Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

(February 12, 2005)

So the boss, miraculously, got to the airport and got on a plane and got to London and then got to Rome.

I don't use "miraculously" lightly. Not in the way "awesome" has passed into common colloquialism. It really was miraculous. It really was quite the miracle. I'm not even sure how we did it. The entire day, nay, week, was a disaster.

During the interview for this job back in November, part of the "thing" he hired me for, as he swept his arm towards the general melee that was his desk and work area, was to "get him organized." Okay, I can do that. I'm good at that, being a process-minded type. Process. Logistics. It's what I did at GiantSuckingSound.com.

I've won awards.

But you know what? All the process in the world cannot help in some situations. Take the Titanic for example, hands down one of the world's most famous disasters.

I am certain that every person on the ship knew their job, knew what to do with what equipment and in what situation. But so what? It was already a disaster waiting to happen. No amount of protocol could have helped. Envision it: Midnight on April 10th, twenty minutes after slamming the iceberg, the Deck Chair Guy is a good do-bee and dutifully rearranges the deck chairs as per his work instructions.

This is me, trying to get the boss to the airport, with everything he needs, on time.

If you think it sounds easy, make note: this is a man who, on a daily basis, loses his glasses, CDs, DVDs, manuals, his glasses again, red handled pliers, cables, his glasses again, wallet, cell phone, keys, red handled pliers again... and the other day? He lost an envelope with 2200 crisp hundred dollar bills.

This happens because he moves at top speed, tearing around the office leaving a wake of wires, papers, drives, coffee cups, tools and unidentifiable bits of electronic parts.

Add to that how busy we are, how many times a day the phone rings, and the constant need for things to happen TODAY that take a week or six, and it means I wangle my way through a series of seemingly impossible feats every day.

These feats cannot be accomplished alone. And for this I am thankful for my circle of friends. To wit:

On Christmas Eve eve, Mojonine spent a half hour on the phone talking the boss through the finer points of purchasing electronic drums for his little boy. This was after about ninety minutes hearing him fret and query aloud what the fuck everything was. "Would you like to speak with a drummer?" I ventured. "Do you KNOW a drummer?" he asked. "I'm pretty sure I could put my hands on a drummer." Or twenty, I thought but didn't say. Mojonine helped him in no time.

Three weeks ago, onlyone did a marvelous trick in Photoshop that meant we could sent a photo of our system to a magazine who needed it that day. There would have been no way for me to do it. It involved skewing, rotating, distoring and resizing four different things.

Three weeks ago, Hub gave us the phone number of a venture capitalist that's already been in the office twice to talk about raising capital for us.

Two weeks ago, Sam helped me haul four six-foot table tops and eight heavy file cabinets from the freight elevator to our office so that the boss could rush to return the U Haul van before the garage closed. "He was going to leave you do to this yourself?" Sam asked incredulously at our fifth or sixth trip with a rolling cart Sam had spotted on the third floor.

Tuesday, Neil left his apartment in Medford at 3:30 and managed to get to PCs for Everyone in Cambridge, then to the office in Allston by 4:30, with two Gigabit Ethernet cards that the boss needed for the trip and was going to try (???) to go pick up himself. Then Neil called for a cab, to the cab company for which he dispatches, which is likely the single reason the boss made it to the airport at all.

I must say, the boss handles all these people in stride. I say that shows a spunk and open-mindedness that I quite like.

It's a wikkid fun job.

I really just need to wrestle the wheel away from him sometimes, because he just can't see that the iceberg could have been avoided by better planning and slowing the fuck down.