Because I Care
Predator Press
[LOBO]
One of my duties at work is to make spreadsheets.
Nobody ever told me who or what the spreadsheets are for, but I crank them out left and right.
They are accurate, colorful, and endless; in fact, my last spreadsheet outlined in excruciating detail how the numbers of spreadsheets produced have increased exponentially since my date of hire.
Louie is a big guy, to say the least. He’s got to be approaching 400 lbs. His job is to take the numbers from my spreadsheets and input them into a computer so all the information can be verified.
Louie hates me.
I knock on his door, and hear a grunt. And as it opens, the sounds of his labored breathing fills the room. “You’re car is being cancelled,” he begins without a greeting. Enshrined by candy bar wrappers, empty nachos polystyrene and Diet Pepsi cans, he says distractedly, “You’ve had a month now.”
“That’s too bad,” I says. I can tell by his voice he’s not done. “Why are you sweating?”
“Your stupid spreadsheets,” he says. The chair creaks under his girth as he leans back, and holds up the two fingers he uses to type. They look lean and muscular in stark contrast to the rest of his body. “The least you could do is do them in numeric order. The way you do them now, I have to delete and type the whole thing.”
“You mean you want me to put them in order so you can just delete the last digit and type in the new one?”
He nods, skull pivoting gracefully over rolls and rolls of neck.
“Sure Louie,” I says, already planning a spreadsheet outlining how many broken chairs come out of this department. “But why don’t you just cut and paste them?”
The impossibly fat eyebrows arch. “Huh,” he says. “That’s a pretty good idea. Between that and you doing them in numerical order, my life will be a hell of a lot easier.”
“Always happy to be of help, Louie,” I says cheerfully, excusing myself.
So for a month, I made spreadsheets using the letter “O” instead of zeroes, “Z” for “2”s, and even brazenly threw in “E” instead of “3” on special occasion.
It’s more than a little ironic that I was asked to deliver Louie's eulogy …
[LOBO]
One of my duties at work is to make spreadsheets.
Nobody ever told me who or what the spreadsheets are for, but I crank them out left and right.
They are accurate, colorful, and endless; in fact, my last spreadsheet outlined in excruciating detail how the numbers of spreadsheets produced have increased exponentially since my date of hire.
Louie is a big guy, to say the least. He’s got to be approaching 400 lbs. His job is to take the numbers from my spreadsheets and input them into a computer so all the information can be verified.
Louie hates me.
I knock on his door, and hear a grunt. And as it opens, the sounds of his labored breathing fills the room. “You’re car is being cancelled,” he begins without a greeting. Enshrined by candy bar wrappers, empty nachos polystyrene and Diet Pepsi cans, he says distractedly, “You’ve had a month now.”
“That’s too bad,” I says. I can tell by his voice he’s not done. “Why are you sweating?”
“Your stupid spreadsheets,” he says. The chair creaks under his girth as he leans back, and holds up the two fingers he uses to type. They look lean and muscular in stark contrast to the rest of his body. “The least you could do is do them in numeric order. The way you do them now, I have to delete and type the whole thing.”
“You mean you want me to put them in order so you can just delete the last digit and type in the new one?”
He nods, skull pivoting gracefully over rolls and rolls of neck.
“Sure Louie,” I says, already planning a spreadsheet outlining how many broken chairs come out of this department. “But why don’t you just cut and paste them?”
The impossibly fat eyebrows arch. “Huh,” he says. “That’s a pretty good idea. Between that and you doing them in numerical order, my life will be a hell of a lot easier.”
“Always happy to be of help, Louie,” I says cheerfully, excusing myself.
So for a month, I made spreadsheets using the letter “O” instead of zeroes, “Z” for “2”s, and even brazenly threw in “E” instead of “3” on special occasion.
It’s more than a little ironic that I was asked to deliver Louie's eulogy …
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