I gave a short impromptu talk last night to the group of squirrels that pop into our office space every so often. Here is the transcript of it:

Procrastination is a wonderful invention. I have yet to meet a single procrastinator who is bad at what they do. In fact, the brightest people I know all happen to be procrastinators. Of course, I’m referring to people who actually get things done while they are putting off other things, not people who just sit around all day like a vegetable and talk about all the great things that they intend to do…one of these days.

Procrastination doesn’t mean being a lazy mofo; it means the exact opposite. It means putting off potentially unnecessary and possibly less important things, some of which are likely to be boring beyond belief, to work on more important ones: the things you feel passionate about, the things that make your heart skip a beat. It means being irresponsible when it comes to administrative and managerial tasks. It is sufficient to make people think that you are irresponsible to stop them from even thinking about relying on you to take care of the boring chores of life, like being the scribe in meetings, which is quite possibly the most boring task in all of existence.

Here is why I believe procrastination is a good thing. The list is based on a single person’s set of experiences so, obviously, it is not objective nor is it meant to be generalized for all of humanity.

• Requirements often change; leaving tasks until the last minute saves time. Say your boss tells you to finish task X by this time next week. You know that the task requires no more than a couple of hours to complete. I can pretty much guarantee you that it is more likely than not that the requirements will change during that week, thereby rewarding the lazy and punishing the early birds. Your estimates for how long a task will take to complete will get better with time, and so, eventually, you will know by how much time you can safely put something off while still ensuring that you finish it on time.
• Tasks get delayed or canceled. One way of accounting for such events is to procrastinate everything but the select tasks you have at hand, i.e. the most critical ones, then, just sit back and watch as those other tasks sort themselves before your very eyes in order of importance and collectively determine which ones to sift out and vaporize - without you having to do anything.
• Working off a backlog is much better than constantly context-switching. Working on anything non-trivial, particularly if you are venturing into new territory, is analogous to building a house of cards. Every time someone interrupts you for whatever reason, they are effectively blowing it down. You then have to start building it up again.
• Pressure is the best motivator. Being overcome by a sense of urgency to finish something is the best way to motivate you to carry on working on it. I always remember getting higher marks for assignments that I started working on closer to the due date, as opposed to those that I started working on the day that they were assigned.

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I would like to take this opportunity to posit, nay, declare that there exists a pre-determined and universal threshold that is as old as creation itself, which lays out the criteria for when it is ok to end a coworker.

What scientific evidence do I have to support such a declaration? You probably won’t believe me, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I was vacationing in Guatemala a few years ago when I came across a piece of rope on the beach. I started tugging it and realized that it actually extended deep below the sand. So I started digging and digging until I came upon a chest. I cracked it open and found a manuscript inside written in a strange language. I decided to take it to the local university and, as luck would have it, there was a professor there who was kind enough to completely translate it for me in a matter of days. He ended up writing a paper about the whole thing and became really famous.

At one point, he told me that according to his very advanced dating methods, the manuscript is at least 29 million billion years old.

I don’t really care about money or fame; I just want to share the content of that manuscript with you in order to give you insight into what the moral grounds are for putting an end to a coworker’s life without feeling too bad about it.

This here is what the hand that drew the sun and the moon, the planets and the galaxies, the mountains and the oceans wrote on the manuscript that I stumbled across. Read it carefully, then think about it, and believe me…it will open your eyes:

I, the universe, hereby declare that the life of a coworker, as sanctimonious as it is, may lawfully be ended if the coworker satisfies all of the following criteria. He or she must satisfy the entire set of criteria, not only one or two of them. Just wanna make sure you’re clear on that…’cos I can’t be held responsible if you misunderstand the rules for any reason and get thrown in prison for life. I’m just sayin’, if that happens, don’t come crying to me like a little crybaby.

The following are the aforementioned criteria, enumerated:

1. The coworker has a habit of clearing his throat in the most annoying and inconsiderate way possible every five minutes, thereby breaking your concentration and forcing you to wear your headphones all day long and crank up your lame-ass music to the point that your eardrums begin to melt.

2. The coworker spends at least two hours a day talking on the phone like a 13-year old girl, preventing everyone around him from getting any work done.

3. The coworker intentionally refuses to pick up his cellphone when it rings so that everyone in the entire building can hear what his latest and greatest ringtone sounds like.

