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deal breaker
Thursday, September 21 2000
In the morning that British-accented Information Systems Manager, the one who'd taken away my hard drive yesterday, was quizzing me in uncomfortable detail about the things she was finding on it. She wasn't accusing me of anything, and didn't even mention the illicit copy of Adobe Photoshop, but it seemed completely unnecessary all the same. She was wanting to know what I wanted to keep and what I didn't. I had no idea - there were all kinds of things stored on that hard drive, but almost everything existed in other places as well. So finally I told her to delete everything, just so she would leave me alone and quick poking around in my personal business.
I set up shop on a different machine, a so-called "server" (a 300 MHz P II) under my desk, and as I happily surfed the web and plinked away at the keyboard, various people from Information Systems came by to, in stages, restore functionality to my main machine. But they never quite got there. It turned out that Homesite, the application I use most, is incompatible with Windows 2000. This meant that I would have to download a patch. Furthermore, there were all sorts of incidental applications that needed to be installed, things like Eudora (which I use to check my Spies.com email) and FTP Explorer (which I use to connect to remote servers). Some of these applications are for tasks that aren't especially work-related, but they contribute to my office comfort and feeling of connection to the world, and as such are essential to my feeling of job satisfaction.
But then I found out that in the process of restoring my hard drive and loading it with Windows 2000, Information Systems had "gone ahead" and revoked my administrative privileges to my own machine. Suddenly, without warning or justification, my ability to install software on my office computer had come to a halt.
Of course I assumed this was a mistake at first, so I wrote a tongue-in-cheekly snarky email explaining that I do in fact know how to use computers, and could I please have my privileges back. But then I was informed that pending a decision of the oily new CTO from Manhattan, no one would be having admin privileges on their machines.
Well that was it, with that email all my good feelings about my job wilted away like a flower dropped into a pan full of boiling oil. I responded (with a CC to Linda and the oily CTO) that this was a horrible development, that my machine was unusable, and that it seemed pretty clear now that the "upgrade and install" thing had merely been a ruse to wrest away control over our machines.
It is, of course, part of my boss Linda's job to quell such inter-departmental sniping and pot shots taken by her underlings, so of course she sent me an email telling me I should calm down and not take out things on the overworked IS department. She even came to my cubicle, wearing her manager hat and being an entirely different person than the Linda I'm used to. I was nearly incapacitated with rage, but I had enough composure to explain that I felt like I was being treated as if I had just started working here today, given a "play-pen" computer with no privileges and none of my old environment. She suggested that I take the rest of the day off. A few minutes later she sent me an email "order" to go home and "chill out." So I got up and left.
During my lunch break I'd found an old 17 inch SVGA monitor in an alley just south of Colorado Avenue. It was already sitting in a SavOn shopping cart, so I parked my bike and wheeled the monitor all the way home on foot. To a casual observer I suppose I looked like clean-cut homeless guy with a preference for large electronic items, but I didn't much care, so long as the cops didn't bust me for wheeling a stolen shopping cart. (Displaced shopping carts are ubiquitous in Los Angeles; should you ever need one you can normally find a few in the alley or out on the corner of the street, where they're picked up by roving shopping cart recovery trucks.) I learned some things about wheeling pushing shopping carts today as I made the 7 block trek. It turns out that there's a good reason why many can-collecting bums drive their carts down the street, not the sidewalk. The little bumps you hit at every sideway crack are enough to eventually jar an overloaded shopping cart into complete disarray.
Unfortunately, after all the effort of bringing it home, the monitor didn't appear to work. The analogue part seems to be functioning fine, but the digital part cannot recognize my computer's VGA signal.
For most of the evening I felt powerless, demeaned and resentful from the events that had ended my work day. I found myself thinking that these things might actually be "the deal breaker" I've been subconsciously looking for. "A deal breaker," Fernando explained to me later tonight, is a catalyst that provides the momentum and excuse necessary for one person to end a deal with another. In my case this would allow me to quit my job and go in search of the next (and, not inconsequentially, the next increment up the IT payscale).
What with the randomizing effect of my housemate John and his friends, one can never predict how any particular evening will unfold at my house. Tonight while John was out doing whatever, Farley and Fernando popped by. When the door to my house is unlocked, they just walk in like it's their house, which is perfectly fine with me.
Farley, what an odd duck, began the evening by talking about the elusive "deal breaker" he needed to end his relationship with his bitchy stripper girlfriend. Without her providing a reason, he couldn't muster the necessary coldness to give her the boot. (If you'll recall the demise of my relationship with Kim, the "deal breaker" was my discovery of evidence that she was still reading my email.) Later Farley revealed that his girlfriend had even given him permission to "have other girlfriends on the side," something that struck John and Fernando as ominous. Obviously, they decided, she is only after Farley for his money; his father is one of the richest men in America.
