing this post in both text and video formats. If you want to laugh with me, at me, or at my kids for having such a dorky dad, click the Play button below. Otherwise, just scroll down for the text.

Introduction

This post continues my discussion of how lessons learned in cycling team time trials (TTTs) can apply to survival in corporate America. If you haven’t read my previous post, go back and start there.

Lesson 2: Pace yourself

On the face of it, pacing in a TTT is pretty straightforward: you just go flat out the whole time, right? Well, yes and no. When you’re on the front, sure—you go all out (or, more precisely, at your anaerobic threshold). But how long do you stay on the front? That’s the tricky part. If everybody’s pulls are too short, there are too many transitions, too many efforts spent latching on to the back of the line, too many opportunities for tiny losses of efficiency. But pulls that are too long don’t allow enough recovery and riders will grind themselves down. There’s no pre-established pattern, such as everybody leading for 20 seconds. It’s up to each rider to decide how long to be on the front each time before dropping back.

This will vary by rider, by race, and by how the rider is feeling at any point in the TTT. The only rule is, if the team is going, say, 30 mph on a flat road, you better keep up 30 mph when you’re on the front. If your pulls are only half as long as the next guy’s, that’s fine—but don’t you dare take a slow pull. Your team will never get that time back, and what’s more you screw up the rhythm and thus the morale of the whole team. When you take the front, everything and everyone depends on you. To pace yourself accurately means being completely honest with yourself about how long you can pull, per rotation, at the group’s speed. This isn’t a one-time assessment, of course; you must always be ready to adjust the length of your pulls (because your stamina erodes, or conversely if you start poorly but begin to feel better). In short, you are on high alert the entire time (which is part of why I always found these races terrifying).

Needless to say, pacing is important in the workplace too. And yet, I have known plenty of people (over my decades in the working world) who don’t seem attuned to this. They take on too much responsibility and let their workdays drag out too long—which is like taking too long a pull. Eventually they start to get overwhelmed and, for all their workaholism, start dropping this or that ball, or turning out poor quality work—which is like taking a slow pull. Of course it’s hard to admit you took on too much, which can lead to blaming others, making excuses, and so on.

So what does pacing look like in the workplace? Sometimes it’s not always putting your hand up to lead a big project, but more often it’s pushing back a bit on your boss if you’re getting overloaded. I’m routinely surprised how few people do this—they’ll volunteer to work on something over the weekend, for example. (I would never do this; I figure once you’ve demonstrated that your personal time isn’t sacred, a boss would have to be crazy not to take advantage of that. Today’s stretch becomes tomorrow’s job description.)

Another corporate equivalent of a shorter pull is delegation. I’m talking about handing off a task not because you’re too slammed to do it, but because it might be a nice challenge for a colleague, who may appreciate the opportunity. I used to think delegation was just for managers, but it’s not. If you’ve coached a colleague a number of times and thus built up goodwill, why not offer him or her an interesting task? In my experience, a manager won’t fault you for this, as long as the work gets done.

In a TTT, if you pace yourself poorly, you could slow down the team by taking slow pulls or blowing up and going off the back, unable to contribute anymore. This can ruin the race for your whole team. When we consider what’s at stake in the workplace, the analogy falls down a bit because if you don’t pace yourself well in your job, it’s not just a project or campaign that suffers. It’s your whole career.

Lesson 3: Get help when you need it

We can’t all be “on” 100% of the time, but we’re taught not to make excuses, and to deliver on time, every time. Individual ambition drives us to just dig deeper when we’re struggling. This is fine here and there, but if it becomes a habit, it stops being sustainable. Our mental health suffers, probably our work/life balance, and the collateral damage to our personal lives can eventually become a serious distraction. (My father was a hopeless workaholic, and during his divorce, he couldn’t sleep at night and would often fall asleep on the job—the workplace equivalent of crashing out of a TTT.)

Why don’t we ask for help? Surely somebody could pitch in on a project, revise the scope, or relax a deadline, if we ask? I think the problem is often lack of humility … it’s hard to admit you’re not up to the demand. This is easier to spot in a TTT than the workplace because a rider who doesn’t ask for help is just suddenly gone. It’s a disaster and I’ve seen it too many times, usually in the first few miles of a TTT. In the photo below, we lost two guys in the first mile or so … and needless to say didn’t go on to have a great race.

What does asking for help look like? In a TTT, it’s yelling like crazy if you get gapped, or sitting out a pull if you’re feeling crappy. When you’re on the back and a teammate finishes his pull and drops back, you wait until he’s just ahead of you and tell him, “Take it.” You let a gap open for him and joins the line early. Granted, he won’t be stoked about this, as it gives him less time to recover before his next pull, but tagging him in like this is way better than slowing down the group or getting dropped, thus abruptly leaving the team without your services. I’ve had TTTs where I started badly, got some help, and then went on to fully contribute.

So how do we ask for help in our corporate jobs? That’s more complicated, of course, but it starts with humility, trust that your colleagues won’t resent you for reaching out, and a focus on team results vs. worrying about your reputation.

Lesson 4: be grateful you’re in the race

The team time trial was definitely my best event as a bike racer. I recover quickly from deep efforts so the repeated hard pulls on the front, followed by rest periods in the line, suited me perfectly. Unluckily for me, the team time trial is a somewhat rare event. I did my first one in 1982, but didn’t have another opportunity until 1985 when a TTT featured in the Red Zinger Mini Classic stage race. My next chance wasn’t until 1988 when I started collegiate racing. Happily, in college there were several of these races during each season, followed by the conference championship TTT and—since my teams qualified—the national championship. I was so grateful to ride so many of these TTTS during my college racing years, and bummed that there hasn’t been an opportunity for me since.