4. The coworker is at least once caught rummaging through your personal belongings, and then, when asked what in sam hill he is doing, replies with “Yeah, I think I dropped my pen somewhere here.”

If you work with someone who resembles all four of the above traits, then I, by the power vested in me, declare that you are morally obligated to end that person’s life so as to rid humanity of his very existence. You shall be rewarded in this life and the next.

Gratification through despicable and heartless degradation of others is the lowest form of human behavior. It becomes worse when the other side decides to stay quiet for whatever reason, thus encouraging the lowly human to carry on with his sadistic pleasuring. Little does that person know that any creature, natural or man-made, can only take so much, and that at some point they’re bound to just say “That’s it, I’ve had enough!” and retaliate fairly or unfairly; whichever they deem fairest.

This brings me to an event I witnessed this morning, the sight of which sent my heart to within chewing distance of my teeth and caused my eyeballs to do a couple of back-flips. I’m still not sure if what I saw was real or if spacetime decided to momentarily rip open and give me a glimpse into an alternate universe, where humans are the lowest form of primates and laser printers rule the world. I’m more inclined to go with the second explanation because, among other things, it’s difficult to accept that laser printers are actually independent entities that can talk and move about. Some might disagree, but to me, that seems a bit unreal.

I was walking to our kitchen area to get myself a cup of coffee when a white, smoke-like figure manifested itself in front of me. A couple of seconds later, it either disappeared or teared open, I’m not sure which, and then I suddenly saw two “HP Color LaserJet 4650″ printers standing at the very edge of a raging volcano, with a blind-folded, middle-aged man in work clothes standing between them. The two printers where wearing what seemed like skimpy tribal clothes that barely covered their assets. One of them was holding a spear. I looked closely and realized that the nerdy-looking man was actually one of the developers here.

The printer on the right cleared his throat and began speaking in a very deep voice:

“Your acts of aggression can no longer be tolerated. We are here to carry out the sentence that was passed against you this morning. You are to be thrown into the molting lava below to be burned alive for heinous crimes committed against printerity. You have not only forever stolen the innocence of one of our daughters, whose toner was so new, you could still smell the plastic wrapping around it, but you then proceeded to go on and on and on, mercilessly and animalistically ripping its tiny little motors to bits and desecrating its inner mechanics with hundreds of sheets of paper.

“You leave us no choice. We are here to make an example of you so that no human will ever again think of compromising one of our kind.

“In the name of our Great Leader, I hereby prepare to throw you into the volcano below to die a slow and painful death. May no one have mercy on your soul.”

And with that, the guy was thrown in. The scene that followed is too painful to describe, so I won’t even try. It will undoubtedly haunt me for the rest of my life.

All I can say after witnessing my fellow employee’s demise is that I will always remember him as an enthusiastic, joyful person who saw no shame in printing hundreds of tutorials, papers, articles, short-stories, novels and whole encyclopedias using the shared color printer. May he rest in peace.

I opened my eyes. Not to the sound of chirping birds, nor to the sound of the builders next door hammering away, nor to the sound of my alarm clock. I just opened my eyes as a sudden feeling of amnesia and fear ran through me. I turned to my right, away from the wall and squinted as I tried to read the time on my alarm clock. It was “3:30 PM”. “Oh crap”, I thought, “Not again”. There was something seriously wrong with me; anyone who oversleeps for over eight hours isn’t a normal human being. I’ve been like this for a few days now and suspect that I’ve either caught the summer bug or that my body has just had it and is reacting to the sheer exhaustion everyone in Development is experiencing from having to work six days a week, twelve hours a day for the past few months without any overtime pay.

I didn’t spend much time thinking about what might be screwed up about my inner beings because I knew that there was a more frightening matter that I would soon have to come face-to-face with. The very thought of it sent a cold chill down my spine and made the hairs on my back stand on end. I knew that there was no running away from it. I was going to have to…I was going to have to go to HR tomorrow morning and give them my sick leave form, without a GP-stamped sick note confirming that I was actually sick and that I hadn’t just taken the day off to go skipping through the local park singing “We shall overcome”.

Making eye contact with anyone in HR is scary enough; imagine how terrifying it is to actually engage in a conversation with someone there. The level of scariness is compounded when you know for a fact that you’re in the wrong and that HR has the indisputable upper hand.

