Dear Jack,

The writing has been on the wall for about six weeks now. In about two more weeks, the writing on the wall will come to an end. My company has about $2,500 in the bank now, and unless some miracle happens in the next two weeks, that last $2,500 will provide one more paycheck to our only remaining paid employee, one last check to the lawyers, and then we collapse in a heap. We will have probably $20,000 to $30,000 worth of unpaid bills staring us in the face at that point, give or take some insane amount. I wish I could say that it wasn’t my fault, that I could believe in some “it’s the market’s fault!” excuse, but it ain’t the market’s fault. It’s mine.

I have become coldly analytical about my mistakes, to the point where I don’t particularly feel as though I did much of anything right, including starting the company in the first place. Mind you, self-pity is a loathsome endeavor; what I’m experiencing now is not self-pity at all. It’s more like abject terror of what comes next. My financial life is a complete ruin, with three months worth of bills facing me and no idea when I’ll be able to concentrate on getting a new job. Most of what I owe is in the form of an outrageous credit-card debt, which I rang up while trying to start the company in the first place. I don’t yet know what the ramifications of my company’s pending bankruptcy will be, whether I’m going to get personally nailed for some of the unpaid bills – I’m afraid to ask my lawyer at this point, because every time I talk to him he charges me $200. I will find out the hard way, I’m sure.

Our president, a friend I hired earlier this year, is working the phones, and getting nowhere. Last week an old radio buddy of his told him he was considering investing, but we’d have to give him a brand new Harley Davidson if we ever went IPO or got acquired. Naturally we promised him two fucking Harleys if we ever went IPO. He hasn’t called us this week. Last week our president talked to a guy who runs a company in L.A. that seemed like they wanted to give us money. That guy hasn’t returned our calls in a while, either. This is an old story this year; every time someone wants to give us money, their stock in some other company slides 53,000 points and suddenly they’re not interested.

The irritating thing is, things looked good for a while, and I think I pretty much blew the opportunity. I got started too late; I spent money unwisely – although to my credit, we never spent $5,000 on a goddamn office chair. My spending mistakes were strategy mistakes, which is a much more painful category than just profligacy. I thought it’d be “cool” if we did X, thought it would “eventually work” if we just kept doing Y, gambled on getting another round of investment before the money ran out, neglected to budget money for promotion, etc., etc., until I wished I’d never had this idea in the first place. The only things I did right were getting us a round of angel investment at the start, and then hiring some extremely talented people; but even those victories are now bitter, because I raised the money from friends and family, and those talented people are good friends of mine. I can’t imagine what it will feel like to tell each one of them, it’s over. I know it’s going to happen, and it’s like some sad recurring nightmare in my head – rehearsing for it means it keeps happening over and over again.

Tomorrow we have a pretty important presentation of the software we’ve developed for a much bigger, more impressive local company. They have our fate in their hands, to some extent. When I met with their CEO, he casually mentioned he could finance us if he liked what we had to offer, but the minute you start believing what successful people tell you, you’re always in for a rude surprise; they hold cards you don’t, and you’re not even playing the game until you have eleventy billion in capital from Pompous Venture Fund Incorporated.

Goodness, maybe this is self-pity. I apologize.

I started my career as a temp in Chicago, for the director of marketing for a huge global company with 30,000 employees. When she got promoted, she hired me on to be her full-time “executive assistant.” After a while, a friend convinced me I had more skills than that and got me hired as an “associate consultant” for another giant company, and then eventually I got promoted to “consultant,” and then I eventually became a “content manager” and then an “associate producer” for multimedia-based training products, and then I wound up working as a “project manager” for web application development and web projects. Time elapsed: about five years, give or take, and somewhere along the way, I got the idea to start my own company, and so I became “CEO & Artistic Director.” For a while, I used to walk down the street giggling at the idea that I was a CEO. The idea for the company came to me in the middle of a heavy experience involving homemade ayahuasca, but that’s probably another story altogether.

I convinced my uncle to chip in, and later convinced my old boss to chip in a big hunk, and then convinced our future president to chip in, and invited him to hitch his wagon to our rising star. Just in time, as it turns out, for all kinds of things to go wrong: I made some bad decisions early on concerning the viability of video on the net; I burned up development time on a project that we would eventually replace with something smarter, but not before wasting months of effort; leads kept drying up for future financing; the sneaking suspicion began to overwhelm me that if I was an actual CEO, I’d know what to do, but instead I grew paralyzed as we slowly ran out of money. I had known all along this was the likelihood; most companies fail in their first year, and when dot-coms started collapsing all around us, my fight-or-flight instincts started selling me out.

The technical people who work for us have been slaving away. Our director of software development said to me a week and a half ago, “I don’t want to look back on this and realize there was something more I could have done.” I don’t have any such way to focus; the things I think I know how to do at this point require money I don’t have to accomplish. I’m twenty-eight years old. I don’t belong at the helm of a company, and it’s clear to me now that that’s one of the major reasons our business plan met with such little success. I am at a complete loss, and I spend my days waiting for something to happen.

My own personal network has been tapped out; the developers can keep developing, our president can keep making phone calls. This meeting tomorrow could go well; chances are, it will go just fine but they won’t commit to anything and we will shut down before the end of the month, go our separate ways, and look back on this however we choose. I’m the only one who has to answer to those investors, of course, and god knows my old boss is going to kick my ass for losing his money. I’m going to go back to consulting, make enough money to pay off my debt, try to get on with my life without such enormous ambitions.

I think it’s easiest if I just blame computers. I fucking hate computers.

Signing off,

Scott

Dear Boomer:

It’s a Saturday morning and I need to log on from home to check my email. I am reluctant to do so because I know that I’ll have a big fat bunch of work emails to sort through and respond to, but I have to do it, because I’m about to leave my house to go to my parents’ to be home for Yom Kippur the next day, and I’ll be out of the office on Monday for the holiday. All the people I work with know that the best way to get me is to email me, not call me, and they’re all expecting that I’ll have looked at whatever they send before Monday. I’ve already packed my kids’ “temple dresses,” pajamas, play clothes, and essential stuffed animals and books into their rolling Teletubbies overnight bag, and my partner is wrangling with final getting-out-of-the-house logistics, so I log on.

I have sixty-nine new emails. I’m scanning the subject lines, looking for anything concerning this big show that we’re premiering on VH1 on Monday. It’s the latest in a series of documentaries we’ve been doing: the 100 Greatest Whatevers of Rock & Roll. We’ve done Greatest Artists, Greatest Women Artists, Greatest Songs, Greatest Music Moments on TV. It’s become a franchise. Monday is the 100 Greatest Dance Songs. It’s a multi-million dollar production that has been plagued with problems, miscommunications, setbacks, and pressure.

Part of the pressure I’m feeling is the pressure that the creative team must be feeling. We’ve paid them a lot of money, in absolute terms, to do this show, but probably not enough to really do it the way we keep pounding them to do it. My team of hench-people and I keep going back and going back and going back to them with criticisms. We’re sending them notes that say things like, Don’t shoot a copy of the single under the title camera and spin it towards the camera and fill in the spindle hole with a picture of someone’s face! It looks like Ralph Kramden’s coming on next! Don’t slam that artist for doing a disco song – it was his biggest hit!

