Want to play a game...

So yesterday, right around noonish, the telecommunication's server at my office went down. As a result, my office was without the ability to receive voicemails, email, and most importantly, we were unable to access the internet or as it is commonly known in the popular parlance of America's youth, the World Wide Web. As such, I was left with five hours, FIVE WHOLE HOURS, of nothing to do but work. I am not sure if you have ever tried to do work for five hours straight without interruption, but I can assure you that if I had to perform such a task on a daily basis, I would insist that I be compensated atleast ten thousand dollars for every hour that I worked. I mean it is hard and extraordinarily boring to have to work for that much time straight. In fact, I am not attorney, but I bet there are laws against it.

Now, such an outage has happened before at my office and everytime it happens, I am reminded of a classic SNL skit called "Wake Up and Smile" starring Will Ferrell, Nancy Walls, and the guest host of that night's show, David Alan Grier. Basically during the skit which is a mock of a network good morning show, the teleprompter breaks and as a result, the host (Ferrell) and his cohost (Walls) are left paralyzed and helpless as they no longer given what they are supposed to do and say... The skit basically proceeds with these characters breaking down as if they are in a real natural disaster facing a life and death situation culminating with them forming their own tribe and eating the weatherman in order to survive... with Ferrell's character saying:

The weatherman is DEAD! I KILLED the weatherman! His STRENGTH is in me!

Similarly, at my office when the internet goes down, people start to exhibit odd breakdowns of character that someday may in fact result in the death of a coworker in order to save the group... I mean some people do truly sit down and do work, but others start to simply roam the office as if they are searching for survivors of this metaphoric crash... They react in this manner mainly because they can no longer avoid doing work by checking their email, updating their fantasy teams, blogging, commenting on the blogs of others, surfing the web for porn, and/or playing their favorite internet games. (I do atleast three of those activities, but since I am writing here, I am exempt from criticism.) More often than not, these individuals tend to just end up standing in the doorway of my office with a weird shell-shocked like look of desperation hoping to talk about anything in order to calm the internal panic that has seized them because the internet is not working. (Note: Usually, we talk about all the things we could be doing on the internet instead of having that conversation.)

My favorite group or tribe of people that forms during these crisis are the Helpers or those individuals that feel the need to tell everyone they can that the internet is not working. For example yesterday, this group managed to inform the office of this fact at least a thousand times throughout the course of the afternoon. Of course, they not only told us that the internet was not working but some even tried to explain the problem as if they had suddenly gone to Devry and overnight received their computer degree making them experts on this problem. (It is amazing how most of these so-called "experts"work in the file room and exhibit a marked inability to grasp the alphabet on a daily basis. But for some reason understand why the entire telecommunication's hub at my office has shit the bed.) Now my reaction to these people, who I am certain deep down truly believe they are helping the greater good by spreading the word that there is an internet outage, was to walk around the office right around five o'clock after they had finished their rounds and ask random people if the internet was working. And of course, some people, mostly members of this group, felt the need to tell me that it was in fact not working and that it had not been working for awhile now. (No SHIT SHERLOCK! By the way, "S" follows "R" in the alphabet.)

Of course, this group are composed of the same people who everyday forward me some crazy bull shit of an email about a lost kid or how I should not flash my headlights at a car that has their's off because that is a gang initiation tactic and I will be shot. First of all, the kid is not lost... he ran the fuck away from you because you were always on his shit trying to help him. And if he was abducted, it was voluntary because once again he hates you. Furthermore, no god damn email is going to bring the little bastard back so go back to playing the Maze Game or whatever the fuck it is that you play on your computer all day long instead of doing work... (oh right you can't cause the internet is down... life's a bitch, buy a shotgun.) And as for the gang thing, well that has been around since atleast the 80's as an urban legend, but here is a little hint, if a gang wants to kill someone, they will just do it. They don't need you to blink your headlights at them for motivation. (Note: If this is in fact the way I die, kudos to the people who elevate this myth to reality) Actually, come to think of it, that kid from the picture that you sent in your previous email, who had run away, well he actually joined the same gang that shoots people for flashing your lights at them so you better WATCH THE FUCK OUT. Furthermore, all the emails that you send that include things that are supposed to make me happy, get closer to Jesus, and/or feel bad for others. IN REALITY, MAKE ME UNHAPPY, HATE JESUS, AND LOATHE PEOPLE WHO ARE WORSE OFF THAN ME... LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!!! ( and for the record, pictures of puppies, cats, and other pets do not make my day go by faster nor do i think they are cute...) But i digress...

Thankfully, today, when I arrived at work, the internet was working and once again some kind of normalcy had returned to the office. Unfortunately, the Helpers were onto their next task of informing everyone that the internet was now working while incorporating some of the lingo from the IT people as to the cause of the problem and what was done to fix it. And of course, I still received at least three emails containing cute puppy dogs, a lost child from California, and a warning about phone calls from a fake area code...

Maybe tomorrow I will just call in sick...