I didn’t want to think about it, but I had to, because I was going to have to visit them the next morning and therefore needed to prepare myself for the encounter. My heart started to beat more violently as I sat up in bed and gently rubbed my eyes. I got the same weird feeling that I used to get the night before the first day of school. I’d spent so long building up my ego; I didn’t want all that effort to go to waste as a result of HR’s notorious Nazi-inspired ego-shatteration techniques.

I’d only been up for a few minutes, but I was already beginning to feel tired, so I set the alarm clock for 6:30 AM and lied down again. A few minutes later I was fast asleep.

The next morning I woke up to the sound of the alarm clock. Resigned to my fate, I got out of bed, washed my face, changed, got into my car and drove to work. Our building’s parking lot is reserved for upper management, so we have to park in the visitors’ parking lot that is a good 150 yards away from our building. A big sign hangs near the entrance that reads “The shaded parking lot is reserved for those who have made it in life; the rest of you suckers can park in this ****-hole”.

I got out of my car and began the trek to our building. The days are baking hot in the summer, so by the time I got there I was soaked in sweat and was sipping the final drops from my third bottle of water. I walked through the sliding glass door and immediately fell to my knees as a cool burst of air hit me in the face. I threw back my head and smiled. Boy did it feel good. Showing any signs of happiness in the wee hours of the morning isn’t taken well here; in fact, it may even be a fireable offense, so I got up before anyone noticed and made my way up to the 15th floor.

I sat in my cubicle, took care of some final errands, sent a few emails to my loved ones, sealed my will and put it in my drawer. I took a deep breath. It was now or never, so I got up, holding the sick leave form in my right hand, and made my way to the elevator. I pressed the “Up” button. A few seconds the later, the doors opened, revealing an empty carriage. I got in and pressed “17″.

It started moving upwards.

“Doors closing”

“Ting”

Then silence…

“Ting”

“Please mind your step”

The doors opened.

I was flabbergasted. The piece of paper dropped to the ground along with my jaw. My eyes bulged out of their sockets, my back felt stiff. I felt nauseous. A horror overcame me like none that I have ever experienced in my entire life. The humid, damp ether wrapped itself around my body, suffocating my pours. I dropped to the ground, while my eyes remained fixated on the placard that hanged at the entrance of the dark and eery twilight zone that the 17th floor had for some reason changed to.

I shook my head. This couldn’t be happening to me. It had to be a dream. It had to be a hallucination of some sort. Where was I? Please, God, no!

The placard was concise and to the point. It read: “Abandon hope all ye who enter HR”

I had been forsaken.

(to be continued…)

Carry the hero over your shoulders and sing and dance the day away.

But once you are done and the mood has sombered; and once the air dries up and the moon embraces the sky; and once the voices die out and the crowds disperse; endow upon the human ghost a modest smile and a tender touch. Kneel down as you face him, and kiss his forehead; with a few sweet words acknowledge his existence, acknowledge his worth.

In the dark of night and in the dark of day, the human ghost walks up and down the city streets, through its alleys and over its bridges. Oblivious to his presence are the eyes of men and women. They realize not that the noblest of hearts and the keenest of intellects are sometimes hidden within the souls of the unpopular, the shunned, the ignored.

If ever you see a shadow sweeping through a crowd of walkers, stop for a minute then turn your vision. Focus on that which you may have otherwise considered an insignificant being and allow it to materialize. Allow it to collapse into reality, with a gesture perhaps or with words of encouragement and praise. And then, once it has, walk away.

Verily, that which is given in humanity is lent to the universe, not lost.

Someone in our office space who has yet to reveal himself has the unfortunate habit of not flushing when he does his business in the lone bathroom whose services a dozen employees rely on. The sight of any floating object in a toilet is more than likely to turn one’s stomach in and ruin the rest of one’s day. To combat the grotesque habit of the caped non-flusher, I decided to work on a new project that involves mapping all the bathrooms in our building. Relying on nothing more than social engineering, some wit and a couple of disguises, I was able to determine where all the bathrooms were located in a matter of days.

The next step was easy. I would start from the closest bathroom and work my way to the farthest, giving each one a rating of “Poor”, “Average”, “Very Good” or “Excellent”. I couldn’t rely on empirical evidence for all the bathrooms since some of them were clearly off-limits, like the CEO’s. So I decided to stop the data gathering once I had five that were either “Very Good” or “Excellent”.