Meanwhile, I was blessed to be on that UC Santa Barbara team that was loaded with amazing talent. It has certainly helped shape my worldview that my greatest success in the sport came not so much from my own ability, but from having been on the right team at the right time. I can never forget how lucky I was just to get to race those TTTs when I did, so I am always grateful for the opportunities I have in my career, even if it can be difficult and frustrating trying to make the most of them.

Moreover, to even have a career in corporate America requires a lot of luck. You were born in this country; you had the educational opportunities needed to be qualified for a white collar job; and, you had enough opportunity to secure a position. This is a really big deal. There are something like 65 million Americans employed in the professional and technical workforce, and while this is about 41% of US workers, it’s only about 1.4% of the world’s adult population. Think of all the things that had to be true for you even to have your job.

Why does this matter? It’s because being talented and educated enough to get and keep a job isn’t the whole battle. You have your own contentment to deal with, and I suspect lots of corporate employees have a bloated sense of entitlement—which can make them disgruntled, or bored, or restless. This in turn can a) affect their performance such that they don’t survive the next round of layoffs, or b) cause them to job-hop too often (like hitting the Hyperspace button on their careers) because they blame their employer for a dissatisfaction that has its roots in lack of gratitude.

I’ve outlasted colleagues who spent far too much energy fretting over the golden parachutes the executives get, or the fact of younger people passing them up on the way up the ladder, or the apparent lack of advancement opportunities given to them. I find it a shame when someone lacks the humility to just knuckle down, do their job, and be happy to be there. In this country we are all pressured to pursue and gratify our individual ambitions, but I’d like to point out that where life balance is concerned, contentment isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Instead of worrying about your rise through the ranks, just be glad you’re on a team.

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All I Need to Know About Corporate America I Learned in Team Time Trials

Vlog

Ear hair. It’s becoming a real problem for me, but I don’t always get around to trimming it. Nothing motivates me to groom myself like posting a video to the Internet. For that reason (and because I’m told some people prefer watching videos to reading a lot of text), below is a vlog version of this post. Close your eyes and you’ve got a podcast. Scroll down and it’s a blog post. Enjoy please enjoy.

Introduction

I have worked for the same employer for over 25 years, and have made it through three acquisitions, a bankruptcy, and countless reorgs. Along the way I’ve had thirteen different bosses. How have I lasted this long? I joke that my spirit animal is the cockroach. But actually, I’d say my longevity is a combination of the right attitude and the right practices.

Of course it would be a stretch to say that the team time trial, a type of bicycle race, taught me how to survive in corporate America. However, as I will explain here, the same attitude and practices apply to each. The team time trial is a great metaphor.

What is a team time trial?

In road racing, the individual time trial—often called the “race of truth”—consists of each rider racing alone, against the clock  (typically sent off at 1- to 3-minute intervals). A team time trial, aka TTT, is the same thing but with teammates racing together to try to put up the best time. Crucially, it’s not the time of the first rider that’s taken. If it’s a five-person team, the third rider’s time is what counts. For nine riders, it’s the fifth or sixth. To be competitive, a team needs all (or at least most) of its riders contributing to the effort of taking turns breaking the wind for the others. They must cooperate perfectly.

Lesson 1: Work for the team

“Be a team player” is obviously a cliché. It’s something management routinely tells us, and they might even mean it, but it often doesn’t pack much punch in a culture like America’s where individualism, and individual success, are promoted so universally. So it is in sport, and in cycling in particular, with Lance Armstrong being perhaps the greatest example of the self-focused sportsman—a bully obsessed with individual domination, fearful of any personal ambition among his teammates.

The team time trial is ideally the purest antithesis of all this. A TTT team that works well together is a thing of beauty. Every rider is acutely aware of how every other rider is doing. If you’re totally on fire, you carefully channel this by increasing your output gradually, without disrupting the smooth functioning of the formation. You may take a bit longer pull, and you can even slightly increase the speed of the group while you’re on the front … but harmony is your first priority.

This is harder than it sounds. It’s almost automatic to accelerate when you start your turn at the front, because this is right after you’ve recovered in the line. But, if you’re a good team time trialist, you never forget how hard it is to latch on to the back of the group, after having slowed down to let the other riders past. This is the hardest part of a TTT because at the back, you’ve just finished your pull, aren’t yet in the slipstream, and need to accelerate slightly. If the guy on the front increases the pace at all as you’re latching on, he practically breaks your legs.

Let’s think for a moment about teamwork in corporate America. In your workplace, how much energy do you think people devote to helping their colleagues? Is much attention paid to buoying up those who are struggling? Other than managers, do people even care?

It’s amazing how many seasoned bike racers screw up the team time trial by kind of missing the “team” part. In fact, it’s often the team leaders that cause the most  problems—because their drive and talent and alpha-dog-ness is what made them leaders in the first place. Returning to my Lance Armstrong example, to watch him in a TTT was like agony for those of us who understand this event. He pulled too hard when taking the front, screwed up the rhythm, sometimes dropped his entire team, and—as came out later—would terrorize his teammates over the race radios for not going fast enough.