On most other series we establish the format in the first couple of segments or script passes, and then the outside producers take it from there and other people monitor it for me and that’s it. But this show has been a 24/7 kind of thing for months – messengers and couriers follow me around the country, around the world, delivering cuts and scripts with a demand for immediate turnaround. The process has sucked. And the show is suffering for it.

Out of those sixty-nine emails, about fifteen deal with the show. They have arrived at various points since my departure from the office on Friday and most of them I delete, or respond to quickly. One, however, is from one of the two executive producers. It was sent late on Friday night, and the subject line is blank, which is unusual. I open it. It is a message I was never meant to see.

From: R.
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 9:21 PM
To: Zalaznick, Lauren

F:

did you write lauren z a note regarding the credits – I just dont want her calling up and complaining because we started the roll too early – I agree with your change – and I think she’s a fuckin cunt – but I just dont want her coming back and saying (WHY IS D. ON THE ROLL – blah blah) also, can you believe she crossed out all the writer credits? no one wrote the show? whatever! can you please let lauren z know that you changed the roll to keep D. – she never says no to you.

Obviously, R. intended to send it to the addressee, F., who is R.’s long-time producing partner. But he sent it to me, instead.

Right away, I hit “reply,” cc:’d F. (the person for whom the email was intended), typed nothing else, and hit “send.”

Many minutes passed during which my heart was pounding, my eyes were stinging, and my mind was out of control. It was like what I imagine the visceral response would be to walking in on your partner having sex with someone else. But it was also tinged with a sensation of petty pleasure, an immediate emotional victory. I had regained a certain advantage over the offending party by that simple act of sending back the note. I could envision the gasp, the pain, the stunning re-alignment of his world knowing immediately that not only did I know what he had done in error, but also knowing that his producing partner, too, would react with shock and horror.

Then we were off to my parents’ for the holiday. But I kept obsessing about it, replaying both sides, thinking: It was a blow-up, he doesn’t really mean it, get over it. It’s not like this person is a stranger to me – I have a multi-year, extremely close working relationship with both him and his partner. But then again, there are a million producers who can do the work, why do I even need to deal with this? I thought about the fact that I could take away three million dollars worth of work in the same amount of time it took R. to hit “send” on that email in the first place.

This all happened during the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a period of reflection at the highest level upon the concept of forgiveness. It is a holiday that is in a sense about exactly this kind of dilemma – do you look past one person’s bout with weakness, in this case an uncontrollable anger and frustration, and consider it a lapse, a mistake, albeit a hurtful one?

I kept thinking about the Alphabet of Woe, the traditional list, recited on Yom Kippur, of all the infractions against the moral code that every individual must confront in him/herself. It starts at A with the sin of Arrogance, goes through Bigotry, all the way down to Xenophobia, and Zeal for bad causes (I’ve forgotten the “Y” sin). The underlying idea is that we’re all guilty of all twenty-six sins – and that the biggest sin of all is to think that you’re not guilty, that you’re somehow blameless, that you’re better than everyone else. Yom Kippur is about atoning for your own sins, but it’s also about considering others’ weaknesses and infractions and forgiving them for whatever unkindnesses have been done to you. Under the rules of Yom Kippur, holding a grudge is wrong, just plain wrong, especially when the other person has made an offering, a concession, a confession.

So all of this was pounding and flashing through my mind when, sure enough, the chain of apoplectic, agonized apology emails started to flow.

From: R.
Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 6:27 PM
To: Zalaznick, Lauren

nope I didnt mean to cc you – I feel like a total idiot. it was in the heat of the moment – and after an all-nighter. no excuses – but you gotta know its absolutely not an accurate reflection of my feelings. I’m thinkin no muffin basket or poo poo platter will make up for it. I cannot grovel enough – I am now going to throw myself off the top of a tall building. please feel free to call me a complete and utter dickhead – and cc whoever you want. I’m sorry sorry sorry. yours abjectly, the hot-headed italian asshole (and that’s not an excuse – cause I really am sorry)

* * *

From: F.
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 11:55 AM
To: Zalaznick, Lauren

dear lauren

r. is devastated and we are both very upset about hurting you.

it really should be taken with a pinch of salt because it was a heat of the moment thing he simply dashed off and intended to send to me.

no excuses but in addition to [the two shows] the office move and flu have just sort of piled on top.

anyway I know he feels absolutely wretched about the whole thing and I just wanted to say sorry and let you know he really does not think of you like that at all. as I’m sure you know anyway.

will be in NY this fri 13th (!) and hoping you might have a mo’ to meet. will call the office tuesday.

bye for now

f.

Their emails were reasoned and maybe even reasonable, but there’s something about seeing the words on the page – well, on the screen – that is so irretrievable and irrevocable. So easy to pore over. It’s not like an overheard conversation. It’s text, and text still has the power of being something you can’t “take back.”

Over the course of the next few days, my reactions fluctuated not only on a personal, emotional level, but also on a professional one. I wrote a snotty email telling them that I wouldn’t be renewing their contract, but I didn’t send it. I knew my boss would support me no matter what I did, but I thought about everything I’d have to say to everyone else I work with: Gee, we just don’t do any more work with them – they sent me a mean email?

I’m the second-highest female employee of VH1. I don’t take it upon myself to reflect, frequently, on this fact. But I know I’m under an emotional microscope all the time. My reaction to every stressful and negative situation is closely monitored. Other people make it clear – usually when referring to some other woman and how she performs at her job – that emotions, and demonstrations of them in a corporate setting, are used to assess a woman’s performance, achievements, and chance for success. For women in a corporation, it goes without saying: the higher the degree of emotion a woman brings to the job, the lower the esteem in which she is held. Which is why the idea that R. should be excused because he’s “hot-blooded” seemed more than a little unreasonable to me.

I’m probably regarded as being tough, fairly hard-hearted, outspoken. I am occasionally criticized for digging in and being less accommodating to other people’s ideas and criticisms than I “should be.” But this is a weird sort of (double) standard to be held to, especially in a “creative” job where passions are usually what get ideas heard and shows pitched and accepted and produced. This is a place where strong disagreements (among men) are usually taken as a sign of strength and vision and leadership and upward potential.

In his email, R.’s partner, F., requested a meeting with me in New York on Friday. I agreed, through my assistant (since that Saturday morning, I had had no direct contact with either of them).

The meeting was in my big beautiful corner office looking west across the Hudson and south into and over Times Square and downtown. There are piles, scores of tapes and binders full of scripts and two TV’s going all day (one always tuned to VH1) and signed photos from famous people on the walls. My assistant, who had somehow intuited that it was a good idea to close the door, was answering the phone and checking the fax machine next to his cubicle with no knowledge of the fact that this conversation was different than the fifty meetings I’ve had with these people before. F. and I didn’t kiss hello or goodbye, as we usually do. And I tried to do more listening than talking, but as F. reiterated the tone and substance of the apology emails, I got rather bored. And I got annoyed with myself for not really feeling like a resolution was going to happen. I was trying desperately to focus on what he was saying – sir can you just explain that one more time, why I should forgive you, the partner of the person who called me a fucking cunt? Because that’s just him and I should know he didn’t mean it and look at all you’ve been through to deliver my television show?

