The Perfect Man

My excuse this time is simply this: Too much work. However I am now in a more enlightened place. I have realised the work will never stop. I might as well work around it. This post is quite predictably about my workplace. Give me time and I will align myself to things that are more real. Here goes.

I know he will not read this. He is too tied up in the most mundane of things life has to offer. I am praying he will not read this and I know my prayers are answered even before I ask. This is a post about someone I work with. I will try not to be too critical of this person. The reason why I am apparently 'attacking' this person is because I feel a lot of us risk becoming like this too early. Let me be very clear, this is NOT what you want to be.

To maintain a level of decency, we will call him Mr X. No, "he ain't that cool".

He is 28 yeard old, works for a software company(but ofcourse) and is looking to get married. Simple guy, simple desires? NO.

Here is a simple example of this mans' persona.

We were to submit a document for review. Since the people who had to take a look at the doc were in the US, we were looking at a 4:00 in the evening submission time. I had made my changes to the doc sent it to Mr X and was waiting for him to get his work done. None of us could leave the office until the people onsite sent us a thumbs up(this is usually followed by an impromptu victory parade in the aisles). So I sat there twiddling my thumbs with hope in my heart. After about 2 hours, Mr X gets up from his place looks at me and gestures to come over. So I went up to him and he shows me the document. "There is a problem boss", he says. So i pulled up a chair and say, "Sure, tell me man". he showed me this screen.

"The flowchart is too big so i have split it across 2 images", he says.

I said, "That should not be a problem."

"No no, thats not the problem. The images are not aligned."

"They fit the document fine, what else needs to be aligned?"

"Look at the connector"

"I am looking at the connector, it looks good. What's the issue?"

"The connectors are not aligned"

I stared at the screen for some more time so he did not see the expression on my face. I took some deep breaths and looked at him trying to keep my face as expressionless as possible.

"The connectors are there so we don't have to bother about alignment. Why do you want the connectors to be aligned?"

He bit his lower lip and stared at the screen for some more time.

"You think so? Can't you do something? I feel they should be aligned."

"I think the flowcharts look fine", I said.

More staring followed. A very real twitch was beginning to develop on my face.

"Maybe we can trying moving the images a bit", he said.

"The image fills the entire page, you can't move it anywhere", I was slowly losing my cool now. The man stares at the screen for some more time.

"Ok fine, let me see what I can do."

I got up and walked away while congratulating myself on how well I had controlled my emotions. He had been staring at that flowchart for atleast half an hour. At this point if you are impressed by Mr X's attention to detail, go visit a shrink.

Everyday for me is an intense battle.