Not that Lance was the only team leader to do TTTs poorly. In the 1993 Tour de France, the Gatorade team was selected, in part, to support their leader, Gianni Bugno, in the TTT stage. This was supposed to be an opportunity for Bugno to take serious time out of the race favorite, Miguel Indurain, whose Banesto team was better suited to helping their leader in the mountain stages. But Bugno apparently couldn’t keep it in his pants and his team floundered in the TTT, actually losing 12 seconds to Banesto. How was this possible? Well, Indurain—though he was hands-down the strongest individual time trialist in the race—matched his team’s pace perfectly. As reported in Winning magazine, “When asked how it was that Banesto stayed more or less together while Gatorade were all over the place in the TTT, [Banesto team director] Jose Miguel Echavarri responded that ‘it was necessary that the king went with the people, rather than that the people try to follow the king.’”

(Ironically, pro cycling teams are run like companies, and yet all too often the prima donna behavior of riders like Armstrong and Bugno has been allowed, perhaps encouraged, by management … hence the revolving door of talent on US Postal, which can’t have been good for long-term team morale.)

When I was at UC Santa Barbara, our TTT was a perfect case study in selflessness. We were all completely devoted to the team’s success, despite the fact that our two best riders really didn’t get along. This didn’t affect how they rode—they unfailingly set their grievances aside and worked together flawlessly in races. Our reward for perfect teamwork was a TTT victory at the collegiate National Championships.

The next year, I’d transferred to UC Berkeley, and though on paper we had a more talented overall roster, we never got such good results. The reason, as all but one of our riders would happily explain to you passionately and at length, was our team leader. He was headstrong, self-absorbed, and a terrible team time trialist. The way he started his pulls, you’d think he was deliberately trying to saw his teammates off the back, like this event was about him showing us how dominant he was. Spiritually, a good team time trialist is almost like a Girl Scout den mother; this guy was more like Ahab—and every other living human was Moby Dick to him. (For a more complete case study of this strong, successful, but flawed individual, click here and do a page search for “Ace.”)

Okay, so how does this relate to the corporate world? Beyond being an obvious object lesson in the downside of selfishness, I think it points to the need for wider awareness than your personal ambition will give you. A TTT isn’t about you being fast; it’s about your team being fast, which requires a whole lot more than your own strong pedaling. In my experience of the workplace, revenue and earnings are the measure of victory, and maximizing them is extraordinarily complicated. Creating the right products and services, building them right, marketing and selling them effectively, and providing good support cannot be achieved by the smartest guy in the room performing brilliantly.

Yes, you need smart—but also patient, careful, and generous—people in countless rooms working together. Those who rise in the ranks by “promoting their personal brand” and striving to stand out may naturally have a hard time leading their teams toward the results that matter. A company will only thrive if it promotes those with a sensitivity to how well everyone is rowing together. A sales director at my company once joked to me, “I’m good at this stuff because I’m pretty stupid, so it’s impossible for me to overcomplicate things for my reps.” His humility, and his focus on collective results, have apparently served him well.

In all my years of bike racing, I was never the team leader. This isn’t because there’s anything wrong with me, some fundamental lack of ambition or fear of success. It’s that I’ve been lucky enough to be on teams with better riders than myself, and selflessly supporting them was the obvious and correct thing to do. Bringing my support (aka domestique’s) perspective to the TTT was a natural fit, and nice insurance against instinctively trying to show dominance and messing up the flow. Steeped in the art of looking after my team leader, I was a natural at looking after my team as we fought the wind together.

Similarly, in my work life I’ve never been the alpha dog, and my humble approach—i.e., helping others in the background vs. showing off—has worked out well. I sincerely believe it hasn’t held me back; if anything, I’ve been given all the responsibility and growth opportunities I can handle. Even if my approach isn’t the ticket to rising through the ranks at work, it does seem to help with career longevity. Maybe I’ve missed out on some promotions and the income growth that can bring, but I’ve also avoided the pitfalls of the kind of self-serving behavior that hampers the results an employer cares about. I believe there are certain risks in clawing one’s way up the corporate ladder too swiftly; whether or not I’m right, I can say that I’ve never been unemployed. For the last 26 years I’ve had continuous income, and that adds up.

I chalk all this up to my TTT mindset. Recently I had my annual review and my boss told me I “need more swagger.” I took this as a compliment.

To be continued

Dang, this has taken me more words than I expected. Tune in next week for three more (shorter) lessons gleaned from the tarmac crucible of team time trialing.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Typing Tutor Corporate Intrigue!

Introduction

Sometimes technical support really lets me down. And then, when I want to gripe about it, who wants to listen? This post, from my archives, recalls an email exchange with tech support that bled over into my personal life, when I forwarded the thread, with my commentary, to my brothers and my dad. I somehow really ruffled my dad’s feathers, and his peeved response to my email provoked a whole new level of my scorn.

(The original version of this post didn’t disclose that it was my dad I was responding to. I called him “P—” because he probably wouldn’t like being quoted here, and I couldn’t just get his permission because he was dead. I took some solace in knowing that his being dead would somewhat mitigate the consequences of anybody figuring out who he is. Er, was. But it’s been a few years now, and honestly I think my original discretion was perhaps unnecessary. Don’t worry, he won’t be rolling in his grave because he was cremated.)