We reached some sort of détente, I guess, but the questions keep cycling through my mind: Do I care enough about what they must have been going through to reach that level of emotion? Should I care about the person that hurt me? Isn’t that like the hostage feeling bad for the hostage taker? Was the mournful, soulful high holy day period getting to me? If some guy was rude to my boss on a golf course would it be a matter of course that the relationship would be ended? Would he torture himself for days on end about whether he was being unreasonable? In the end, in this business, it’s all a matter of who needs who the most – you only say fuck you if you really, truly, never need that person again, and you can never really be certain of that. One Emmy award and we’d be begging to be back in business with them.

I just hope the show pulls a decent rating this weekend.

Ugh,

LZ

Dear Satch,

In your last letter, you questioned my use of the word “integrity” on my Dishwasher stationery, since my trademarks in the business include, among other things, hiding dirty dishes and quitting jobs without a minute’s notice. If anyone else had asked that question, I would have laughed it off and let my lengthy record of dishwashing experience speak for itself. But since the question was posed by someone with such an impressive dishing resume as yours, someone who most definitely has “dishwasher integrity” (whatever that may be), then I had to wonder: Do I lack integrity? Have my actions in the past made work harder for other dishwashers? Am I an embarrassment to the profession? Am I a lousy dishwasher? For a few days I remained bothered since I didn’t know how to answer your question.

Then, this past weekend, something unique happened. The three waitresses at my work who I respect the most each, independent of the others, told me that I was the best dishwasher they had ever worked with. No, I hadn’t fished for compliments from them and, no, I’m sure they weren’t trying to curry favor from me (since there are no favors to be curried from me). Though I don’t seek to be “the best” and though it may not really be an answer to your question, I offer those three testimonials of “best dishwasher” to you, in defense of my integrity.

It’s been nice to be back working with people that I’ve worked with before, as opposed to all the jobs I’ve had lately where I didn’t know anyone when I started. But I’m also working with a couple of new-to-me employees, who weren’t working here last year. One of the new-to-me waitresses is convinced that I’m a strict Mormon. It started when I declined her offers of coffee by saying that drinking coffee went against my Mormon beliefs. But now I’ve been using Mormonism as an excuse to explain anything to her. Yesterday, one of her CDs was giving me a headache so I stopped the CD and complained that, as a Mormon, the music offended me. It’s a little troublesome that she so readily believes that I’m a hardcore Mormon.

A couple of days ago, I took my act over to my boss’s new restaurant to work for a couple of nights. I was anxious to see if all the problems of the dishwashing set-up at “Restaurant A” that I mentioned in my last letter had been rectified at the new “Restaurant B.” This was my boss’s chance to redeem himself.

I showed up, threw on an apron, and sought out the dishroom. Last year, I saw the blueprints for this place while it was still under construction, so I knew exactly where the dishroom was supposed to be. But it wasn’t there. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere. When the cook pointed me to the three sinks in the rear of the kitchen, I sensed something was amiss. I smelled a last-minute, cost-cutting, makeshift dish area.

As I stared at the sinks and the under-the-counter dish machine and the complete lack of counter space, the prep cook walked up behind me and said, “We run out of hot water here pretty fast, so only use the hot water when you absolutely have to.” In the span of one minute, all my enthusiasm was gone.

I tried to ignore the crummy set-up. This approach lasted for a couple of hours until a rat ran past my feet and scared the shit out of me. Working alongside mice and cockroaches never bothers me, since those creatures tend to keep to themselves. They can even make for nice distractions while working. But rats are an entirely different story. When I work around rats, I’m always paranoid that I’m going to step on a tail and, in a panic, the rat will gnaw at my ankle until it can escape. So after the rat first ambled by, I spent the next two days staring down at the floor, keeping an eye out for rats.

I informed a cook that I saw a rat, thinking he might show concern. Instead, he was only disappointed. “You saw him?” he asked. “God, everyone’s seen him except me.” I raised the rodent issue with other employees but they all shared a similarly cavalier attitude about “him.” For some reason, they assumed there was but a lone bachelor rat existing in a vacuum, without any immediate or extended family or friends in the vicinity. Altogether, I had three rat sightings in two days. I don’t profess to be able to distinguish one rat from the next, but I highly doubt I was seeing the same rat run back and forth.

I was a bit homesick for my friends at Restaurant A. I missed the well-worn routine and the humor and the fact that nobody ever minded when I would wander off in mid-shift and go down the block to the bar and have a beer. So while I was working at Restaurant B, I called over to Restaurant A just to tell them that I missed them. Then, the next day, they called me at Restaurant B to say they missed me as well. It was sweet.

Remember when I said that the opening of Restaurant B caused Restaurant A to be treated by the owner like a neglected stepchild? Well, one of the waitresses came up with a better analogy. She says that Restaurant A is like a former only child who is jealous of the attention that its new sibling, Restaurant B, is getting. When I returned to Restaurant A the next day, everyone wanted to hear about what it was like to work at the new place. I whined for most of the day about the sub-par dish facilities. Like good jealous siblings, they all relished the fact that I had nothing good to say.

The waiter who told you to turn down the stereo sounds like a real asshole. As great as your job sounds – minimal hours, great pay, autonomy in the dishroom, etc. – I’m sorry that you have to put up with him. I’m glad that I don’t work with anyone who’s on a power trip. In fact, not only is no one here bossy, but since the owner is always over at his new place, I don’t even know who the boss is. Last Saturday, a salesman came in while I was out on the floor and asked, “Can I talk to whoever is in charge?” I looked around at the three waitresses and the two cooks and was dumbfounded. I had no idea who our leader was. “I’m not sure who’s in charge,” I told the guy. “All I know is it’s not me.”

So long,

Pete.

Memo #1

From: Team Leader
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 5:54 PM
To: The Team
Subject: Hours and Days

Hello everyone,

A. is going to talk to the team about more commitment toward meeting our early October Final Date. You as designers and engineers have the heaviest burden on your shoulders, with an awful lot of material to finish for this project. I don’t know when he is going to address the team, and I have talked to most of you already about added commitment. I would like us to lead this effort by example.

When we did the final seven weeks of [design on our last game], the team worked almost 500 hours per person. That was a phenomenal feat. We are now in a more critical position than we were in the final seven weeks of our last project.

I ask that you be able to commit yourself more fully to the time that it is going to take to get this done. Ideally, we would all be motivated to work hard to get not only our scheduled items done, but also to get the polish and fun into the game that it needs. Some of you are more efficient workers and would need to help one another when we are falling behind, and to lend your specific expertise to assist in making sure every part of the game has the same level of quality.

As a minimum, I am asking that you put in a six-day work week and a ten-hour day each of those six days for the next six weeks. If you feel you are ahead of schedule or moving at a good clip to get tasks done, there are lots of tasks that we can farm out from either of the collective pools (engineering and design). Every extra effort would be appreciated by the team and company.

Memo #2

From: Team Leader
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 2:06 PM
To: Team
Subject: RE: Hours and Days

Hi.