As luck would have it, the first five closest to our office space, other than our own one of course, were all in excellent condition. So I started using the first one on the list. It was in our floor’s executive meeting room and had all the amenities you would expect from a bathroom associated with such a room. You know, leather seat, velvet slippers, silk curtains, golden taps. It was so convenient that I just kept going there every time nature called and didn’t bother trying out the others.

That went on for several weeks. Life was looking good.

Then one day, terror struck. While I was washing my hands in the executive bathroom I suddenly heard what seemed like the meeting room door giving way to a barrage of laughing men and women humoring each other, which could only mean one thing: upper management was coming in. Damn! I was stuck, I couldn’t go out without embarrassing myself. I decided to stay put hoping that their meeting would be a short one.

It wasn’t. It went on and on. And on. Forty minutes into the meeting a manager decided it was time to unload his bladder. I could hear his footsteps getting louder as he got closer to the bathroom door. I was terrified. I looked at the ceiling. Could I escape through the vent like they do in the movies? Should I just open the door and pretend like I had gone to sleep by mistake? Should I rip off my shirt and pretend to be the resident plumber and that I had just fixed the sink?

I couldn’t think clearly; fatal embarrassment was potentially only a few minutes away.

Then the door knob turned. The door was of course locked, so the manager started turning it with increasing aggression. He started pushing against the door thinking it was stuck, but to no avail. I stood against the wall, terrified, sweating.

“Hey, Bob, this thing seems to be stuck. Wanna give me a hand.”

Damn you, imbecile! So the door’s stuck. Can’t you just hold it in or try a different bathroom. This guy was committed; he was going to get into this bathroom no matter what.

So Bob came over and they both started turning the knob and pushing against the door. I could hear the hinges crying in agony. They were getting looser with every strike. Dust started falling from the ceiling. The whole place was coming down and the bastard was not giving up. He was intent on relieving himself in this particular bathroom even at the cost of lost lives.

The hinges were no match; soon enough they would surely give up. I had to think quick. But before I could decide what to do, the door came crashing down and a huge puff of dust mixed with debris filled the room. I was covered from head to toe in it. I had covered my eyes during the ordeal, so the two big circles of untainted skin surrounding my eyes made me look like a raccoon.

Once the dust settled, there I was standing face-to-face with the two managers. They were in shock; they stood there in disbelief, staring at the overweight blob before them, covered from head to toe in dust and debris, with his fly open.

There was nothing I could do to get out of this situation with any pride, so I just lowered my head, dropped my arms, hunched my back and walked over the debris in order to make my way out of the room. Fate threw in one last punch and made me slip, resulting in a pride-annihilating face plant. I got up and walked out.

On a positive note, at least I hadn’t been caught on the toilet seat with my pants down.

Embellishment Rating: [ Low ~ Moderate ~ High ~ Extreme ]

First, the secretaries and office boys leave.

Then, those in Operations leave.

Then, those in Customer Service leave.

Then, most of the developers leave.

Then, the security guards switch shifts.

Then, the janitor comes to clean the toilets.

Then, another janitor comes to vacuum the corridors.

Then, another janitor comes to empty the trash cans.

Then, a few more developers leave.

Then, it gets really quiet…

Then, another janitor comes to clean the tables and computer equipment. Not many people have ever seen him.

Then, the whole place is filled with the stench of “Mr. Sheen”.

Then, it gets really really quiet…

I mean really quiet…

Then it gets dark…

Really dark…

Then, I start to hear voices.

Then, I start to hallucinate.

Then, ghosts from the past fight their way out of my soul and levitate around me.

Then, I begin to converse with some of them and shun others.

Then, the cynical ghost calls me a “tool” and tries to manipulate me into going home.

Then, the wise-old ghost interrupts him and tells me to carry on doing what I’m doing.

Then, the class-clown ghost makes a joke about my weight.

Then, no one laughs and so he feels humiliated and disappears into my soul.

Then, the wise-old ghost notices that the cynical ghost has his back turned so he throws a hole-puncher at him, knocking him back into my soul.

Then, the wise-old ghost gives me a thumbs up and disappears.

