A Series of Unfortunate Events
So, you know that feeling you get when you’re at work editing porn and a stranger comes in, mistakes you for a secretary, and hands you eviction papers for your office? ‘cause I do.
In other words, it was a typical day at the office.
As many may already be aware, porn has deep pockets, and I was bought a brand new iMac at work that exists solely for the purpose of ripping old, bad porn DVDs. However, when this process began our instructions were simply “rip these DVDs,” and we failed to interpret that as “rip the individual scenes from these DVDs as separate movie files.” So, silly us, we started ripping entire feature length porn DVDs. When this error was cleared up, I was instructed to go back into the QuickTime files we created and cut these movies down to their individual elements. So, over the course of two days, I have been editing nearly five terabytes worth of porn. It’s good that I never meet women I can try to impress, because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to honestly say “I am a video editor, and I do not work in porn.” But that’s neither here nor there.
As I was nearing completion of this project, a man walked into my office and caught me at it. Now, it is worth remembering that there is a children’s charity run out of the back, so whenever people walk in, I do my best to hide any porn that may be in plain view. But, just in case I’m not fast enough, I try to screw my face up in look of deep concentration so that if anyone does catch me, they will immediately realize that I am hard at work and not enjoying myself. Though to be fair, since I then immediately hide what I’m doing anyway, they might just think I am a very dour man who enjoys pornography.
In any case, the man looked at me and said “I have these papers for someone.” I then promptly said to myself for the first time in my life, “Hey, I’m someone!” And since the man seemed disinclined to offer any more clues as to what he was holding or who it was for, I agreed to take them. He handed me a loose stack of about a half a dozen copies of the same form: A letter from our landlord’s lawyer informing us that if we don’t pay the rent within the next ten days (which we appear not to have done for a very long time), we must vacate the premises. I know my company isn’t in great financial shape, but I was still a bit surprised to learn that a company that seems inclined towards paying me so well, if never on time, is about to end up on the street. But there was nothing really to do but bring the papers back and give them to someone. So I did, and like a good American, I didn’t ask any questions.
A few minutes later, our accountant stormed out asking if the man had asked for him by name, or if the papers had at least come in an envelope, and I said no. And he started off on a nice little tangent about how irresponsible of the lawyer that was. “It’s not a big deal because we have no secrets here and we’ve known this was coming, but if this had been a real company and people saw this, there’d be a lot of panic.” Clearly not panicking, I paused for a moment to assess the implication that I wasn’t working for a real company, but I let it slide. The accountant explained that this was all part of an on-going discussion with the land-lord, told me that we are not moving out in ten days, so I shouldn’t worry. And for a lack of anything better to do, I decided to take his word for it. At least for the next ten days. At that time I might start asking myself what kind of discussion actually involves not paying someone and having them send a lawyer after you.
-TC