I am not in the business of making the team work slave hours, and I never get down on someone unless they are being less than productive to the team. The purpose of my previous email was to state the urgency of this project’s status in relation to when we are going to have to ship it. I feel that there are other, less productive ways to approach motivating people, and have found over the course of managing that there are two ways [that are] best to convey that urgency and motivation.

The first way is to be honest about our situation to those that report to me. I hate managing by politics, and in fact almost never include other managers at my level or above in these types of emails because it conveys the attitude that I am only sending these mails to satisfy them. The real reason is in fact to let you know exactly where we stand in the project and what my expectations are of you as a group or individual. As a manager I have to balance two things. I have to do what I can to make you guys productive and do what I can to make you happy. I do my best with Costco runs, letting your direct manager be the key contact point between you and me, and just trying to be good/light-natured in the office.

As for productivity, I believe it is a two-way street. Obviously each employee is as productive as he/she wants to/can be. It is my job, though, for the sake of the company and the employee/team, to help them remain informed of the company’s needs and expectations. As a manager many of my expectations have to mirror the company’s. There are other managers who like to hoard information like a power broker, and there are those who are outright dictators. I would like to believe that I am both fair and honest.

The other way to gain productivity and motivation is to lead by example. I stated in the last email that the team members worked an average of 500 hours for the 7 weeks. Although I am not as critical-path as the rest of you guys, I in fact had put in 650 hours for the 7 weeks. I had stayed here at work 3 to 4 nights a week. Not once did I ever ask another employee to match the amount of time I spent here, nor did I ever ask an employee to spend the night or compromise their personal lives in that manner. Again I can only ask that you guys put more hours in, I can’t force you.

[After my] last email I was flamed by about a half-dozen replies. It may have been worded wrong, but we had missed our milestone by a week at the time and ended up being more than a month late on the final date for that milestone (first playable). There is a lot of added pressures to this particular project such as marketing is WAY behind our product, and we are coming up on our scheduled finish without having reached two of the project’s biggest milestones (Alpha and Beta).

I am by no means a perfect manager. I have only stated the above to open this dialogue so you can understand me a little better. I would appreciate any further feedback as I know there is a serious lack of communication to you guys, and anything I can do to assuage your doubts about me or the company, I wish to commit to.

Memo #3

From: A.
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 10:44 PM
To: Team
Subject: Labor Day PTO [Paid Time Off]

Monday September 4th is Labor Day, a company holiday. Since this date is two days before our Alpha date, I expect that many of us will be here working. The company will credit 8 hours of PTO for employees who work on holidays, but it must be pre-submitted. If you are expecting to be in, just let me know and I will take care of the paperwork.

Memo #4

From: Team Leader
Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 1:54 PM
To: Team
Subject: Thank YOU!

Marketing came by to thank all of you guys for the hard work and effort you put into the demo. You did in fact kick ass.

They left some milk and cookies at the Costco lunch stop, outside of my cube. Come get some before the milk curdles

Dear Collin,

I’m sure I’ve told you about my cousin, the one who worked at Microsoft? The one who retired with large land and stock holdings in his thirties? Because he worked there, I’ve always felt like I would work there too someday, at least I did until I interviewed with them last week.

My full day of interviews started off with an investigation of my work ethic. The beautiful HR representative asked me how many hours I’d worked per week at my last internship. Forty? Is that all? She asked me what my former boss would say about me if she called him up and asked him about me right now. I think she wanted me to say that he would say I was brilliant, a saving grace to the company, that I had to be dragged away from my computer. All I could get out was, “He would, uh, say, uh, I was a hard worker, and that I learned a lot.”

She also wanted to know if I had checked with my boss to see if the program I wrote five months ago is still working. I honestly hadn’t checked, although I knew that it worked perfectly when I left. (I checked after the interview and found that they hardly ever use my program, but that when they do, it works superbly). She was scandalized by my lack of concern, and a sense of corporate guilt welled up inside of me. This interview was not going well.

My next interview was with a woman who seemed very dedicated to her job. I was taken to her windowless room, which was of course filled with workstations and servers. First she asked me a Zen-like computer-science question: Given a circular list of data items, what was the quickest way to get from the beginning to the end? I floundered. She followed up with a question concerning two jars full of marbles, filled with a hundred red and a hundred green marbles, respectively. If ten red marbles were put in the green jar, and then ten marbles were drawn from the green jar to be put in the red jar, how many marbles of each color would be in each jar? She asked me to come up with an equation. With her hints, I answered the question. Her final question was: What were my computer-related hobbies? She didn’t want to know what kind of plain old hobbies I had, just my computer hobbies. I play the violin, I study multiple foreign languages – but she wasn’t interested in that.

I was taken next to a room with an actual window, where I was introduced to a smiling man. By then I had learned to mistrust smiles. He asked me another marble question, followed by a light-bulb question, then did something I will never forget. He picked a highlighter out of his drawer, set it on end in front of me, and asked me to describe how I would test it. I must have listed twenty tests, including toxicity, endurance, buoyancy – yet still he asked for more. Finally, I reached out and grabbed the highlighter. It turns out that this was what he had been looking for all along.

My final test was administered by a nearly unintelligible (though obviously quite intelligent) Indian man. He, too, asked me a riddle. It concerned an Indian village which was in the midst of an epidemic. Infected villagers were identified by a red dot on their forehead. Each day the villagers gathered in a circle, so that each villager could see every other villager. If someone in the village was infected, a visitor to the village would say that “one or more of you has the disease.” Those that determined they had the disease would leave the village immediately, while the others would stay. This process was to be repeated once a day until all the sick people had left. Given a certain number of sick people and well people, how many days would it take for all of the sick people to leave? I still haven’t figured that one out.

I had one more meeting with the HR girl. When she asked me how the day went, I laughed. She didn’t find anything the slightest bit amusing.

Sincerely,

Anonymous

Dear Emily,

When I got the offer for the job I have now, I dimly suspected that the company was operating some sort of high-tech hustle. But this inkling didn’t assume any solid shape in my mind. When friends asked me what I’d be doing, I repeated what I’d been told by my new boss, who didn’t seem to harbor any doubts about the enterprise. When the job started, and it became clear that there was almost no work to do here, I revised my boilerplate answer. When people asked what I did, I told them I was a reporter taking summer vacation in a cubicle.

Summer is over. The other day someone inquired about my job again, so I took a moment to consider everything I’ve observed at this place, and then surmised, “I’m paid to help make a company that doesn’t do much appear otherwise. The people who head the company have secured a large amount of venture capital from investors who are convinced that, in the future, there will be tremendous demand for what we will, by that time, do. Until then, we strike a pose of readiness.”

Our company is “well-positioned,” with “strong partnerships” and key “intellectual property” in a “fertile field.” Management repeatedly claims that very exciting developments are in the works and that a major, major announcement is just around the corner. One nods and smiles. When one is given something to do, one does it. More often, prospective investors and partners are given tours of the place, so it’s best not to be playing video games. Our office has a kitchen, where employees have access to free sodas and snacks. There are two handmade signs in the tiny room, scotch-taped at eye level on opposite walls. One reads, “There is no one here to clean up after you.” The other says, “This refrigerator will be cleaned every Friday.” I notice this almost every time I get a can of seltzer.

