More E-mail from the Land of Hate

My supervisor felt compelled to keep me in the loop on the database situation, lest I waste a moment of time on frivilous activities, like research or reading. Or gathering my thoughts.

From: HIM
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 11:40 AM
To: ME
Subject: Database is still down

Since the database is still down I do not know what the various product teams have ready to be reviewed. Therefore there is not any database content to be edited at this moment. Furthermore I have asked the supervisors if they have any email templates ready for editing. I have not received any responses back yet so I do not have any work that I feel comfortable assigning to you at this time. So please take lunch early if possible, and I hope to have work to assign to you by 1300.

Note the lack of punctuation, followed by the humble request to take lunch early so that I can get back to tearing my hair out.

By the way, he wasn't in the military, so don't be fooled by the 1300 thing. He was an EMT at his previous job. They calculate time that way, too, I think. Either way, he makes me want to count the minutes until 1700.

The crowning glory was the following e-mail, which he sent on the third day that the database was down. My guess is that he spent the entire morning composing it. Note the carefully crafted sentence fragments peppered with such gems as "until such time as," and "please reply with your acknowledgement." These are literary stretches for him, and I can tell he worked hard at them; almost as hard as he did at trying to humiliate me with instructions on how to cut and paste.

It was bait. I didn't take it.

From: HIM
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 8:04 AM
To: ME
Subject: Editing work for today
Importance: High

Since our database storage for the test environment is still unavailable, and I expect it to be unavailable for at least the first half of today. I have worked with the team to get you some editing work during the downtime.

1. The following network path contains a folder with your name.
2. After navigating to this network path you will find a folder with your name.
3. Open your named folder, and within it you will find two additional folders.
3.1.0 To_Be_Edited, the items within this folder need to be edited.
3.1.1 Open the oldest file in the folder.
3.1.2 Once your editing of the item is complete, Please enter your name and the date in the Edited by Fields
3.1.3 Save the item
3.1.4 Close the file
3.1.5 Return to the To_Be_Edited folder
3.1.6 Highlight the file that you just edited
3.1.7 From the Edit menu select "Cut"
3.1.8 Navigate to the Editing Completed folder
3.1.9 From the Edit menu select "Paste"
4. Return to Step 3.1.0 to locate the next item to be edited

When you have complete all items in your To_Be_Edited folder please let me know immediately so I can ensure that you have additional work to complete until such time as the database environment becomes available again.

Please reply with your acknowledgement of these instructions, and/or any questions.

Editors! Who needs 'em?! Any idiot could do this!