NO!
Your Humble Scribe is not talking about that memorable scene from the king of documentaries, John Carpenter, in "The Thing" where Garry turns to impart bad news to MacReady.
GARRY: The generator's gone
MACREADY: Any way we can fix it?
GARRY: It's gone, MacReady.
Art!
The first intimation that Outpost 31 is in doo-doo deep as the Mariana's Trench
Ooops. Okay, I confess I put the first picture up because that's the one that'll come up on Facebook, and the second one just isn't as striking.
No, what I am referring to is the fact that once you send an e-mail, it has gone. Not quite beyond reach, you can still retrieve it in Outlook if you decide discretion is a better virtue than honesty, but you have to get there before the other party reads it. With the old-fashioned missive known as 'a letter', there was a possibility of retrieving it from the postie, or nicking it off the doormat once it got to destination*. Art!
Conrad remembers Jo at Connexions sending an e-mail to her friend, mentioning a Youth Training Scheme involving vehicle mechanics, and dismissing it airily as young men learning how to 'pimp their ride'. Art!
Except she sent it to the whole office, didn't she? All forty people. O how we laughed.
Then there was Clare at the Co-Op. She was a team leader and wanted to co-ordinate her team's shifts for the next week, and she was over-hasty about it, because she missed the 'f' out of 'shift' when she circulated the e-mail. How the spellchecker didn't pull that one up I'll never know.
ANYWAY what this Intro is really about is another tale of Manglement from Quora, sprung from the question "Have you ever accidentally discovered you were going to be fired?" Well yes, explained Original Poster. Their Bottom-Hole Boss had sent an e-mail to the whole region informing them that they wanted OP to be fired, with a list of reasons. OP had then received another e-mail from HR, explaining that they wanted to "Get rid of the worthless piece of shift today". OP sent a copy of the e-mails home, packed up his office and was sat waiting for his BHB to turn up.
By which point BHB may have realised that he'd messed up rather badly. However, a word you surely expected to see, those e-mails had long been sent and were irretrievable. Perhaps BHB also informed the HR Idiot that it might have been a good idea to be discreet, not overt.
Thus OP was fired.
That wouldn't be a good place to end the tale, right? We want some schadenfreude whilst eating our popcorn.
Once OP got home he sent the offending e-mails to the Head of HR and the Chief HR Officer, probably shocking them at how unprofessional both BHB and HR Idiot had been. They were further unenthused when OP informed them of his intention to sue for HR information being sent to non-essential personnel. Once they were gone they were gone.
Within two months both BHB and HRI were fired. How's that for closure? and not getting another person to review what you're about to send. Remember, 'Send' is the end. You can't get it back. Art!
E-mail sack?
What On Earth?
Conrad is left rather puzzled by this one. Art!
I'm guessing that this is a Czech vlog, quite possibly about the modernisation of a rail link between Czechia and Slovakia - one assumes Ċadca and Svrcinovec are towns linked by a rail 'Corridor'? Art!
Half right, anyway.
Why on earth would this show up on Youtube? Conrad cannot remember ever looking up or at Czech videos - or is that scary animator Jan Svankmajer from Czechia? I may have to watch the fnorping thing, just to satisfy my curiosity.
"The War Illustrated"
More from Edition 182. Art!
This was a new one to me, I'd never heard of the "Convoy Rescue Service" before. The role fell to a specialised ship at the rear of any convoy, whose duty was to rescue from the sea any crewmen from merchant vessels in the drink. You can see the netting, which would be 'trawled' across the waves to pick up men unable to climb due to exposure or injuries. Ratings would be ready to assist them, and there was a fully-staffed and stocked operating room in the bowels of the beast. The article credits the CRS with saving the lives of over 1,300 merchant navy crewmen.
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor and Alex are both getting an education as to what life is like in New Eucla post-Big Crash.
Alex had to bite his tongue to prevent blurting out observations about
alien intruders.
‘Oh? I would have thought old
folks like Lenny would be most upset about what they can’t have. After all, he’s old enough to remember things
before the Big Crash.’
Mike grinned a mocking grin.
‘He’s a moany old sod, isn’t he!
Yeah, you’re right. But, the
government created a set of books after the Big Crash for anyone coming along
afterwards, sort of a picture library of what we’d achieved. It goes up and down the coast from one end to
the other with the couriers. Getting
pretty worn, now, but they keep people abreast of what we had. So we don’t forget.’
Alex turned a wondering eye on Mike.
Had the Doctor, who seemed to have at least three different agendas on
the go at any one time, manouevred them into close proximity in order that they
had exactly this conversation?
‘Mike, Upstairs on Arc One we’re at the cutting edge of human
technology. Nuclear power, electronic
communications, computer-controlled atmosphere, medicine, pharmacology, hydroponics,
blah blah blah. Everyone up there –
Every. Single. One. – would swap Arc One for New Eucla in a
heartbeat. Everything Upstairs is
running out or breaking down. A single
meteor could destroy the whole sphere in ninety seconds flat. A serious fault in the fusion motor would
kill fifty per cent of us within five minutes.
We live – sorry, they live –
in an environment that barely sustains itself from day to day. No matter how backward life might be here,
it’s still life. ’
Yes, Alex, but they have to deal with Hunting Spiders.
Bring On The Circles, Auntie Beeb
Yes, a little photographic relief after a wall of text. Who does that author think he is? Art!
Courtesy Thomas Burke
This is from the port of Syros, in Greece. One glance at that bright blue water will instantly reveal it's nowhere near the murky waters that encircle This Sceptred Isle. Thomas doesn't explain what these circles are, except that they are 'public art'. To be admired and looked at but not sat upon, 'twould seem, apart from seagulls.
Still Kicking Them Whilst They're Down
"The Marvels" continues to underperform wildly at the box office, with a whole host of vloggers on Youtube pointing, laughing and saying "I told you so". The drop-off in revenue between the week of release and last Friday was record-breaking, except in a bad way, because it's never been that bad for any superhero film. Art!
Figures as of Sunday evening. Using Conrad's divide-by-two rule for receipts, this film has only made back $80 million, meaning it's still $220 million in the red. Mind you, it has gone past $150 million. Which is not really a success when the bar is so low. Currently it's playing at just over 4,000 South Canadian cinemas, a total that will get cut as revenues slow down, causing them to shrink further, because why continue to lose money over it? Indy 5 cut the cinemas it was playing in by 700 after two weeks, and another 1,000 a week later.
And consider this: there are film critics and reviewers out there who consider that the total box office needs to be divided into three to represent what the studio makes back. If this is the case, them TM has only made back $54 million.
Ooops.
Finally -
I'm off to get a brew on. I need Darjeeling!
* You'd also need a fishing rod, heavy line and superglue.
No comments:
Post a Comment