Last spring, before I landed this job, I interviewed one of the rappers from a left-wing, militant-black-nationalist group. It was a good interview. We were both well prepared to talk about music and politics. I respectfully challenged some of his stated positions and he defended them. Then he returned my rhetorical fire, no less respectfully. I quoted him saying, “Your legacy has been that of the slavemaster.” He was talking about a poor-people’s uprising, saying I had to choose a side in the battle to come. He stated this without knowing anything about me, personally.

As it was, as of last spring, in order to repudiate the societal privileges this man was referring to I wouldn’t have had to change all that much. The most overlooked advantage of being white and at-least-middle-class in America, I’ve found, is margin of error. A perfect example is my pal Sam. He went to a top Manhattan private school but refused to go to college. He became a bike messenger and pothead instead. Sam probably smoked herb on the streets of New York City every single day of Mayor Giuliani’s reign. Of course he got busted several times. But he was never sent to prison. Sam has drifted far from his home culture. He believes the conspiracy theories bike messengers sometimes discuss over lunchtime joints. And yet, unlike his colleagues, I’d bet Sam could bluff his way into Columbia next semester if he tried.

I took a bunch of freelance assignments over the summer. One of them led to my leaving work early yesterday. It was a story about a crew of rappers from Newark who opened an ice cream parlor in their neighborhood. The group’s publicist insisted on being present when I visited the shop. But she didn’t want to be in her clients’ neighborhood after dark, or even at dusk. (The publicity firm she works for is one of many in New York staffed by grown-up high-school-cheerleader types.) So I went A.W.O.L. from the office. I took the train to Newark – home of Funkadelic and of Redman – and a cab to the ice cream parlor. It’s in a part of the Newark/Irvington ghetto where the boarded-up buildings are low and grass grows high and thick in the vacant lots. Compared to the Bronx it’s downright country. The only other businesses near the rappers’ new one were a bar and a fried chicken place. The latter was obviously the regional gathering spot for unemployed men and freelancers.

Children and old people were assembled at the ice cream parlor, watching the musician-entrepreneurs get their picture taken. The photo will appear in Sunday’s newspaper along with my story. It will be an upbeat and hopeful tale, with quotes about doing something for the kids and flavors named after hip-hop stars and investing in the community and local boys made good. I’ve followed these guys’ career so far and think they have a lot of potential. I thought so even before one of their better MCs was shot and killed, and since then they’ve worked even harder. Yesterday we talked only of ice cream and urban revitalization. The photographer, the cheerleader, the b-boys and I stood on the corner near the shop and shot the afternoon breeze. We had green, white and pink ice cream cones to lick. The same summer sun that was so oppressive a couple of weeks ago felt good right then, because the wind carried that first hint of autumn’s bite. There was high grass and broken bottles all around.

Before long the cheerleader’s hired car showed up, and she offered me a ride back to Manhattan. I accepted and made it to the office before quitting time. I grabbed myself a seltzer and checked my email for something to reply to.

–Adam

[Deirdre Dolan is a contributing editor of Open Letters. Eilis Dolan Klein is her niece; she is five. Eilis started kindergarten this week, and agreed to speak to Open Letters about the experience.]

Deirdre: When was the first day of school?

Eilis: Wednesday.

Deirdre: Who took you?

Eilis: Mommy.

Deirdre: What’d you wear on the first day?

Eilis: A flowerdy pink striped dress that I haven’t worn in a long time. I picked it out weeks ago and I hung it up with my backpack and underwear for the first day.

Deirdre: Which underwear?

Eilis: The white Barbie with horses on them.

Deirdre: Did you do anything else to get ready for the first day?

Eilis: I put my pencil case in my backpack. Which I didn’t actually need.

Deirdre: Why?

Eilis: They have everything you need there.

Deirdre: Remember how you practiced doing homework every night for a week before school started? Why did you do that?

Eilis: Well, I didn’t know what they were going to do. They said you have to do work, but I thought that meant work, like you bring in homework. But it turned out that meant do art work.

Deirdre: Were you happy when you found that out?

Eilis: Yes.

Deirdre: Where’d you get the idea there was going to be homework?

Eilis: I just knew that I had to do something.

Deirdre: Did you see it on TV?

Eilis: I think so.

Deirdre: What show?

Eilis: Arthur.

Deirdre: Did you spend the whole first day thinking they were about to ask you to do some work?

Eilis: Yeah, and when they didn’t I was like, Oh, that’s crazy.

Deirdre: How long does a day of kindergarten feel compared to a day of pre-kindergarten?

Eilis: Long.

Deirdre: Do you get tired?

Eilis: We have rest time.

Deirdre: What do you do during rest time?

Eilis: You lie down on a towel.

Deirdre: For how long?

Eilis: A slow fifteen minutes.

Deirdre: Does anybody fall asleep?

Eilis: It’s called rest time. You’re supposed to rest. I’m not that tired.

Deirdre: How old is your teacher?

Eilis: Twenty-five.

Deirdre: Does she go to the bathroom?

Eilis: Of course not. She doesn’t need to go all day. I didn’t see her go to the bathroom once.

Deirdre: Who was wearing the nicest outfit on the first day?

Eilis: Me. Wait, change my mind, Mrs. O’Connor.

Deirdre: What was she wearing?

Eilis: She had this little sweater and a dress and curled-up hair and high heels, and she has an assistant named Mrs. Opino.

Deirdre: Has anyone got in trouble in your class yet?

Eilis: No. But there’s a Time Out Chair.

Deirdre: Has anyone had to sit in it yet?

Eilis: No. But one day Mrs. O’Connor went over and goes “This is the Time Out Chair.”

Deirdre: How long do you sit in it?

Eilis: About two minutes.

Deirdre: Are people scared of having to sit in it?

Eilis: No, it feels like nobody’s scared. Except Matthew. I mean, he cries like crazy.

Deirdre: Do you think you might ever have to sit in it?

Eilis: Oh, man, no way.

Deirdre: How come?

Eilis: Listen, I don’t make a sound at circle.

Deirdre: What’s circle?

Eilis: Where you sit down on the rug and the teacher says what’s going to happen.

Deirdre: Why do you listen so well?

Eilis: I don’t want to go to the principal’s office at all.

Deirdre: Why does school exist?

Eilis: Because people have to learn.

Deirdre: Why?

Eilis: So they can go to high school.

Deirdre: Why go to high school?

Eilis: To be a grown-up.

Deirdre: So was life better before school or after?

Eilis: You can guess that.

Deirdre: No, I can’t.

Eilis: Of course you can.

Deirdre: I can’t.

Eilis: Just guess.

Deirdre: Before.

Eilis: Before.

Dear Joel,

And the Lord says, Go to Peoria.

Give away all you possess and go to Peoria.

He says, If you desire to do my will, if you truly want to be my servants, go to Peoria.

He says, I have a place for you there.

