DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!
I am in a particularly tetchy mood today and have already vapourised five Codeword compilers. Brunch has mellowed me slightly but not sufficiently to NOT vapourise anyone who accuses me of a typo.
This thought came to me whilst I was walking Edna this morning, in what I like to call "Thinking Time", where there are no distractions such as Dog Buns! Quora. How many famous 'Malcolm's have there been? and I couldn't think of any. Does Malcolm Bradbury count? Once home a quick Google brought up this lot - Art!
Charming young men
These musical Luddites were managed by one Malcolm McLaren. Who is probably more notorious than famous. O and there was some bloke called Malcolm X, doubtless ripped from the pages of Marvel or DC. O, and Malcolm III, King of Scotland from 1058 until his death in 1093. Art!
Kingy with crown
He appears in That Loathsome Scribe's "Macbeth" as the son of the murdered Duncan.
As to the name itself, it means "Devotee of Saint Columba", probably Gaelic thanks to it's Scottish origin. Pretty close to 'Columbia', you know, the old poetic description of South Canada, because here's another famous Malcolm. Art!
Malcolm second from port
Conrad loved this series, as did the critics and audiences. Malcolm is the middle child of four boys as the eldest is off at military school, and whilst he is a genius, he is also as immature and destructive as his other siblings. His family is heartily disliked by their neighbours thanks to the always-plotting boys, who get into mischief as easily as other people breathe. Conrad always misheard the gifted class he's in as "Krell Brains" in a reference to "Forbidden Planet" when in fact it's "Krelborn", after the character Seymour Krelborn from "Little Shop Of Horrors". Art!
Thank heavens for armoured underwear!
Here an aside. The reason you don't see Rick Moranis in films any more is because his wife died suddenly and unexpectedly, so he quit his acting career in order to look after his two kids. Big man. I happened to be thinking about him whilst making my brunch before creating these very words.
ANYWAY of course - obviously! - none of this has anything to do with anyone named Malcolm. No, I am using my pet portmanteau term for 'Malicious Compliance' because that's what this Intro is really about. The Original Poster worked in second-tier IT support for a very large South Canadian retail chain with branches across the whole of South Canada. No names given thanks to Non-Disclosure Agreements and fear of being sued. Art!
Perhaps
It was coming up to the end of the financial year, where management were being extra-specially tight-fisted in order to come in under budget and thus earn a big fat bonus for themselves. Thus there was a strictly enforced NO OVERTIME policy, which was pursued with extreme diligence and weekly e-mails warning that there was to be NO OVERTIME. Did I mention the NO OVERTIME policy enough?
Possibly
OP was doing duty on a Saturday, covering the later part of the day's shift with his partner, Matt, who had started at the crack of dawn to cover the morning calls. Things get really, really busy and have not slackened off when it's time for Matt to leave, so he calls management and asks -
NO OVERTIME!
Okay, bye then. Off he goes, leaving OP alone. Then disaster strikes; a server fails and dozens of stores cannot process transactions or take card payments.
Here an aside. When I worked HR at Sainsbo's, this would have been immediately classed as "Business Critical" and IT would have been on it like a bonnet until it was resolved, no messing about as to whether OT would be involved.
Definitely not
OP's end time rolls around and he's made all of 0% headway in solving the problem, so - he goes home because remember NO OVERTIME. He leaves a phone message for the on-call management, which they ignored since problems like this rarely arose. In fact the server failure isn't discovered until Sunday, whereupon management blow up OP's phone trying to find out what happened and how to resolve it. Which he cannot respond to because he'd have to log on and that would breach the NO OVERTIME policy.
Possibly
Inevitably he gets called into the office on Monday, asking why he didn't stick around to solve the issue? He presents the repeated e-mails about NO OVERTIME and is quietly dismissed, because manglement realised they'd shot themselves in both feet and then stuck them firmly in their mouth. Instead of having to pay a couple of hundred in OT they lost at least half a million in sales. There was no follow-up to this but Your Humble Scribe is betting many of those managers responsible 'left to pursue other business opportunities'.
Could be
Wowsers, that was a lot longer than I expected. Next!
"The Sea Of Sand"
When we left the Doctor, he had sneaked into one of the bio-vores' buildings and is now acquiring background information about them.
He whistled, impressed. That must be the date the complex went into operation. No wonder Professor Templeman couldn't explain which terrestrial culture built Makin Al-Jinni! A date like that pre-dated all but the very earliest Nile civilisations, who simply couldn't have built such a site.
Further inspection revealed that the building consisted of a single giant room, around the edges of which were banks of technical equipment, with corresponding display screens set into the walls, nine feet above the ground. Everything seemed to have been constructed with glass, used to seal in the delicate components within.
"Perhaps this isn't just a case of using local resources. Perhaps their home is rich in silicon-dioxide," the Doctor mused to himself. Having said that, even if only to himself, he needed to look for information about the alien homeworld.
"Baseline Referential Data" seemed a likely possibility, a banner located above a bank of dusty, angular equipment racks. Pressing the Master Operator switch brought up three-dimensional display of a world that was not Earth, not at all, instantly recognisable as a different planet. The Doctor squinted at the stellar background, rotated the virtual model, zoomed in and out.
"Say hello Delta Pavonis," he told the instrument panel.
Now we have a 'Where'.
Sticking With Astronomy As A Theme
More from the BBC's promotion of a competition for aspiring astronomical photographers. Art!
"The Eye Of God" by Weitang Liang
This was the winner in the 'Stars and Nebulae' field, and it's known as the Helix Nebula, even if it looks more eye-ish than helical. What you're looking at here is the outer layers of a star, expelled as it nears the end, lit up by the star itself.
That Lord Peter Wimsey Crossword
Let me baffle you with another clue: "To smallest words great speakers greatness give; Here Rome propounded her alternative (6)"
And the solution? "VANITA"
No, I've no idea what it means, either. A figure from mythology? A public speaker? A forum for debate? Art!
It can't have meant the above since such a retail store never existed in Dot Sayer's day. There is "VANITAS" which is Latin for "Emptiness". You see why I gave up trying to solve it myself?
Finally -
We've hit the Adjusted Compositional Ton, so I shall wrap it up here and see what's for lunch. YES I KNOW I ALREADY HAD BRUNCH. Deal with it.
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