Typing Tutor Corporate Intrigue – April, 2002

From: Albert, Dana P.
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 4:28 PM
To: support@ssi.com
Subject: Question about Typing Tutor

Hi,

I just bought Typing Tutor 9. I see from your website that version 12 is available, but I can’t find it for sale anywhere. I’m hoping v9 is good enough.

My question concerns your Conceptual Effects Typing Method (CETM) training scheme and the Dvorak keyboard layout. I bought your product, over competing ones, because I wanted to try the CETM method, and I’m learning the Dvorak layout, and your software purports to support both. The problem is, the Dvorak layout seems only to be supported by your standard tutorial mode, not the CETM mode. In other words, your software introduces the keys sequentially according to the QWERTY home row, even when I’m using the Dvorak configuration. Is there a way around this, perhaps a patch I could apply to the program? Do more recent versions of the software support this?

Thanks,
Dana

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From: support@ssi.com

Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 2:46 PM
To: ‘Albert, Dana P.’
Subject: RE: Question about Typing Tutor

Actually, the latest edition does not support the Dvorak keyboard at all. Support for it has declined with the rise in carpel tunnel injuries from over use of the keyboard.

M— B—
S.S. Interactive

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From: Albert, Dana P.

Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 5:16 PM
To: ‘support@ssi.—.com’
Subject: RE: Question about Typing Tutor

M—,

Are you saying that use of the Dvorak keyboard has been associated with carpal tunnel injuries? This seems counter-intuitive based on the purpose of the Dvorak layout. Is there any documentation to this effect? If there are risks associated with this layout I want to know about them!

Thanks,
Dana

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From: support@ssi.com
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 3:19 PM
To: ‘Albert, Dana P.’
Subject: RE: Question about Typing Tutor

No formal scientific studies have been done. Some say that it relieves symptoms but on the other hand, if the speed increases dramatically, you are back in the repetative [sic] motion issue.

M— B—
S.S. Interactive

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From: Albert, Dana P.

Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 4:34 PM

To: Geoff Albert; Bryan Albert; Dad

Subject: FW: Question about Typing Tutor

Dudez,

Remember that Typing Tutor problem I was talking about, where the lessons weren’t tailored to the Dvorak keyboard as promised? I emailed tech support, and they basically blew me off. I’m not going to pursue the matter with the hapless support rep, M— B—, because to challenge her out-of-thin-air BS explanations, employing my relentless rhetorical style, would be cruel. But check out her emails (attached). Unbelievable. Just to blow off a little steam I’ll share my objections with you.

If no study has been done, on what basis did they drop Dvorak support? And I have to take issue with the idea that increased comfort doesn’t relieve repetitive stress disorder because the increased speed results in more typing. This is only true if there is an infinite amount of typing to do. But if I’m faster, isn’t it the case that I finish earlier and can spend more time at the water cooler resting my hands? (Never mind that my employer took away our water coolers, in addition to our coffeemakers, and are putting in a vending machine. Those are mere technicalities.)

The more I think about it, the more M—’s logic befuddles me. If speed is bad, because it increases the likelihood of repetitive stress disorder, why is SS Interactive producing software that helps you increase typing speed? If they really care about repetitive stress disorder, why not either get out of the business entirely, or teach a more ergonomic typing technique (e.g., Dvorak)? And while I’m at it, wouldn’t “repetitive stress disorder” be a great name for a rock band? (“Coming to the Palladium: Repetitive Stress Disorder, with special guest Hard Floor Tool!”)

Dana

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From: Dad

Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 9:56 PM

To: Albert, Dana P.

Cc: Geoff; Bryan

Subject: fellows: Re: FW: Question about Typing Tutor

Dana,

The lady you are dealing with is merely covering for her managers. They have almost certainly decided, as one learns to do in management school, to eliminate any products whose monetary return is not dramatic. Ms B— might quickly lose her job if she backed down on the validity of the things she has said. Surely her email transactions are monitored sometimes or all the time. It is not worth costing her her livelihood to prove that you are right. It’s the managers who should be punished, but you have no safe means to do that, and it would not get you the desired software. Why continue?

Dad

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From: Albert, Dana P.

Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 5:03 PM

To: Bryan; Geoff

Subject: FW: fellows: Re: FW: Question about Typing Tutor

[Dad omitted from this response]

Dudez,

“Why continue?” Why indeed! Naturally I will not rest until I have entrapped Ms B—, pawn that she is, in my remorseless game of corporate intrigue. Yes, I have set a trap—my e-mail messages are the bait, and she is my prey. I’m sure her evil employers have a zero-tolerance policy concerning failure to further the corporation’s diabolical deceptions. It is intuitively obvious that entire rooms full of lowly auditors pore over e-mail after e-mail looking for signs of dissent. Sure, I’d like to punish those managers, ensconced in their comfortable boardrooms, plotting their schemes to catch disloyal tech support people in the act of being bullied, by the likes of me, into betraying the evil business school secrets. But if I can’t catch the big fish, I’ll settle for ending the humble career of a mere clerk. Such is my insatiable lust for winning arguments, even if I’m arguing with unlearned, weary cogs of corporate America. If I can have the satisfaction of taking food right out of the mouths of Ms B—’s children, that’s enough for me. Here is my fantasy, which I run through in my head, night after night, in salacious detail: 