And so what do you do? I suppose – if the word really comes and comes clear enough – you don’t have much choice, you have to listen and do what God tells you. You have to divest yourself of every single thing you own, break the news to your friends, your family, mother-in-law, neighbors; turn off the gas and electric, stop the mail, quit your jobs, pull your kids out of school, pack up a van, leave everything and everyone you know and head off to Peoria. You drive all day and night and reach, at long last, the outskirts of town. You cross the town line and pull off by the side of the highway, the fields lying flat and covered with dirty snow. And you wait and pray, pray and wait.

I spent all morning on the phone with the man who did this, just gave away everything and led his family to Peoria and sat at the outskirts of town as the light faded, his wife and kids shivering in the cold, the trucks and cars rushing past. (God had only directed him as far as Peoria, which is why they waited for the next directive at the town line.) It all sounds crazy to him, too, he says, which makes me respect him. He knows that this is beyond reason. He knows that it’s a thing no one could understand, the fact that he and his wife both received word from God like this, that God would be so specific, and that they would actually do it, give away everything and follow this voice to Illinois.

The story was sent to Guideposts, a religious-minded monthly where my job is to rewrite these “true stories of hope and inspiration.” It’s not sold on newsstands, but the magazine has more than three million subscribers, and the somewhat slippery mathematics of “pass-alongs” raises our readership to twelve million or so. For more than fifty years, Guideposts has been rolling out its brand of good news to the world: first-person accounts, taken from actual events, that are testaments to faith of some sort. As the magazine’s mission statement says, our “articles present tested methods for developing courage, strength and positive attitudes through faith in God.”

Most of my days at work are filled with people who talk to God – help this, rescue these, give us that, thank you for those – though God’s corresponding silence becomes, usually, part Rorschach test, part sphinx-like oracle, part expression of what the narrator needs or fears or wants from his or her life and circumstance. What made the Peoria story so fascinating was that God not only spoke back to these people, but that he got back to them in such a specific, puckish way.

I love the image of them on the side of that highway, wondering what to do next. They’re all cold and hungry and scared and disheartened, and dispirited in the dark they drive to the first cheap motel they see. The five of them stay until they’re down to their last twelve dollars. Again, their prayers are answered and they find a church, and so on. It’s a crazy, miracle-laden story, which barely makes sense, really.

Yet talking to this man, he isn’t the unquestioning fanatic that I had imagined. In fact, by the middle of our conversation – which ranges from the grace of Tiger Woods to why pride is the last possession we release – I’m convinced that something extraordinary has happened to this man. I’m convinced that, in his own way, he heard the voice of God. And I’m convinced he made a cold-sweat leap of faith, that he had doubts, and that he has a deeper faith now because of this test. And whether you call it religious or not, no one goes through any kind of trial without having something spiritual happen to them.

My job is to make sure that the story becomes a Guideposts story, make sure that it conforms to the expectations of our readers: the story needs to have its all-walks-of-life beginning, its crisis or test of faith, its dark night of the soul, and its triumph of spirit, its turnaround. God’s goodness, whatever that means, must shine through somewhere, someway, somehow. My job is to make the true story fit into this unalterable template, and to shepherd the author through the process to the point where he or she signs off on it, attests that it’s real and true.

In other words, I set up the pay-off: everything works out; they find their home in Peoria; even better, they find their home wherever God wants them to be. A guy rescues manatees in Florida; the cropduster or beekeeper or fisherman survives some great accident or addiction or loss; someone finds an unopened letter from WWII and forwards it to the widow; a man goes to Peoria – the variations are endless for us line-workers at the epiphany plant. In the epiphany business, each epiphanic moment goes by the more durable, in-house name of “the takeaway.” Takeaways need to be short, sweet, and positive – variations of the “I trusted in God and that has made all the difference” theme. Amen.

I feel like a whistle-blower telling you this. These inner workings of the ghostwriter, the anonymous content provider, the humble commodifier of insight and faith: the sad truth is that I spend a couple of days on the Peoria story, then it’s gone and the next thing is on my desk, roughly one story per week. Next week is wedding lady. The week after is Iwo Jima guy. And I know we rarely do justice to the stories that deserve it, and do too much justice to others. Yet still, there are worse ways to make a living. I work three days a week, get full benefits, the hours are good, the work strangely interesting, the people in the office nice, and the product really does seem to help a great number of people, mostly elderly people (you should see the sacks of letters lined up by the elevators every day).

So what bothers me about all this? The fact is that I hear commandments as well – vague and small-voiced – everyone I know hears them. And what, really, is the difference between “Go to Peoria” and “Make the film”? Or “Write the book”? Or “Become a Sumo wrestler”? Or any of the countless passions that guide our days? These are all things my friends expend great amounts of energy working for and dreaming about. And they’re all acts of faith, in one way or another, all the urges that carry us through our lives and give us meaning and help us make sense of the accidents that befall us. Maybe I’m not so bothered when I think of it this way, when I think that we have to admit that the best in us is utterly mad, or started out utterly mad, a dim voice urging us on to our own kinds of Peoria.

As ever,

Bill

Paul,

This afternoon I turned in my chair to face a co-worker, Michael, and was startled to find it wasn’t Mike standing behind me at all, but a stranger, no more than a foot away, reading, over my shoulder, the “to do” list I was typing on my G3.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Not much.” There was a pause. This was where the kid was supposed to tell me why he was in here. He didn’t.

“Can I help you?” I added.

“Naw.” His hand came out. “I’m 3PO.”

First thought: like the robot? Is that the robot’s name? No, no… C-3PO, it’s C3PO. The hand was cold and sweaty, but the guy, maybe twenty-five, looked relaxed. Where I work, at a skateboarding company that is essentially run by skateboarders, a lot of people come in and out of the offices, but they are usually on at least a loose leash, accompanied by one of the twenty or so pro skaters who ride for us. I looked behind 3PO, around the office, and noticed no one. “What’s going on?” I asked again, expecting some sort of clue.

“Nuthin.” No clue. He sat himself down on my couch and began gazing around the room. I turned and started typing again, thinking Paulo or Richard – two skaters known to bring in many, let’s say, unique compatriots – would wander in at any moment to pick up the stray. The guy fit right in; logo T-shirt, cargo shorts, skate shoes.

Minutes passed. I heard 3PO leafing through the latest skateboarding magazines. Okay, I thought, that’s cool.

More minutes passed and it got real quiet. His reflection in my monitor sat motionless. Finally, I turned to face him. “You sure I can’t help you?”

“Naw, man, I’m just hangin’ out.” His face pleasantly vacant. Grinning. Stoned?

“Are you with someone?”

“Naw. Just waiting.”

“For what?”

“For somebody.”

“Do you mind waiting downstairs in the lobby?”

“Will that make you feel more comfortable?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“All right, then.” He grinned at me, clasped his hands Jesus-like, and walked out slowly.

My mind was dragged back off into work again and I forgot about 3PO. Then I heard a tinny tink, tink, tink sound just outside my office. Must be Tony, I thought. Or Rob.

“What the fuck is that sound?” Tony asked from next door. It wasn’t Tony.

It continued. Finally, I got up and walked out into Tony and Rob’s shared office. “What is that noise?” I asked them, and before they could answer, I looked over into Michael’s cube and saw our man, 3PO, sitting on the floor, my bass case out before him, my bass in his hands, being slapped and thumped in a random manner. I walked right up to him, and as I entered the space I noticed Michael sitting in his office chair, staring directly into his Mac, wide-eyed.

