Sock Puppets Inc.: Anthropomorphizing Alice

I really think Alice is my favorite co-worker. Her indefatigable optimism is astonishing. Breathtaking. Bordering on insanity. How can you not like it?

Alice has worked in this office since Bingam started the business. There are dirty rumors that she got her job doing dirty things, but I suspect Alice got her job because she sold the boss on religion. Her own particular type of religion - that the machines surrounding us have lives of their own, and any malfunctions they have are of their own doing. It's actually pretty compelling, isn't it?

Today, I was leaving the office to get some much-needed fresh air and I passed Alice whispering. Curious, I slowed, and overheard her coaxing, "Come on baby, you know you can do it. That's it, come on." I thought she was coaching her dog (Maybellina) through puppy-birth over the telephone. (It happened last year; she was heartbroken to have missed the event.) "That's it, Mr. Shiny, give us the file." Nope, no puppies. Just the computer.

Alice has a theory, she tells us. The computers are part of a karmic network. They give back to us what we give them. If we talk to them nicely, keep them clean, and don't gossip about them behind their backs, they will cooperate with us. Alice's theory is so indisputably nice, so innocent, that she's really won quite a few converts. The other day I did find myself nuzzling my mouse.

Sock Puppets Inc.: Gross George

Working in an office is a lot like being an animal at the zoo. You have all different sorts of species thrown together and no matter how hard you try to escape, maul one another, or steal someone else's fruit pop, in the end, you have to get along. (Otherwise the boss will tranquilize you. Am I mixing metaphors?) I feel that this is particularly the case in our office, where we walk around subject to someone else's whims entirely, never availed with a change of clothes, and slaving away to market prosthetic eye buttons. What we do really doesn't matter (I watch the Office too) - it's just the grist for our mill, not the soul-sucking mill itself. So I'm going to vent. I'll get around to introducing myself eventually, but first I want to bias you against my co-workers so that you're more inclined to like me. That brings us to Gross George.

George, bless his heart, was the inspiration for Boss Bingam's business, for which we all labor. George lost his eye. He says it was "in the war" but I chatted up his drunk his wife once at the holiday party and she whispered, in a conspiratorial tone, that it was really a childhood mishap. A playmate launched a rock at him and, lacking arms, he wasn't able to shield himself. Who would have guessed their game of rock tag really would put an eye out.

I think George has since then been on a crusade to prove that he really does only see half of what's out there. Selective sight is excellent - it allows him to ignore the signs in the kitchen instructing employees to wash their left-overs down the drain, to disregard the stares of his coworkers when he dips his tongue in the coffee pot to test its warmth, or to fail to observe the dried mustard on his tie. It's been there for THREE MONTHS George! Good god.

Today George sneezed vociferously onto his keyboard. He then leaned over, squinted his remaining eye, and examined the bounty. We're lucky to work with such an interesting fellow.