Then, it gets quiet again…

Really quiet…

Key:

• S₀: Idle state
• S₁: Crap, we have a problem
• S₂: Let’s hope the problem got fixed
• S₃: OK/Not OK decision

Here’s another diagram by the same people who brought you this. Here we model the mindset of employees who prides themselves on not caring much for planning or proactive thinking. The attractiveness of iterative self-refining reactionism (ISRR) to certain types of employees -notably, those in upper management- is due to the fact that

1. the process’ outcomes (i.e. winged reactions) tend to ultimately converge on an acceptable solution, albeit at the cost of time, money, effort and morale, and
2. the effects of winged reactions can be observed and analyzed with the 20/20 clarity that hindsight affords

Also, the process is very encompassing when it comes to defining the qualities of the principal actors; it just states:

1.16. And as for the intellectual capabilities of the persons who are to execute this process, they must have a sixth grade education and know how to read and write. A working knowledge of arithmetic is useful, but not required.

We’re good to go. Mission control has set a “go live” date of July 2 and the countdown has already begun. The skies are expected to be clear and the North-to-North-West gust of wind on launch day isn’t likely to cause any problems. Our flagship software product is on the pad, it is fueled up, it has been checked and double-checked and triple-checked for foam-related issues, it has been washed, cleaned, waxed, massaged and given words of inspiration. Life couldn’t be sweeter.

The engineers are sitting back, confident of a smooth ascent into the cosmos. Having spent over three years engaged in careful and systematic engineering, disaster is unlikely.

But hey, what is that I hear coming from upstairs? It appears to be an uncalled for stimulus snaking its way through the vents and tightening its grip on the fragile bubble of serenity that surrounds our office space.

It sounds like frantic screams mixed with faint yet still audible cries of “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!” What’s going on? I decide to investigate. I open the door leading to the staircase in order to go upstairs and see what all the commotion is about. No sooner have I put my foot on the first few steps than a body smashes onto the ground behind me. The sound of shattered bones and ruptured organs causes me to make a “What-the-hell” face. The fallen manager slowly rolls onto his back and looks to the heavens. He smiles as he sees what can only be assumed is the tunnel, the light. He then turns his head and looks me straight in the eyes. His smile disappears, and with his last breath utters the words: “Save yourself, comrade”.

I carry on walking. A few steps later I’m once again forced to pull a “What-the-hell” face as I witness a butt-naked manager with only a tie and a pair of socks on running hysterically down the stairs. I carry on walking. Finally, I stand behind the door to the 16th floor. I want to open it, but trepidation sets in and I hesitate for a moment. I take a deep breath and turn the knob. The door proves no match for the tornado being spawn by all the people running around, screaming for their lives; it flies off its hinges and smacks an unsuspecting secretary on the back of her head, killing her instantly.

I look around me, dumbstruck. What the hell is going on! I glance to my left and spot an office boy sitting beside a water cooler, shaking his head and wiping his tears. I go up to him, grab him with both hands and shout: “What the hell is going on, man!” He looks at me with droopy eyes and quietly asks: “You want the truth, or its cousin?”

“Of course I want to the truth; just tell me, please, I’m begging you, tell me what’s going on here!”

“The truth is that everyone is afraid of what might happen after we go live.”

“What do you mean! We’ve been working on this thing for two years now; it’s as predictable as a kid in a candy shop and as robust as an East-German…workhorse.”*

I duck as a piece of plywood flies past, barely missing my head.

“Yeah, well, you say that because you’re an engineer, but these people are not. They know nothing about software or IT, so they think that the outcome of going live is going to be a result of their haphazard, irrational, unrealistic, totally random management decisions, which is why they’re acting this way. You know that the outcome is going to be the result of Engineering’s well-planned and well-executed work, which is why you’re so calm and composed. You can’t blame them, son.”

While in the comfort of my two hands, which are still grabbing onto his shirt, he lowers his gaze and lets his eyes unload for about ten seconds. He then looks up at me once again and with a sad voice says:

“You can’t blame them.”

I let go of his shirt and quickly begin to walk backwards towards the door, with my eyes transfixed on his. All I can think of is: I hope I haven’t contracted this seemingly contagious virus that has struck everyone here. When I’m close enough to the door I turn around and make a run for it. I get to our floor, run to our office space, squeeze into the bubble and throw myself into my cubicle, crashing into my pile of notes and diagrams.

My colleagues are flabbergasted:

“What the hell just happened to you, Karl? Are you alright?”

I couldn’t muster up the energy to reply. I needed a quick fix. So I took out the semi-automatic staple gun from my drawer, aimed for that part of one’s anatomy that one aims for if one wants to willingly pass out and pulled the trigger.

It went dark.

* : This line could have been funnier were it not for political correctness

Embellishment Rating: [ Low ~ Moderate ~ High ~ Extreme ]