         Ms B— reads my retort, which lays bare the flaws in her statements about Dvorak and Typing Tutor 9. Realizing she is outsmarted, and can no longer continue her deception, she replies, “You’re right! I can’t deny it! It has nothing to do with carpal tunnel! It’s you—you’re not a preferred customer! You had it right all along! Please, please forget about Typing Tutor, forget this whole correspondence!” She clicks “Send” and then madly begins deleting the e-mail chain, message by message, from her PC, her face bright red. A colleague, a mere two feet away in a three-foot-wide cubicle identical to hers, sees her distress, guesses it’s corporate sabotage, and sends a quick message to her manager. In less than an hour the auditors have put together the incriminating trail of digital evidence, and Ms B— has been summoned and is standing in front of her boss, knees shaking.
         “Ms B—, was I not perfectly clear, in our staff meeting last October, what tech support personnel were to tell customers about our stance on Dvorak?”
         “You were,” she sobs.
         “This company cannot afford to support Dvorak users, and yet we cannot risk being sued for choosing not to support them. That is why you were to use carpal tunnel syndrome as an excuse for our product direction. Why have you betrayed our secret to a customer? Don’t try to deny doing it, I have the e-mail right here.”
         “I don’t know . . . I guess he bullied me into admitting it!”
         “Yes, it seems a very clever troublemaker with a big chip on his shoulder has it in for you. But damn it, you didn’t need to cave. I have your employment agreement right here. You have acknowledged, by your signature, that failure to align all of your customer-facing statements with our official corporate positions is grounds for immediate termination. Give me one good reason not to fire you.”
         “I’m the sole breadwinner for my family! My husband was arrested by the FBI for forwarding an article about PGP to a friend, so I’m raising the children all by myself!”
         “I’m afraid that’s not SSI’s problem. You have five minutes to clear out your desk. A security guard will escort you from the building. You’ll never work tech support again in this state, I can guarantee you that.” As the door closes behind her, she hears the beginning of a long peal of evil laughter.

Since when is Dad an expert on what “they” teach in “management school”? And where did he get his information about how closely companies monitor e-mail? Did this guy grow up in the Soviet Union or something?

And what’s this about “It’s the managers who should be punished, but you have no safe means to do that.” What does that even mean? Since when do managers get punished? And how would one do that safely?

Above all, how did Dad not grasp that my retort was hypothetical, and that I never intended to “continue”?

Sheesh,
Dana

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Inside the Corporate Yurt

To start off, I never actually did get to occupy one of the yurts.  The tour was moving quickly, and with the open floor plan and my poor spatial skills, I feared that to be left behind would mean getting totally lost.  But I got a good look at the yurts.  They were about ten feet tall and a dozen feet in diameter, made of wood and light fabric, and open in the front.  The walls were divided in triangular sections and varied from opaque to translucent to nothing.  Some yurts had chairs; others just had cushions.

I was visiting a San Francisco tech company, in the hip South-of-Market (SOMA) neighborhood, with windows overlooking the bay.  It was a very large, high-ceilinged lofty space.  No matter why I was there; for all you know, I toured it just for this blog, or was covering corporate kitchens, freelance, for Ladies’ Home Journal.  I will tell you I was not being recruited, though it’s hard to tour such a novel, interesting place and not imagine working there.

Modern, quirky, colorful furniture was scattered around, in  (seemingly) random fashion.  There was quite a bit of empty space.  Some areas had empty chairs and desks arranged in neat rows, like a classroom, but mostly the arrangement was ad hoc.  Our guide explained that all the desks—which were pretty much just tables—could easily be raised so you could stand at them instead of sitting.  The overall vibe was more trade show than corporate HQ.

One thing I saw zero of?  Offices.  There were a few meeting rooms, but the walls and doors were all glass.  Also conspicuously absent:  cubicles.  Cubicles equal Dilbert.  Offices, meanwhile, suggest hierarchy and bureaucracy.  This wall-less, open floor plan might be designed as a spatial metaphor for the open-standards hi-tech development realm that removes barriers to innovation.  The place just says “startup.”

Oddly, the company I visited isn’t actually a startup.  It started that way (obviously), but as so often happens it was soon purchased by an industry juggernaut, though it still operates as its own company.  This is not an Uber-type outfit that will blow up a giant, embedded system of logistics and replace it with something categorically different.  Their product will not go viral, or change society, or get you laid.  As tech products go, it’s not on the same lowly end of the spectrum as an HP printer, but it’s also not Facebook.  It’s essentially the Internet equivalent of a much, much better mousetrap.

Better mousetraps, of course, are not sexy, because they’re not … wait for it … disruptive.  The Pied Piper .. now he was disruptive.  Perhaps when a more or less traditional tech company like this, that manufactures objects you can physically touch, tries to recruit top Gen-Y talent, it helps if the work environment is non-traditional, playful, and wacky.

There was an order to things, though.  Different functions (HR, marketing, engineering, operations) were arranged in informal clumps, with empty space between.  This workplace has the sprawl of a megalopolis, at least for now.  So did all this empty space feel moribund, like a ghost town?  Nope.  New-and-empty is a lot different than old-and-empty.  The atmosphere was one of great confidence:  “We may not need all this space right now, but we will soon.”

I had to wonder, where are the Razor scooters?  Maybe that would seem clichéd.  Could it be that employee scooters are over?  I mentioned them to my teenage daughter and she said, “Epic! I need that!”  So, even if they’re passé, maybe they’ll make a comeback in a few years.

