The Abuse of a Tool

Outlook is a useful tool. It stores and organizes emails. Most people over forty don’t have a clue how to use it appropriately. Email is meant to convey messages across a digital medium in real time. Messages, or notes, should have a body, an idea, or simply a main point. I write emails to seek answers to a question I may have at work all the time. Upon receiving that answer I do not reply with a thank you email. Call me crazy, but I think a thank you is implied. I don’t need to respond to the person whom I have directed the email at with a thank you email upon reply. People over 40 do this all the time.

“Hello Chris!

Can you help me with something? I’m in word and I cannot create columns. Can you help???”

Re: Sure, just insert a page break and then click the button that looks like columns already. It will then ask how many you want, etc.

Re: Re: Thank you!”

Waste of time and space. Yes this happens several times in any given day to me. Sigh. This is not why I am writing, but merely to serve as an example of how my co-workers misuse and abuse outlook. The real reason I am writing this is because of Outlook’s calendar function.

It’s a wonderful tool to schedule time with your boss who is in meetings all day. It’s a great way to remind yourself of everything that you need to do that day before you can power down your computer. The idea being that it is meant to be an important and USEFUL tool. My friends and I like to joke about setting up fake meetings between all of us (we all work for different corporate entities in different industries) entitled “LTD’n” or some other silly and fictitious event. I wish this was this was the case with my co-workers. No they would rather send outlook calendar appointments for…CAKE. Yep, good ol’ fashioned yellow sheet cake from COSTCO. I am not kidding. A recurring meeting every other Friday is on most people’s calendars in my department to remind them that cake is on the way. It takes place from 1-1:30pm.

I have declined this invitation twice now. I get made fun of for not eating cake. Not eating cake makes me the social outcast. Why am I the one who is laughed at when it should be the organizer of the stupid cake meeting? Why doesn’t everyone point their fingers at Cathy and laugh heartily at her gluttony? Because everyone in healthcare loves cake. The irony of the whole situation is that these people love cake so much that it would be impossible for them to forget about eating cake in the first place: No appointment necessary.

What makes the cake appointment worse is that they send someone out to gather up everyone in our department that didn’t make it in to the boardroom for the event. At times like this I try and get to bathroom and just hide out until the caking is over, but sometimes it just isn’t possible. The back of my head hears a lady that is shaped like one of those potato experiments where you stick the toothpicks in it tell me,

“It sets a bad example for new employees when we all don’t attend the afternoon meeting.

Back of my head: “I don’t really think I like cake enough to interrupt what I am doing right now. Plus this way everyone gets more.

Potato Experiment Lady: “There is plenty of cake for everyone to have two pieces if they want. You should come say hi and eat cake.

Back of my head: “No thanks, I just ate.

Potato Experiment Lady: “Suit yourself, you’re missing out.”

Actually I am not missing out. I have a fucking appointment on calendar because of you that reminds me of your activity. I wish I was missing out.

Prologue

I am a guy who lives two very different lives. These two lives rarely intersect. During the day I seldom feel like myself, more like someone dressed up to disguise himself in a place he doesn’t belong. At night, I am, I get, to be me. It’s only fitting that these two different personalities each have a different occupation. By day I work for a major health insurance company as a project manager and by night I am a bartender at a local, popular restaurant. This is all the explanation that is necessary and where I stop describing myself. I document my life at night by the memories and people who share it. I document my life by day with tales of abject horror, tales I do not make up. These are actual occurrences that occur in my office. I will not exaggerate but I will allow passage into my mind and thought process. I cannot for one second imagine a world this absurd. I fear that I may one day lose my objectivism as the office becomes routine; habit. This blog may be my only method of maintaining my sanity in a world that is my reality between the hours of 9-5.