“Hey, you can’t do that in here,” I told the kid, trying quickly to think of a reason. “We’re…working. Give me that.” I took the bass from him. I felt like a school teacher.

“Is this bothering you?” he asked.

“Yeah. This is a place of business.” I know, I know, a skateboard company, a place of business? Still. “We’re trying to work.” I was, now, a prudish adult, a security guard, a cop. 3PO had forced me into a turnabout of roles and I didn’t like the feeling – I just know someone gave me that same line when I was a kid.

“No problem,” he answered.

I asked who he was waiting for.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know anyone here?”

He paused and smiled vacantly. “No.” He looked around at the four of us now gathered. “I don’t recognize anyone. Yet.”

I told him he had to leave. “You can go wait in the lobby. Down the stairs, go left, then left again. They can help you.”

He left silently. We all looked at each other, questioning.

“Thanks for doing that,” said Mike, visibly nervous. “That dude was freaking me out. I thought he was with one of the guys so I didn’t say anything to him. Thanks.”

“I thought he was your friend, Mike,” Rob said.

“No!”

“That guy’s a tripper.” We laughed nervously. There was probably a time in each of our own lives when we were just steps from being a 3PO. Thus our hesitation to boot him. We related somehow. It made me think about the reasons “kids” gravitate to this totally unassuming cement building that sits in a mundane business park among fifty others just like it. Once, a few snuck into the warehouse, during business hours. They’d made a couple successful forays in to scavenge, before Ozzy, a tough, reformed gang-banger who worked back there, caught one. He grabbed the kid by the collar and dragged him while chasing the other one. After he had the both of them, he scared them into giving up their accomplice, the youngest. We found him cowering under our ramp, a half-pipe out back. The thirteen-year-old had a nice little pile of stolen decks with him. For punishment we made them work in the warehouse the rest of the afternoon.

That ramp is a magnet for skate grommets. Nothing keeps them out. They’ve jumped over, squeezed under and cut through our concertina-coated fence, risking grave injury just to sit on the large locked-up boat which their idols, the pros, skate during the day. When they get bored, they start digging through the dumpster for old skate shoes, wheels or cracked decks. Anything that isn’t bolted down is potential loot – a piece of a real skateboard company. Over the years we’ve lost several forgotten skateboards, a trampoline, some basketballs and, once, Megan’s pet pig. All items left on the grounds vanish by morning.

3PO wasn’t like the little thieves. He wasn’t looking for souvenirs or autographs or a pig. What he wanted from us was intangible.

I went downstairs to use the copy machine. I looked down the hall to see 3PO’s head bobbing just beyond Dorothy’s desk. What the hell? I reached the front office just as Tony did. Dorothy had beeped him.

“You’re still here?” Tony asked. “Who are you waiting for?”

“Nobody, man. I just want to talk.”

“To who?

“Is Rick here?”

Rick’s the boss, the owner, a well-known pro skateboarder.

“No. He’s out. Are you a friend of his?”

“Can I talk to him?”

“He’s out.” Tony was getting fired up. “Do you know Rick?”

“Man, there’s no need to get argumentative. It’s cool.” By now a crowd of about eight or nine had gathered. “Can we go in your office and talk about this?”

“About what?!”

It was clear he wasn’t going to leave. He looked over at me. “You look like a guy that I can talk to.” How?

At this point, Tony, Rob and Carlos from the warehouse escorted him outside. Peacefully. Pupils dilated. Shoelaces missing. He was freaking out folks. Davey told me he recognized him as a sponsored skater from a few years back. Dorothy said he’d told her his friend had dropped him here after stealing his clothes and board. Sam added that he thought this guy was the same one who had been leaving messages on his voicemail about “needing to be part of the family.” I quickly figured he’d been in the building for at least an hour, floating from office to office like a half-filled helium balloon, propelled by some unseen emotion. Everyone thought he was with someone else.

Finally we had to close the door and lock it to keep him outside. 3PO retreated to an outside wall of the building and sat, knees up. He didn’t look upset or scared. Just gone. The cops came. They talked to him. Same thing. Then, finally, he left, on foot, heading south.

He was somebody, looking for somebody. His intrusion created a basic uneasiness in us all; he could very easily, under slightly different circumstances, have been a peer, or even a friend.

Later, when I left for home, I half expected 3PO to be outside, waiting. He was nowhere to be seen. I was mad at myself for feeling a twinge of fear. Across the street the Torrance daily breeze had blown a batch of papers from a businessman’s hands. They fluttered and flapped all over the parking lot, chased by the man and a number of his fellow employees. Like chickens, those people – they all looked like chickens. I wondered where our 3PO might be right now. At a bus stop, gas station, or just walking – not skateboarding, but fluttering like those papers. Only no one is chasing him.

Old Skater,

Andy Jenkins

Deirdre Dolan: What’s your name, how old are you, and where do you work?

Invisibyl Ninja: My name is Invisybl Ninja. I’m nineteen. I work in tech support for Earthlink.

Deirdre: Are you the youngest tech guy who works there?

Ninja: On my team, yes. On the floor, no. There’s a sixteen-year-old.

Deirdre: How many people in a team?

Ninja: Our team is thirteen people.

Deirdre: How much space does each team take up?

Ninja: We have a small section of cubicles, around the size of a one-room apartment. Actually, more like a studio.

Deirdre: What do you do all day?

Ninja: If Earthlink customers are having trouble connecting to the Internet, they call customer support, and if they get transferred to me then I fix the problem as best I can.

Deirdre: What are people like on the phone?

Ninja: Most people are all right, but some people completely tear you down or act like they know everything. It’s just not cool. You don’t see people yelling at a fireman when you’re trying to pull them out of a burning building.

Deirdre: If someone starts to swear at you are you allowed to hang up?

Ninja: You can’t hang up. If they’re swearing you try to do your best to calm them down.

Deirdre: How?

Ninja: You say, “Sir, if you continue to swear at me I can’t work.” They tell us to let them vent for a little bit. You just put them on mute.

Deirdre: What if they don’t stop?

Ninja: You say, “Sir, I would like to help you.” Eventually you have to go to a supervisor and ask for their assistance. There are times when a person is completely yelling at you and there’s no way you’re going to get a word in edgewise. I’ve heard of people hanging up then.

Deirdre: Does it bother you when you’re being yelled at?

Ninja: No. I think it’s funny,

Deirdre: You never get mad back?

Ninja: I generally don’t get upset on the phone. I have patience but at the same time I don’t have patience. It’s kind of an oxymoron-type thing. The thing that gets to me is when they go, “I’m so stupid, I don’t get anything.” I don’t want to hear them say that, because they’re opening themselves up to some kind of attack.

Deirdre: From who?

Ninja: Some techs might say, Yeah, you are stupid. And then they could treat them like a kid. But in a way, sometimes you do have to treat them like a five-year-old kid. Some people don’t even know what the Apple menu is, or how to click on their mouse. I had a woman call who was having some problems and I said, “Okay, ma’am. I want you to double-click on this.” And it wasn’t working. It turns out she was tapping the mouse against her screen.