Inside one yurt was a giant flat-screen monitor connected to a variety of gaming systems.  Predictable enough.  But then another space had pinball machines, which (our guide told us) were brought in by an employee from his personal collection.  My daughter played her first game of pinball recently, at the Exploratorium (a museum) and was bummed when I outscored her.  How do these pinball machines play out here?  If the rare older employee dazzles the millennials with his skills, does this make him cool or lame?

I couldn’t help but wonder, as we wandered through, what this workplace would be like for an introvert like me.  I could imagine developing a case of agoraphobia here, like so much openness would eventually wear me out.  Of course the idea behind this setting is to encourage collaboration and creativity, but doesn’t the latter flourish in a completely private space?  (I’m thinking here of writers’ or artists’ colonies where you mingle some of the time, but also have a private studio or cottage where you are utterly free from distractions.)

In tech, you certainly need extroverts to dazzle investors, recruit talent, and generate enough media hype to keep the vision alive ... but you also need coders and engineers, and aren’t a lot of these folks on the shy side?  What do they do for privacy … plug in headphones and listen to music?  It wasn’t that loud in there ... perhaps employees don’t always take advantage of being face-to-face.  Maybe a lot of them just have instant message chats all day, with colleagues six feet away.

There was a room, larger than the yurts, that actually had two or three opaque walls, and in the corner was a baby grand piano.  I could imagine this being really useful for an introvert … he could go in there and surround himself with a wall of sound.  Of course this only helps if you know how to play.

Just like at Google, there was a large cafeteria where all the food is free.  “Cafeteria” gives the wrong impression; the combination of tall windows overlooking the bay, the high ceiling, and the scattering of small, round tables created the feel of a café (though one that goes on and on).  I was too late for the spare ribs, but had some apricot chicken, and ravioli that was so sophisticated I can’t remember what was in it.  Squash, I guess, and the pasta casing was varicolored (spinach and sun-dried tomato?), lightly bathed in brown butter instead of a boring tomato sauce.  There was a large salad station (as far from the little buckets and sneeze-guards of a salad bar as this company’s workspace is from a cube farm).  The most sophisticated thing about the cafeteria was this:  not only did they have bottled soda instead of fountain drinks, they had Mexican Coke (made with sugar instead of corn syrup).  Pretty impressive.

Outside the cafeteria was a little table with a sign saying “Suggestions.”  There was no paper to write on or box to drop a written suggestion into.  Rather, the table was covered with Lego, with which to spell out your comment.  Brevity is clearly encouraged.

The tour ended with the lunch, and I never had the chance to ask what, exactly, was the purpose of the yurts.  Perhaps that’s for the best … maybe our guide wouldn’t have had a definitive answer, and maybe it’s better just to wonder.  Here are a few of my guesses: 

• A pseudo-private meeting place.  Occupation of the yurt tells passers-by not to join in on the discussion.  In this way, the yurt functions like the conch in Lord of the Flies.
• A place for having a time-out.  Talking is not allowed in the yurt, so it’s a place where an introvert goes to daydream.
• A place for a punitive time-out, like the ominously named “center pod” in my kid's kindergarten class, where misbehaving students did time.
• The yurt is symbolic of a nomadic inclination, and serves to remind upper management that they must continuously renew the love of their young, flighty talent.
• The yurt is a living experiment, perhaps one of many, being conducted by a very sophisticated, savvy HR department, to gain insight into the mysterious minds of their Gen-Y employees.
• The yurt is actually mostly useless, and exists only so the company can boast of having yurts.

Do you have any theories?  Have you lived or worked in a yurt?  Comment below, or e-mail me.  And if you’re reading this long, long after 2015, in a time when corporate yurts are ubiquitous, send me your recollections (e.g., “I’ll never forget my first yurt…”) and I’ll post them here, or in a follow-up essay.

From the Archives - The TechCorp Files, Part I: Interview

Introduction

Short stories are a slippery thing. If a story is true, it can be spun as a simple yarn, and no more is expected of it. Formal fiction, though, gets subjected to all kinds of critical evaluation. Is there a story arc? Is some kind of Truth revealed? Does the main character grow? After all, with all the freedom in the world to contrive characters and actions to make your point, you’d better say something.

I’ve found that if you try to dress up a true story as fiction, you’ll crash and burn. I tried this, in a writing class. Amazing things that actually happened to me were dismissed by the instructor as “totally unrealistic.”

One problem with my earlier writing is that I didn’t bother separating fact from fiction. I thought this was playful and fun, but I’ve come to realize it probably just confuses the reader. Besides, it deprives him or her of a sense of wonder when something unbelievable is actually true.

So it is with the following story, which is essentially nonfictional. Except where clearly noted (e.g., “Okay, I didn’t really say that”), almost everything happened exactly as I tell it. For example, I describe a pre-employment aptitude test, which was real. And, on my way to take the test, a homeless person really did pick a fight with me. I faithfully documented what he really said, and he really did seem to attempt to wring the neck of a parking meter. That said, there’s some hyperbole too; for example, the parking meter’s neck didn’t break. By exaggerating like this, I inadvertently pushed the whole episode into the realm of fantasy, where it didn’t belong.

I could go fix those problems in this archival tale, but a) that’s too much work, and b) the hyperbole is kind of fun. So instead I’ll preface what follows by itemizing what is truly fictional, so you can appreciate that everything else is true. Here are the other fictionalized bits:

• The interviewer’s abrasiveness is exaggerated through dressed-up dialogue;
• Names of corporations have been changed;
• Other job candidates’ credentials have been exaggerated;
• The Swan’s Oyster Depot episode is entirely fictitious.

