Whats for Lunch

What’s for Lunch

I’m in my twenties waiting in an office for friends and lunchtime.

I am at my desk and trying to figure out what to do today. I’ve never had an official job description for my career. Well, that’s not true, when I scooped ice cream there was about five lines of whatever. It reduced to keep clean, don’t steal, don’t leave unexpectedly etc. This job doesn’t need me to clean, there isn’t any money lying around, and if I leave unexpectedly, and people expect me, I expect to be fired.

I’m waiting for some colleagues to go to lunch, but there is someone in my doorway and he’s got the “wait til your father” face on. My dad is up in San Francisco, and unless he speeds, it’s going to be a long wait. There is an expert IT person. IT are the only department where they are assigned the name people mainly. HR sometimes, but IT almost always. You could be a sr|jr media buyer|supervisor|director (no jr) and, if you tried hard and were good, you could go to the moon if you believed or did something. It was always unclear why people were promoted, but usually you could predict it. You needed to stay in position X for N years, hit various KPIs, and pack your head with as many facts to be applied to demonstrate your expertise.

I’m waiting for why I’m in trouble or if my father is driving down, and I don’t want my father driving, as it’s a Monday and well, I can’t go to lunch or the movies on Monday. It’s the former: “You have an unauthorized wifi access point.” I agreed and that startled him. “You need to unplug it immediately.” He didn’t have any power over me and I’m using a complex technique mastered by two-year-olds to piss people off: “Why?”

There are so few people who aren’t angered by that simple ask. The thing is, I’m sure what the answer would be. I’d asked myself many questions about my wifi access point and had concluded that it was a good idea. I didn’t ask for permission….

…and now this is where you get to say “why?”

I would answer “I didn’t think you’d let me because you’d think it wasn’t secure.”

He never asked me “why did you want to do this at all.” This which would have told him that we needed to figure out this wifi stuff and fast, but he was happy on his mission to prove that I had done something wrong. He was hungry too and it didn’t seem it was going to turn his way.

Now, that wasn’t exactly how it went down. Almost everyone I’d meet in my career would never counter with “why” because after a few “whys” are asked on a single issue, a singularity opens and swallows the world. So why must be limited or we’ll ALL DIE (hand slap on wall leaving bloody hand). I agreed that if he could connect to my wifi access point, that I would immediately apologize and give him this property I owned to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. This pleased him initially until he asked my network name, I wouldn’t give it to him, and he couldn’t even tell it was there. While he was doing that, I was answering emails while connecting to my wifi point that he couldn’t find unless he got some information he didn’t have from me. I waited and he escalated that we needed to “do more.” I suggested many other things we can try: we can go ten floors downstairs and see if we can connect from the street to make sure the actual place where this might be hacked and problematic was there. Try other areas and behind walls. We could try… and he left. My wifi was still working great and my friends are here. Let’s eat.

We are headed to a complex restaurant that serves mongolian barbecue. No mongolian has tried mongolian barbecue unless you mean he’s a mongolian barbecuing which he eats plenty of and would like a change of pace as variety is the spice of life. The restaurant is complex, not because of mongolian meaning differences in different contexts, but because the patrons and the restaurant hate each other.

The customers love the food but hate paying for it. Even though it is plainly obvious of several things, these people have told you, not directly, that they expect you to get, order, and eat an amount of food that you will enjoy that will leave them enough from all the costs they have happily outlaid so you can slice open your hands in a brillig display of strength. I’m thinking I should file something away: [IT’S GOOD TO TRY TO STEAL FOOD FROM PEOPLE IN THEIR FACES AND IF THEY DON’T LIKE IT SO WHAT]. That seems both right and wrong.

The three of us are walking and I’m on the far left. I stopped thinking of mongolian barbecue and mongolian barbecue and mongolian barbecue. Most of these are good, but some are gross. If you think hard, it’s also true that it is gross or gross if you eat a gross.

I’m listening as the woman on the far side of me is talking. I assume everyone has stopped thinking of mongolian barbecue, and we’re listening to her talk. Her name is Sue and she is telling us a story about her childhood and I’m preloading seeing if anything funny is going. I know a few things about her, lived in Azusa (funny name), had a strange license plate but I’m not seeing anything yet. She describes some difficulty in her childhood development, she’s light about it, so it seems she’s okay. No whispering or hiding so I’m sure if I’m nice we might laugh and have fun. Usually, if you make a fast connection that can blow the doors off and I steel myself. Sue: “When I was young, I had a speech imp—”

…now by now, I’m sure I’m not finding anything. We’re heading to a discussion of her childhood disability. Maybe go back to thinking about piles of mongolians or something nicer.

Sue: “When I was young, I had a speech impediment.” She’s starting to mock herself now: “ooo-dee-ooo-dee—”

I just got the green light by a stupid sounding voice. Now: funny sounding voice, two hits, Florence Foster Jenkins, and Nell. Got only a little time left before it’ll suck and not work and I go, kinda risky, “Who knew they were raising the Nell of Azusa.” Clean hit. The middle lady fell to the street laughing in tears, and Sue was mildly amused. She didn’t like that I’d interrupted her funny voice. Florence wouldn’t be right as she sang words. It was good but not great and I hope the middle lady remembers that for the rest of her life.