Wait, he’s really a boy?
Make sure to remind me of how amusing i found this to be when i’m a famously androgynous rock star, okay?
by krisis
What do you think an eBusiness’s worst nightmare would be? Actually, i’ve been involved in two over the course of the last 24 hours so, by all means, let me share. First, you should know your worst nightmares by type. There’s the illusionary worst nightmares, which paralyze you in fear but have no bearing on your business. Then, there’s the Sisyphean nightmares that totally cripple a single aspect of your operation by rendering it useless. And, finally, a global nightmare – which is basically like living in some sort of eTwilight-Zone.
Yesterday was my first post-tonsil day back at work, and when i arrived i was greeted by a daunting task: someone had ordered over $2,000 of rock records, and it was my job to swiftly pull them and prepare them for shipping. Of course, swiftly is a relative concept when you have to individually track down over two hundred records, but i attacked the task with as much enthusiasm as i could muster. Meanwhile, my supervisors were at once ecstatic and suspicious of the fortuitous turn of events. But, everything checked out: the billing address matched the credit card, the shipping address matched the billing address, the credit card company enthusiastically approved the charge, and we even spoke to a real live person at the contact number provided with the order. How could it possibly be bogus?
Well, it was, and i can’t even explain it because no one’s taken the time to explain it to me, but after spending almost a solid eight-hour day getting this order together i’ll be spending another day tomorrow integrating it back into our inventory. And, while everyone’s pretty pissed about someone trying to scam us, no one actually spent more than a few minutes working on the actual order other than me, so i’m really pissed. Thus, the Sisyphean nightmare.
The specific nightmare was more dramatic, and even more annoying. Lindsay and i got to work this morning a whole twenty minutes before 9AM, hoping to spend a short day in the office. However, when i flicked the light switch in our room nothing happened. I found this to be especially strange because our lighting is florescent and copious … not the sort of thing that burns out. We chalked it up to random strangeness and headed into the warehouse, only to find it similarly cloaked in darkness. Just then, one of the owners grumped down the hallway and muttered to us “power’s out, working on it.”
Yes, the power. Out. Not in the whole building, mind you. Not in the hallways, or the kitchen, or in the office of our webdesign unit. Oh no. Just in our offices. Which meant no light for shelving, no orders being printed, no fans to blow cool air on the network servers, and no servers to be blown at. Our webpage is served externally, so we weren’t totally out of commission, but the eight of us that eventually turned up for work could only drink coffee and alphabetize in the hallway for four hours before our electrician glibly informed us that he fixed the problem (before being reamed out by the IT person in charge of our in-house servers).
So, if you thought internet outages and being out of ink were the worst of eBusiness’s worries, think again. And don’t think that anything that happens is easily fixed by specialized problem solvers like the ones in that never-ending IBM ad campaign, either. No multinational fortune 500 company can protect you from your electrician randomly flipping breakers, and no amount of fraud protection can protect you from bogus orders that aren’t really fraud.
And now, back to enjoying the ceiling lights.
Three links that you’ve seen before.
But, if Amy is my journalism Yoda, doesn’t that make me Ewan McGregor? I’m so confused.
And, now, for another episode of Writer’s Block Theatre.
When we last left our hero, he was awaiting a response to his record reviews with bated breath. Would he finally get to write for an honest to goodness newspaper? We pick up shortly after Peter receives the paper’s reply as we fade up from black. Though he was initially joyous at their friendly invitation of “Welcome Aboard,” over the course of the day he realizes that the congratulatory email has delivered him the worst possible news – his new editor is more interested in what he feels about records than what he thinks, and is hopeful that he will revise his reviews to this effect.
Peter stammers as he recoils in fright from this newly transformed message. “But… but… feelings are the root of all bad record reviews!,” he exclaims as he slowly backs away from the screen. “I’ve spent years detaching myself from new records so i can offer tidy unbiased opinions of them. Saying that any record i own by someone other than Ani or Tori makes me feel anything is an utter lie! I’ve reduced reviewing music to science!”
“Is that so?”
A voice rises from behind him; Peter whirls as though he’s being confronted by another of his worst fears only to find Amy sitting on his guitar amp nonchalantly leafing through a Rolling Stone. He opens his mouth to speak, but she silences him with a wilting glance.
“How you feel will influence anything you write, Peter, so you can just come down from the damned pedestal and write with some feeling for the benefit of all of us people who don’t consider each cd purchase a new child.”
Temporarily ignoring the implication that he would feel the need to be scientifically detached from all of his children so that none would feel more liked than the next, Peter madly gestures back towards the screen. “But, Aim, feelings? Why should someone buy a record based on how i feel? They don’t even know me!.”
Amy fixes Peter with a cool glare from over a two-page spread of Ewan McGregor. “Peter, are they really compromising your journalistic morals here, or is it a possibility that you’re so excited about this job that you just have cold feet.”
Peter’s only reply is silence.
“Well?”
“Erm… possibly mildly chilled feet.”
Amy nods to herself. “Just as i thought,” her face is buried in the magazine before the next sentence escapes her lips, “now get to writing.”
His moral quandary solved by the quick wit of his friend, Peter is again faced with the computer screen — now sinisterly blank white as it awaits his feelings about the Wilco record. Slowly, he approaches the keyboard.
(Cut to black, commercial airs while Peter frantically tries to decide if he honestly feels anything about Yankee Foxtrot Hotel)