A final prefatory note: given the length of this introduction and of the story itself, I have broken this post into two parts. No, I’m not indulging people’s shortening attention spans, à la Twitter. I’m just getting more mileage out of this story, like the magazines from Dickens’s time that used to publish novels serially. My second and final installment will go up in about a week, freeing me to work on my tax return.

The TechCorp Files, Part I – June 9, 1995

Last week I had an interview with TechCorp. A stern, cheerless woman scanned through my résumé.

ooooo“1350 Filbert Street?” she asked.
ooooo“That’s the apartment.” I said. “Where I live.”
ooooo“Nice place?”
ooooo“It’s all right.”
ooooo“Dana, imagine you’re in the desert—”
ooooo“Which desert?” I asked, uneasily.
oooooShe stared at me, exasperated. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “The Sahara.” She paused. “You’re walking, and you see a tortoise...”
ooooo“What’s a tortoise?” I demanded, with some trepidation.
ooooo“You know what a turtle is?” she said, quietly, disgusted. “Same thing.” She paused again. “You flip the tortoise onto its back. Its stomach is baking in the hot sun. You could flip it back over, but you don’t. Why is that, Dana?”
oooooI glared at her.
ooooo“They’re just questions, Dana,” she said soothingly. “Designed to provoke an emotional response. Now I want you to tell me the first thing that comes to mind about … your mother.”

Well, actually, that’s not how it happened. That was from a movie. Just once I’d like to have an interviewer say those things. I know I’ve been tempted, when interviewing somebody myself, to mix it up a little.

Of course, it’s much easier to relax and have a good time when you’re holding all the cards. I was far less comfortable here. My chair, a modern grey mesh fabric one that you might find on the Starship Enterprise, was improperly adjusted, and it was all I could do to keep it from pitching back. Somebody had configured it for lounging, feet up on the desk. Is this a ruse, I wondered, to see if I will modify my environment to best suit me? I’m a guest here; do I dare attempt a complex adjustment?

I tried to relax. I devoted my energies to leaning forward, sitting up straight, making eye contact, and trying to impress this rather severe woman. Not being a professional recruiter, she only pretended to know what to ask, and what to say.

ooooo“Now, the role of this division of TechCorp has nothing to do with the consumer-oriented service that you surely associate it with,” she told me. “It’s kind of difficult to explain. It takes a long time working here to realize exactly what it is we do.”

ooooo“Is it something found in the home?” I asked, helpfully.  No, I didn’t really say this—I only thought it. And once I’d thought of it, I couldn’t think of anything else. So I said nothing. My chair was now swallowing me up completely. I was shrinking, rapidly, approaching the size of a small child.

ooooo“Our products,” she said flatly, “involve high-speed packet network data transfer. We sell to huge companies. Our biggest account is MegaFi. You surely never knew this before, but MegaFi itself is not a corporation. It is a non-profit organization that makes money for banks. It makes gobs of money. And what we do for them, is. . . .” She paused again. “Look,” she said, “I am communicating to you across a vast gulf of ignorance and darkness.”

Okay, that’s not really what she said. That’s from a book. But what she did say, which I can’t precisely remember, had the same effect. At this point it was do or die. I needed to take control of this interview, dammit. So I began to just talk, with little regard to my interlocutor’s opening salvo. Through a series of carefully arranged statements, I gradually tried to insinuate myself into the job, so that eventually my employment at TechCorp would be automatic. Over the next hour, I hoped, I could move right into a discussion about promotion, and maybe even early retirement—ultimately, I could come out of the interview with a handsome severance package.

But she would have none of it. For her part, she continually buried the prospect of my employment deeply within the hypothetical realm. When I gave her my references, she said, “We will contact these people in the event that you happen to make it that far into the interview process.” She went into a cruel discussion of the myriad invisible opponents I was up against, most of them Oxford Rhodes scholars with “F-15 fighter jock” listed under “hobbies” on their résumés. She hammered home the point that I had come late into the game, which was in fact a source of irritation to her because I was dragging out the recruiting process. But eventually, and begrudgingly, she told me to make an appointment to take a written exam designed to evaluate … what? My intelligence? My worth as a human being?

ooooo“Funny you should mention a test,” I remarked. “I dreamed I had to take a test at a Dairy Queen on another planet.”  Actually, I didn’t say this. It’s from a song. But just once I’d like to use that, in context, and my little story here may the best chance I ever have.

I was actually eager to take the test. Not since 1992, when I took my last multiple-choice exam, had I enjoyed the opportunity to undergo such a straightforward and concrete challenge. Since graduating from college, in fact, life has taken on a rather nasty guerrilla-warfare bent, where performance is measured by subtle, person-to-person, tactical coups de grâce instead of by objective test results.

ooooo“You may be expecting something easy,” she warned, “but many people find our test very difficult. If you think this will be a routine ‘do-you-have-a-pulse’ kind of assessment, I think you’re in for a shock. I repeat, it is a very difficult test. Many people have complained. Some become outraged. Some never fully recover from the experience.” She paused. “But you appear to be young and healthy.” She gave me a packet of information about TechCorp, along with a two-page explanation of the exam itself. I took it home and read it. I have it in front of me. I will quote from it.

