I put a couple of MacBook Pros into production the other day for our Communications group. Shortly thereafter, the users informed me that I’d neglected to add any printers to their machines. Whoops. So this morning I traipsed over to their office to add ‘em. Though I had no problems correcting my oversight, one of the printers (an HP 2015dn) reported its location as Boise, Idaho.

Of course, I felt compelled to print a test page or seven just to make sure my content came up on the printer in front of me, and did not, instead, start spewing paper in some Farm Bureau office out in Karcher Junction, much to the bewilderment of folks there. But no, print it did, right here. I haven’t the foggiest idea why the printer says it’s in Idaho, though. It seems happy enough to think it’s there, so I just let it be, dreaming its little potato dreams of the rugged north.

Sometimes I work in a different building away from my usual office. That auxiliary workstation is next to a sink and refrigerator. Right now, someone is washing something evil out into the garbage disposal. Whatever it is, it’s disgusting. It smells like something died inside a crate of cabbage in August. The fetor is so powerful that a guy who works in the middle of the building came over to find out what was going on. This is the kind of reek that’s so bad it could probably stain your clothes just wafting through the air. I don’t even want to think about what it must look (much less smell) like close up. Ugh.

One adjective that can be fairly used to describe the unit I work for now is “mercenary”. Though we are an IT group, our boss’ only-half-joking position is that it doesn’t matter what someone wants us to do, if they can scrape together the money to pay our rate, we’ll do whatever the hell they want.

With this in mind, I was still taken aback the other day when a research professor from the Plant Biology department called my personal line, inquiring about how to package a soybean sample. Specifically, how to ensure that the soybeans within a shipping container would not be inadvertently mutated, should the package be put through an X-ray machine.

Only the day before, I’d been finishing up a three-day project for a different fellow in Plant Sciences, and assumed he’d given my number out to his colleague. So my mind raced- does UPS offer X-ray-proof containers? Would writing “DO NOT X-RAY” on the box be sufficient, or would it simply spur the DHS/FBI/Interpol into opening the box (and a dossier) on the professor?

I gave him several different ideas about container types and places to inquire about them. He seemed a little irritated, and hinted that my failure to provide a confident answer put my competence in question. Baffled and slightly peeved, I put him on hold and asked my colleagues for their input. Being similarly IT-oriented, they didn’t have any further insight into the problem either, which seemed to only vex Professor Soybean further.

Finally, I recommended he simply contact one or more parcel carriers and ask their advice, or if they had any readily available packages or shipping options that would keep his precious beans safe from the terrible ravages of Röntgenstrahlen. At this, he issued a little gasp of consternation; it was clear my answers failed to satisfy, and he asked (politely, but firmly) if there was, in fact, anyone there who had a fundamental grasp of nonmutative transport solutions, and if that person could be sent to fetch the package and deal with it properly.

While “the customer is always right”, I am not always willing to go down without a parting shot; not, at least, when my professional fitness is unjustly questioned. Besides, he was going to have to start ponying up the simoleons if he wanted to pursue this any further. I asked him why he’d called me to help him solve this problem. “Because I want a package shipped!” was his exasperated reply.

When I explained that while we were certainly willing to provide assistance, our purview was information technology, not transport. After a short silence, he asked whether or not he had reached the office of the campus Postmaster. I suppressed my impulse to point out that I had identified both my own name and that of my unit when I answered the phone, and told him that, no, the number he had dialed was not the Postmaster’s. Appropriate noises of contrition having been offered and accepted, we parted ways.

Not five minutes later, someone else called to tell me that they had a package ready for pickup. I found the correct number and gave it to them. Since then, I’ve fielded three similar calls. The wierd thing is that I’ve had this line for a couple months now, and all of a sudden I’m getting these calls. At first I thought maybe there was some sort of weird “shipping period”. Then I found out I wasn’t on our group’s internal mailing list. Maybe there’s something my boss is trying to tell me…

I don’t know about you, but it astounds me that you still have to set up an Exchange account through the Windows control panel instead of through Outlook. It’s not that it’s difficult, but it’s needlessly opaque, especially since users expect to go through Outlook, which is, after all, their mail application. I suppose I shouldn’t complain—job security and all that—but it’s baffling.

I’ve been clicking this goddamn doohickey since well before noon when the weather turned nice, but I’m still at my desk and my shift isn’t over. This stupid thing doesn’t work at all.

Our office overlords recently decided to replace all our trashcans with mixed-paper recycling bins. “Mini-bins” (small, parasitic black objects that hang off the side of the blue recycling bins) are attached to them, in the event that non-recyclable objects are discarded. Mixed paper goes in the blue bin. Everything else goes in the black bin. Despite the fact that our office generates almost zero recyclable mixed-paper waste (which was already adequately handled by two large recycling bins that we will still retain), management smiled upon this idea, declaring it Green, and delivered unto us the Mini-Bin System.

It’s entirely superfluous and mildly irritating (we’ve now no waste bins that can handle larger things like to-go containers, pizza boxes, dead hookers, etc.), but very simple to use. Paper goes in the blue bin. Everything else goes in the black bin. Repeat.

Nonetheless, to compound the already unwarranted expenditure on these new bins, we all have to attend a training session on how to use them. The mandatory “invitation” was sent out yesterday, so we all considered it an April Fool’s joke until our supervisor informed us that yes, we were indeed compelled to submit to instruction on how to use a fucking trashcan. All this waste—time, money, materials—in the name of efficiency. Boggling.