Deirdre: That’s pretty funny.

Ninja: Yeah, that’s pretty funny. There was one at Intel, I think it was on the news. This guy calls up for help and says, “Well, my computer’s not turning on.” The tech says, “Is everything plugged in?” And the guy looks and says, “Yeah, everything is plugged in.” And the tech goes, “I’m going to ask you to look behind your computer,” but everything was plugged in. So finally he says, “Sir, has there been a power shortage?” The guy says, yeah, the power was out, and the tech says, “You, sir, are too fucking stupid for your computer,” and he got fired because he was being recorded.

Deirdre: Do they tell tech guys to preface sentences with phrases like “I’m going to ask you to…” and “Go ahead and…” at the beginning of sentences?

Ninja: No. But most techs do say “Go ahead and click here” and “Go ahead and open this.” I think it’s something where they’re trying to be polite. But I usually say “I want you to do this.” I believe in treating a person like they’re a person and not some royalty.

Deirdre: How many calls do you get a day?

Ninja: The average is thirty. The most I ever got was thirty-six, and the day flew by. I loved it.

Deirdre: What’s the average length of a call?

Ninja: You’re only supposed to be on for thirteen minutes. Then, technically, you’re supposed to pass it on to a senior technician. They get as much time as they want.

Deirdre: How long do you have to stay at your level before you can become a senior technician?

Ninja: Six months. Then you take a test and if you pass it and there’s a slot available you can move up.

Deirdre: How much more would you get paid?

Ninja: A couple of extra dollars.

Deirdre: What do you think you’ll be doing a year from now?

Ninja: I don’t think I’ll be at the same job, because when you learn to do something and apply yourself for seven months, you become an item. People want your ability.

Deirdre: So where would you go work?

Ninja: Maybe Intel. I think it would be very hard there, but you can make twenty dollars an hour and after a year another company will be willing to offer you twenty-five dollars an hour or more.

Deirdre: How much do you make now?

Ninja: Ten dollars an hour, which is pretty damn good, I would say. Close to twenty thousand a year, and I’m only nineteen.

Deirdre: Do you live with your parents?

Ninja: Yeah, but I could afford an apartment if I wanted. I’m trying to save up for a better car.

Deirdre: What do you drive?

Ninja: An ’83 Toyota Camry.

Deirdre: What do you want?

Ninja: A ’96 Subaru Legacy.

Deirdre: How much?

Ninja: $11,000.

Deirdre: What’s the average age of the people working in tech support?

Ninja: Fifteen to thirty. There are a couple of guys who are forty and there’s a guy who’s seventy, but I think he’s just doing it for fun.

Deirdre: Do they have anything in common?

Ninja: The one thing they have in common is I can tell these people would not be able to function in a normal retail-type job where they had to deal with people face to face.

Deirdre: Why not?

Ninja: They’re more of the introvert type of personality. They’re more or less stereotypical nerds.

Deirdre: How?

Ninja: Thirty, a little overweight, maybe glasses. I wear glasses, but I’m nowhere near a nerd. After your average guy’s done working here he goes home and sits on the Internet, maybe does a little programming.

Deirdre: What do you do after work?

Ninja: I go home, play video games, and go to bed. But if it’s a Friday night, I try to do something. Even if I get off at 10:30, I try to find friends who are out. I tend to go back to my old job.

Deirdre: What was that?

Ninja: A laser-tag place.

Deirdre: Cool.

Ninja: People always say it’s cool, but I didn’t think it was. It’s cool if you’re not working there.

Deirdre: What else do you do?

Ninja: I go dancing.

Deirdre: Where?

Ninja: A club or a rave or somewhere where I can have freedom. I’m not the best dancer, but I get a lot of compliments. I’m not white. I mean, I am, skin-wise, but I don’t believe how they say white guys can’t dance. Music is my life. I want to produce and DJ, and do this Internet thing on the side.

Deirdre: What do you play?

Ninja: I have no musical ability as far as playing, but I do plan to take some classes. Have you ever had the experience where you can’t sleep at night because you have so much music and voices in your head? I’m constantly thinking of stuff that’s cool. Especially if I think it’s funny, I’ll write it down or I’ll draw it if I have to.

Deirdre: What was your last cool thought?

Ninja: I get this magazine called “Toy Fair.” Besides the pricing of the toys they have a fairly funny magazine. They take pictures of toys and put quotes above them. Yesterday I was sitting around and I had my old Star Wars toys out, and I actually started to play with all my toys and it brought back so many memories and I was thinking about an idea. I thought it would be funny to take pictures and submit them. So that was my last cool idea.

Deirdre: What are your other ideas like?

Ninja: Mostly lyrics for songs or raps. Mentally I don’t store them, that’s why I write them down, because I’ve got to keep my mind open for other things. I did write a poem recently. I met one girl who was kind of messed up in the head, and the first thing that caught my eye was her red hair. Are you a redhead?

Deirdre: Sort of reddish.

Ninja: I started talking to her for a little bit, and my friend gave me props for talking to her, even though everyone was there for the same reason, which isn’t a very good reason to go to a club.

Deirdre: What’s that?

Ninja: Sex. But I was just there to have fun. Then when I went home I was thinking she reminds me of a rose. It seems like it’s becoming harder and harder these days to become romantic. But a woman is like a rose, sometimes deadly, sometimes elegant. So this phrase came to me, the only phrase to describe her, “Striking resemblance to a rose.” So I wrote a poem. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to write poetry. In high school it was all I ever used to do. Hold on, there’s a millipede and I want to pick it up. I live out in the woods.

Deirdre: Where do you live?

Ninja: Sacramento. Oh, no, it’s a caterpillar. It’s one of those ones that if you squeeze it green stuff comes out.

Deirdre: How big is your building?

Ninja: Six stories. We take up four.

Deirdre: Where is it?

Ninja: It’s in a business park. There’s a bank building near it. It’s a normal business-district-type place. There are restaurants everywhere around it. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely a residential area. It’s close to downtown Sacramento.

Deirdre: Are you going to go to college?

Ninja: Not yet. I took a year off after high school, but I generally don’t like school. In fact I hate school. I have a very big authority complex and I can’t stand the structure of school. I’m pretty chaotic.

Deirdre: What do you mean, “chaotic”?

Ninja: There’s times when I like structure and there’s times when I’d rather be given a toothpick and glue and be told to make a bomb. I’d rather have that challenge than not have it. Not to get it throws me off and makes me less of a person, ’cause I live for living. I’m very much an individual.

Deirdre: Do you have a girlfriend?

Ninja: Not currently.

Deirdre: Have you ever been in love?

Ninja: Very much so, with my old girlfriend.

Deirdre: How did it end?

Ninja: She went to college in San Francisco. After she left, she came to see me every weekend, but things weren’t the same. We could never get the same intimacy again. When I visited we could never really be alone, and all I missed was just holding her and just being with her. The fact is that when December came around I broke up with her.

Deirdre: Do you think you’ll ever leave Sacramento?

Ninja: I plan to go to New York.

Deirdre: What’s there?

Ninja: My life.