I can't quite pinpoint what exactly it is about Farley, but has a certain something that makes his friends want to protect him. He's so full of boyish wonder that he strikes you as the sort who would merrily gaze up at circling seagulls and completely fail to see an approaching cliff. He's the hapless guy you hear about stuck for five hours in an elevator, and upon being rescued by the Jaws of Life, emerges with a big smile on his face, gesticulating wildly and saying "You wouldn't believe what I've just been through!" Consequently, even though he already has a girlfriend, Fernando has been trying to find Farley a new one. Tonight Farley was all dreamy-eyed about a girl Fernando had introduced him to last Friday. "Tell me more about her," Farley kept pleading in his distinctly boyish way.
My housemate John showed up, as did Sal (one of the Muslim Mafia guys). The plan for the evening (and somehow I got roped into it) was to meet Farley's tycoon father in Beverly Hills and have him treat us to a fancy dinner.
We ended up in the very heart of the most well-scrubbed, upscale core of downtown Beverly Hills, the part that gives the term "Beverly Hills" its glitzy upscale connotations. The intersections are at strange angles and the architecture is elegant and spilling outside the apparent goal of understated. The people on the street might have all been Middle Eastern, but they were so elegantly dressed as to make my contingent look like State College frat boys by comparison.
The restaurant where we'd be doing dinner was "The Grill." It was extremely upscale and, I dare say, just a tad too tasteful. The staff all wore white jackets and served us as though we were some band of royalty. Entrees were $30/plate on average. I looked around the room at all the elegant, beautiful customers feeling like I'd seen them before. I'm sure I had; I'd wager that there were a quite a few celebrities in the crowd.
One not-especially-remarkable guy walked in with an absolutely stunning blond on his arm. I mean, this chick was absolutely perfect, the sort you can't hope to ignore despite whatever motivations you might have to do so. Judging from her elegance and fashionably tall, slender beauty, it was clear that the unremarkable man beside her must be either massively wealthy or an A-list celebrity. It turned out, Fernando said later, that the guy was none other than Keifer Sutherland
Farley's father was a little old man with grey hair, red cheeks and rumpled complexion. His clothes were stiff brightly-hued and somewhat clashing monochromes (especially that tie!), indicating, it seemed, a style sense that had consolidated circa 1980. His matter-of-fact ears and bridgeless nose were exactly like Farley's, except distended by age. When he spoke, his accent was that of your typical unrefined Texas bidness man, not all that different from H. Ross Perot's. I'm not sure what exactly Farley's dad does for a living, but whatever it is, it must be at a very high level and involve banks, real estate, investors, and plenty of schmoozing in fancy restaurants and flying in Lear Jets.
During the meal, Farley and his father spoke quietly to one another while John provided pointers to Fernando about a possible job opportunity in the Dean's office at Fernando's former college.
Fernando and Farley are both dyslexic, and since John is a special education educator, the three have a common interest based around the subject of "special ability." But beyond that, the web of connection at our table was largely one of roommates. John is my housemate, Fernando was Farley's roommate in College, Sal is Fernando's housemate now, and John knows Fernando somehow, perhaps as a former roommate.
Sal, meanwhile, is hatching a big plan for a new dot com designed to connect businesses to one another via the web. He has possible investors all lined up and it's just a question of how to proceed. Farley's father is always eager to explore new financial possibilities. In our context, of course, this eagerness was expressed purely in fatherly, consultative sort of way. "What is this opportunity?" he quizzed in the low-key, up-beat way that gets seven digit checks written. Sal wasn't really sure, and just in the process of discussing it, we added a couple significant nuances to his embryonic business model.
It doesn't happen very often, but the New York steak I'd ordered was too big to finish. In a scene right out of that hilarious Simpsons episode where Homer and Bart discover the secret of the semi-truck autopilot, there I was poking at a large slab of meat on my plate, puzzled that I had no desire to eat it. The image I had of all that flesh packed into a ball in my stomach wasn't a pleasant one. I'm not really into this sort of traditional upscale American-food, but it was an experience worth having.
When time came to pay up, both Sal and Fernando reached for their wallets and offered to pay. It was a good social move, but of course the multi-hundred tab was destined to be paid by Farley's dad. Or maybe not. Whipping out a credit card in a slate-grey shade I'd never seen before, the little old man proclaimed, "I'll let the Japanese get this one."
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