“Please come prepared....” it begins. “As the interviewing process proceeds you will be asked to take a test designed to measure your ability with numbers and your reasoning and logic skills.” I believed this was right down my alley. I believe I am rational and logical, and those who know me believe, at least, that I have a heart of stone. I looked over the sample questions, and this is one of them:

“Select the next letter in the sequence.

bakrmvmvkr_ 1 2 3 4 5

ooooooooooooa b k l m

The alternate letters in the first part of the series (b,k,m) repeat themselves in reverse in the last part of the series (m,k,_). Therefore, the next letter should be “b”, which is in column 2 of the possible answers.”

The part about “b” being in column 2 of the possible answers made perfect sense. I looked at the number 2, scanned straight down, and indeed “b” was right there. The part about “b” being the right answer, however, gave me more difficulty. True, I have had similar test questions throughout my life, and as a youth was often able to solve them. On “Sesame Street,” or perhaps it was “Electric Company,” a person (or perhaps a clown, or a mime—I don’t remember) would pace back and forth along a row of similar objects, while an unseen singer sang, “One of these things is not like the others/ One of these things does not belong. . . .” Usually the objects were three rabbits and a hare, or three turtles and a tortoise, but sometimes they were more obvious: three beach balls and a basketball. On these latter occasions I solved the riddle even before the mime did.

But this sample test question seemed much, much harder. Perhaps you got the answer, right off. Perhaps you’re smirking a bit, trying to imagine my mental struggle. Perhaps the only confusing thing about the problem for you is deciding how it could have presented me with any difficulty. But I’m just an English major, okay?  Yeah, I know it’s a pattern of letters, from the English alphabet, and yeah, I’m familiar with these letters and can handily recite the alphabet . I could even recite the alphabet backwards if I had to pass a drunk-driving test. But I don’t drink, and I don’t drive, and knowing the alphabet has nothing whatever to do with the solution to the problem. Letters and even words don’t give me a leg up unless they’re written by a long-ago dead British writer like William Blake, okay? My sweet spot is appreciating wonderful, colorful, deeply expressive phrases like “cold hot dog.”  Sequences like “bakrmvmvkr” don’t do a lot for me.

The test description (warning, really) went on to advise that “some people have found that practicing with a standardized test prep book has helped quite a bit.” But the handout they gave me had only half a dozen questions, and with the test looming—it would be first thing the next morning—I had no time to visit bookstores asking for prep books. The test warning might as well say, “Study all you want, but we cannot imagine anything could save you, you miserable pudknocker.”

With the “letter series” problems exemplified above, the test would allow 10 minutes for completing 26 questions. That allows 23 seconds per problem, not counting the time I would spend doubled over in pain. Allowing for about 15 doubled-over seconds per problem, I came to realize that I simply lacked the brain power required to obtain a respectable score. I decided to seek outside assistance.

I strolled down to Swan’s Oyster Depot, and Ralph, the guy behind the counter said, “We got fresh sea scallops on special today. Just $45 for a half-pound. They’re so fresh, we haven’t even caught ‘em yet! Have a seat, it’ll take us ten minutes to haul in the nets. By then we’ll have processed your loan application.”
oooooI shook my head. “Not today, Ralph,” I said.
ooooo“You sure? They’re mighty fresh. God made them just this morning.”
ooooo“No, I need brains today. You got anything smart? An engineer, maybe?”
ooooo“Hey, we got a doctor. Hauled him in this morning. I know, that’s not so fresh, but the price is good. No engineers though. Almost had one, but he figured out how to dismantle our nets. Made off with a lot of bait, too. Have to harpoon him one day. So how about the doctor brains?”

I came home with a small, paper-wrapped bundle of brains. Ralph said he gave me the best part, all left-brain stuff. I booted up my computer, set the brains on my mouse pad, selected “Run” from the “File” menu, then typed “a:\install.” My hard drive chattered for a while, and moments later my intelligence had increased dramatically. I instantly had a new understanding of the world, and I became deeply depressed.

The morning of the test, I showed up early. Nobody was there. What to do? I took a walk around the block, and gave a homeless man a dollar in change. He tried to give me a Street Sheet but I was trying to achieve a total mind vacuum and didn’t need any more information, especially about life on the streets, to gum up my brain. He said, “It’s okay, man, I’m just another of God’s chilluns.” Then another homeless man intentionally stepped in my way and I bumped into him.

ooooo“DO YOU WANNA SEE A FIGHT!?” he cried. “I’LL SHOW YOU A FIGHT, MAN! I’LL SHOW YOU ONE!”

I assured him, politely but firmly, that I did not want to see a fight. He made the offer several more times, and, perhaps for effect, began wringing the neck of a nearby parking meter. It bent like a reed in the wind. When he finished, its neck was broken, its dial said “VIOLATION,” and the man was still yelling, “DO YOU WANNA SEE A FIGHT!?” At this point I noticed he was wearing a rather nice suit, and I wondered if he’d torn it off a guy like me. I extricated myself from the situation somehow, but showed up at the test a frayed bundle of nerves.

I was handed the test booklet. You may raise an eyebrow here at my use of the passive voice: “I was handed the test booklet.” We are taught to use the active voice— “I betook the test booklet”—because the active voice is more powerful. I, however, have deliberately chosen the passive voice here to describe the powerlessness of my position. I was not the master of my destiny, in this room, with my plastic Choice #2 pencil and my two somehow sad pieces of scratch paper. I was to be merely the passive recipient of one and one half hours of intellectual assault. A mental punching bag, if you will.

Tune in next week for the thrilling finale of “The TechCorp Files.”