PANTS / TAILS

23:18

It's a long way down.:

I overslept again today. Right I after I woke up, I realized that I was just a little too well rested, and I turned toward the red digital clock readout with trepidition.

2:11

HOLY SHIT. I was at work in 45 minutes. When I arrived, people were strangely unresponsive, reacting to my presence with shifting, presence avoiding eyes. I sat at my desk and pulled up XEmacs.

"Andrew, could you come see me?", said my phone, slantedly, in the Boss' voice.

I got up and walked down the hall to the Boss' ridiculously big office. "Andrew...," he started, "there's been a real problem around here lately. You haven't really been coming in on time." Uh oh. "Its been making me feel like you don't respect the company. You've come in late every day this week. I'm going to have to let you go."

I didn't really hear anything else he said, except for some mention of passwords that I'd have to hand over. I walked out of his office feeling strangely light-headed and somehow liberated.

My phone rang again as I sat down. I picked up and held the handset against my face. "Hey there, buddy!" It said. I recognized the enthusiastic tones of a client of mine, a guy I wrote some programs for who called me with such problems as the inability to print documents from netscape. "Hi, (guy)." I said. "Well, you sound happy to hear from me again!" said guy, in his wheedling, sarcastic voice. "I've been having a big problem on the server, it says that I'm out of disk space." I log into his machine. "Okay, you've got 700 Megs free now." "Great, buddy! How'd ya fix it? Too technical for me?" "No," I said, "I deleted every single one of your data files." I hung up.

I put my jacket on and picked up my bag. I noticed that I had left my McDonalds Big Breakfast uneaten on the desk. I picked up one limp, soggy hotcake, opened the CD-ROM and smushed it inside, noting that the middle was neatly cut out by the hole it sagged through. The drive made some whizzing noises and began to smell funny. I put on my sunglasses and walk out the door, cooler than shit.

Actually, the Boss called me into his office to tell me that my hours are now 10-7, and that I am now the "Hot Handed God of Networks". I can't wait for my new business cards.