A the Choice

I am bill? · by Bill Berger

The Choice

I am 39 years old and sitting in front of an android.

I am 39 years old and have been working at IPG since 2001. I was “purchased” as part of an acquisition. I was still technically in the media department but working for a nice human that, after seeing there was a difference of some kind between me and say, her average media buyer, I was just building whatever this woman wanted. It was a small list of department tools like: a complete automation of their quality control including on-demand testing like software uses, organization of all their spending data for the basis of negotation, fully automated post-buy analysis systems, random reporting systems, a full transactional system for their largest car business’ digital media (had to learn that in an afternoon), hr tracking and reporting, automation of new overnight feeds and mid-flight warnings and whatever else came around. The Bill Berger “special” as it was called usually took two weeks at most from concept to working model. Iterate a bit, make better, etc. So, just the average bits and bobs…

I am NOT a professional programmer. Few classes (summer camp with an AppleII) and those monstrous red books were my only reference. I had no aspirations to program for a living nor do I have any knowledge of the arcana needed to craft an Excel or a Facebook.

We do have an official IT group that, well, hates me. I make things and get done. I do not have Gantt charts, spec pages, qa guides, manuals, or bleeding edges. IT works with some wizard thing called ColdFusion and an AS400. They have any number of broken, heaving, seizing websites to barely get a form up and back. I use VBA because I’m not allowed to install stuff on users boxes.

The android in front of me is from HR but insists that it is human:

::BILL MUST CHOOSE.::

“What, android, am I choosing between?”

::BILL MUST BE IT PERSON OR NOT::

“What is the job on the NOT side?”

::NO JOB. KICKED OUT WITH NOTHING. YOU ARE IN CONTROL NOW. CHOOSE.::

I have a young child at home and I am making most of our money. They knew the former and, given my pay, could guess the latter. So, I must choose and I am thinking what to say

::BILL: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I DO EACH AND EVERY DAY. CHOOSE TO COME HERE FOR MONEY.::

… and choose to move to IT as “my choice”.