the dilbert principle

one thing i love about my job is that we don't usually have to deal with all the corporate bullshit, a la dilbert or office space or whatever. but every now and then...

griffin, our publisher (who, in addition to me, is one of our tech guys), came by my office today to tell me got up at 4:30 a.m. and went down to soperton to work on their computers. see, he doesn't like working on them during the day because my staff is super paranoid that he is going to mess things up -- and rightfully so -- so they hover around him and watch him over his shoulder and it drives him crazy. so as soon as he told me he had been to soperton to work on the computers, i knew i would get some phone calls from very upset staff people asking me to come fix things. and sure enough... about 10 minutes later my phone rang.

so this is how it works... griffin "fixes" the computers and then i go back and undo the damage he's done and try to solve whatever the original problem was. sigh.

i did get a nice surprise today -- thank you letters from the elementary school children i visit for career day! they all say pretty much the same thing:

Dear Mr Baucom,
     Thank you for coming to our school and showing us how you make newspapers. We really enjoyed your presentation. We hope you can come again.

some of the kids added comments about how they thought the plate and negative were cool, and one kid told me i was a good newspaperman. awwww.