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Saturday, February 26, 2005
Crime Report

Here's something stupid that has been occupying my life in a small way for the past few weeks...

One of my jobs is at a place that operates 24 hours a day, and has four separate shifts. My group shares a workspace with the other three shifts, which is fine since there is very little overlap. Now, one of the workers on another shift had brought in a very nice Dilbert calendar at the start of the year, and hung it up. That's fine by me, I think Dilbert tends to be pretty funny.

The guy who brought in the calendar is not a guy I know very well. But since we work in the same area, I get a number of e-mails from him over the course of a week. These e-mails are invariably stunning from a visual standpoint. They have screenshots, and feature added circles and arrows to highlight whatever information the e-mail is referring to. I won't lie to you, I have no idea how to send an e-mail of this quality, and generally, I have no reason to. It's just as well, since I am easily the least qualified member of my team. Don't tell anyone.

As you might have guessed, e-mails of this type take awhile to put together, and the consensus among people in our area who know this guy better, is that this is what he does instead of actual work. So, while nobody wishes him dead, many of the women have nasty things to say about him. The men seem to mostly roll their eyes. So, my impression of this guy is somewhat skewed, but from other stories I hear, he's just kind of a needy dweeb. This is the kind of person whom I have a difficult time being congenial to. I'm kind of blunt, apparently.

So, about six weeks ago, I got one of these gorgeous e-mails. I sent it to the color printer, hung it up on the wall with the following note attached:

"Dear ___. We are planning to have this e-mail framed and matted, and we would appreciate it if you would please autograph it for us, to better serve as an inspiration toward excellence for us, your awed co-workers. We promise that it will not end up on E-Bay."

It went over pretty well with the people on my shift, but my supervisor, who is a good guy, took it down at the end of the week, because apparently, the target of my jab would have been shattered by my effrontery. I don't complain about it, since it was mainly for my own amusement anyhow.

Then, at the beginning of this month, the Dilbert calendar vanished. My initial thought was that a manager had seen it, found it contrary to the indomitable uplifting spirit of the many "Just Hang In There, Baby" cat poster variants you see in corporate boxopolises, and had taken it down. But realistically, said humorless manager would have asked a supervisor whose calendar it was and then sent a very bland e-mail to this guy asking him to remove it. That's how things work, I'm sure you've seen it in your workplace.

So, since a manager probably didn't take it down, the only other conclusion is that someone swiped it.

Again, people like the fuck with this guy, so the list of suspects is huge. And that's just within our work area. My guess is that others outside the group who have interacted with him probably are amused at the idea of sticking pins in this guy. Naturally, an e-mail ensues.

And it's so sad! No graphics, no bubbles, no arrows, not even his queer computer-generated cursive signature! Just, "if any one has seen my Dilbert calendar, please return it to a supervisor. Thank you." Naturally, we are in hysterics.

"Did you steal it?"
"No! Did you?"
"Don't be stupid. Maybe Kris took it."
"She says she didn't."
"Pretty fucking funny though."

So me, being helpful, I print out this very despondent e-mail, use a pen to draw up a very rudimentary February calendar in the space at the bottom, and hang it up where the calendar used to be. Problem solved!

From here, things actually improve. One of the women has a Marilyn Monroe calendar with some very nice black & white photos on it, and this month's shot is Marilyn holding a small dog. It's a lovely shot. My dear colleague Trina grabs the Sunday comics, cuts out the Dogbert character from the strip, and copies it on top of the Marilyn shot. The result is fucking hilarious, as she is now holding this cartoon dog. We hang it up where the Dilbert calendar used to be. I should take my digital camera to work so I can post a shot of it. It's just so damned stupid, but it's beyond funny.

From there, newspaper articles are altered to reflect the calendar theft, milk cartons are disfigured to show Dilbert on the side. It's rudimentary stuff, but as always, it beats the hell out of working. We don't get a lot of room for creativity at this place, although I work with some exceptionally smart and creative people. I'm not sure if they went wrong in the same way I did, but I'm still kind of new to the place. This is good for us, though, and I look forward to seeing what silliness the other shifts have wrought in my absence. They are a clever bunch mostly, although I'm not sure they have my taste for the jugular. But hell, nobody is perfect.

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posted at 9:51 PM

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