Employee Forgery by space bug
June 22nd, 2006 5:08 PMSteve is the new director of my office's newest division. He works from home. Home, in Steve's case, is an elbow macaroni jar on a file cabinet. Steve is a snail. He has an office asstant/roommate named After-Party. After-Party is a zebra fish. While After-Party has had a lot more experience than Steve, Steve showed a lot more initiative right away, taking care of that algae problem the macaroni jar had so nicely. So, he was put on the payroll and promoted to be the director of our new underwater division. He got a staff photo and an email address. My coworkers now call email from steve "snail mail", which gets a little confusing (though his response time sometimes leaves a bit to be desired, it's true.) He doesn't type so fast with just the one foot, I think, so we're trying to be sensitive to interspecies work relations. I filed his resume in with the rest of our personnel files.
As the office already provides for Steve's room and board, his paychecks are a little smaller. Also, we may need to look into tax laws and how they're applicable to invertebrates this week before the end of our fiscal year. The payroll system wasn't sure about it, and neither was the office through which we get our health insurance...
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You mean I've been exchanging email with a snail? What a slimy thing to do!
I'd like a little bit more of an explaination on how Steve spoofed the rest of the office.
Admittedly, that's where this task falls short from what I'd hoped for. My office only has four, close-knit people in it, so anonymity in something like this is nigh impossible. There was a hope that I could snow one colleague into thinking Steve was a real person with the help of another who was in on it (we may be hiring people out of state in the near future so it wouldn't have been *totally* out of line), but it fell flat because I'm a terrible liar anyway and just *can't* if I'm confronted with a straight up question unprepared. Like in high school when my Mom asked me what time I *really* came home, or when, say, the coworker I was hoping to prank unknowingly looks over my shoulder at the email addresses I'm editing and asks blankly "So, who's Steve?"
Gaaah.
I caved.
So, while I tried to think of another way to make that better for a few weeks (note the forged paycheck - which I"m proud of especially- has a date of mid may) I couldn't think of anything good, got sick of sitting on the evidence I'd already created, and submitted it as it was, thinking that this could perhaps be forgiven as "unique requirements for different working environments".
I don't know. I think there are still portions of the task you could have gone above and beyond to make up for parts you felt aren't in your reach.
Technically speaking it doesn't require you to fool the people in the office, merely to have them interact. I checked this before I voted, because I really liked this but wasn't sure that it fulfilled it. But in fact it perfectly matches the requirement, and is so clever and cute and well worked out that I said YES!
Steve seems pretty rad. I hope that After-party understands why Steve got promoted, and shows just a little more gumption in the future.