De Ja Vu

Part of the perks at my new job is that we get to use IM. Not only do we get to use it, we are encouraged to use it, so much so that, as soon as a newbie is hired, they are instructed to create an account for use at work, and e-mail said account information to all employees in the company.

This level of trust is vastly different from that which I have experienced at my previous work/hell. In my other life, when employed as lowly slave at Other People’s Money, all employees were threatened via neatly typed memo that anyone caught instant messaging would be summarily dismissed from their position in the company. Likewise, sending a personal e-mail to your granny was also a good way to get the axe.

And at Other People’s Money, the axe fell A LOT.

Needless to say, as one of their longest running employees, having worked in their dank, decrepit hovel of an office for a whopping 14 months, I never broke the rules.

Err well, they never knew I broke the rules.

It’s true that I never once IM’d. Too risky, as downloading of software is involved. Now as far as those e-mails to granny, I never did that either. Well, not really too much. Maybe once or twice to gma, but she is old and needs the reading materials. You gotta have something to fill the days right?

Yes, I e-mailed gma only a negligible 10 times, but the e-mails to maaa, pop, sis, Rock Star Brother, an elderly French woman, my best friend, the neighbor with the ugly tattoo, that skeezy interpretive dancer I met at starbucks, my tenth grade Japanese teacher, and SORM – well I probably wrote them more than the 20 times I ever did to gma, God bless her.

And maybe I wasn’t always the exemplary OPM employee. Maybe I’m the one who used up all the plastic forks in the kitchen and secretly snacked on other people’s potato chips, homemade cookies, and dressings. Maybe I made up all those “appointments” so I could go shopping at the Gap on Friday afternoons. And maybe that one time I pretended to take my car to the shop, quite possibly, I really left work so I could stuff my face with movie house popcorn at the theater where Bridget Jones was showing.

The Eagle Has Been Sighted

Lo, readers, I have spotted the Great Eagle and it is the Olive Garden that he haunt (also several vaguely violent dreams but that's a whole other ball of wax). And while he successfully managed to pretend he didn't see me (I assume because he will loathe to admit the wonder of my XML translating code), it was him.

Damn you, Eagle. Can't a man eat his soup and read his paper in peace?