I wonder where Neil Scranage is today?

Why, when I was thinking about trying to design a user interface for a reconciliation tool and considering getting a chemical cup of free coffee, was I suddenly wondering where a person I hardly knew seven years ago, was doing now?

Well, one of the hundred or so subconscious conversations going around me at work became a conscious one today. I guess it’s like having a mouse trap set all day, lots of little fluffy mice walk over the trap without you ever thinking, then one, slightly plump one sets of the trap. A chain reaction of thoughts, just without cheese.

Now this subconscious mouse trap conversation was an incredibly boring one . It was not who had slept with who at the department night out. It was not even the one that ‘John had screwed up again, for the fifth time’. Nor was it the moaning about the coffee tasting like it had been purified through a chemicals plant. And funnily enough it wasn’t about how the day seemed to be going so slowly, (one that I was never able to work out, does that mean you haven’t got enough work to do, just keep quiet stupid). No it was something far more mundane than that. “I can’t turn my head for five minutes without him using my P.C when I’m not looking, it’s really starting to piss me off”.

Now that mundane subconscious thought became a conscious one today, because just like normal, small things trigger off a chain of afterthoughts. They trigger off things you don’t really want to think about, like the time you kissed ‘that’ girl at the school disco or like the time you threw up in your hand at that party and hoped nobody would see (but of course they did!). All the thoughts you tried to block, the hidden under the floorboards type memory ones, occasionally pop out at your head for no apparent reason like a big, fat, ugly spider.

I suppose it’s like when people say “How did we ever get on this subject?”, after finding themselves talking about pet food when only three minutes ago they were talking about project deadlines.

So, the conversation about not leaving your pc without locking it. Well, just like most company rules, they are there to be ignored.

“Rule no 5 – When users are not at their desks, they are required to lock their p.c to prevent unauthorised user access”

Now, most people don’t. If you go and get a coffee, you just don’t lock your p.c. And that’s exactly what happened to me, seven years ago, only three weeks into my first proper job. I had left myself open to a practical joke that could have gone seriously wrong.

I came back to my desk. An email was proudly sitting in my newly acquired inbox.

To : Rich Cooper
From : Andrew Walker

Subject : re: Alien Abduction

I think you have got the wrong person,

Andrew

That was strange I thought, I had never sent out an email to a person called Andrew. So I decided to read the message history and this is what I found:-


To: Andrew Walker

From : Rich

Subject: Alien Abduction

Andy,

This keyboard has been overtaken by an alien. I am having sex with your fingers right now, your keys feel so horny, I hope you return the complement.

Rich
xx


Five minutes later, a smirking Neil Scranage came to my desk. “Have you received any emails from Andy recently?” he said. He was proud of his prank. And, in many ways, I would have been proud of it too. But, and unfortunately for me, he had sent this email to the wrong Andrew Walker. Not the ‘open minded, up for a laugh mate’ Andrew Walker, but a senior manager in the company with the same name. So, fresh faced and keen to make an impression, I had just conveyed my undying sexual desire for a senior manager in the company I had just started working for.

And for that moment in time, which I thought was well confined to my under the floorboards memory, I thought I was going to get fired, then and there. Or worse still, being confronted by a large, balding, homosexual man in the lifts at work. Thankfully for me, nothing was said, I forced Mr Scranage to send an email of apology, and the senior manager decided to practice leniency, even though it was strictly against company policy.

Right, time for a coffee, only two hours before home time, I’ll just lock my p.c.