Here is an example of the kind of respect I command.

OK, so maybe we sent one of our remote employees - let's call him Hippy McNeckbeard - a replacement laptop with some extraneous equipment included in the box. And by "extraneous" I mean a half-eaten chocolate candy bar, some floppy disks, a postcard of Prince William, an inappropriately adorable background image, CDs with drivers for items you would only find in an antique store, a 2008 SF Giants calendar, and various other useless items.

Now, I.T. professionals know that remote employees are a special challenge. These employees are usually very smart, but far too ugly to have in the general population, so we "let them" work remotely. It turns out the time they save by not having to commute out of their parent's basement makes them extra wily and gives them extra time to plot revenge. And so, when the aforementioned employee returned his broken laptop, he sent along his own surprises.

It may not be well known that our Web Ops Director is 12 years old - which wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't so emotionally immature - so the Highlights magazine was for him. We'll also never be short of USB to PS2 converters again. To quote 30 Rock, those are "as useless as a mom's college degree." There are still terrible fights over who gets to keep the green plastic army men. Below, you can see the full array of items. The computer itself was lovingly wrapped in toilet paper and scotch tape.

Oh, and look: for me there was a personalized book: One Pretty Princess. Kids, this is why you don't put pictures of yourself on the internet.

     

Damn it.

And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse. I opened the laptop and OHGODMYEYES!

You win this round, Hippy McNeckbeard. You win this round...

Comments

[Picon]

That's a funny story. Well at least the parts that I understood.

"These employees are usually very smart, but far too ugly to have in the general population, so we "let them" work remotely." That's jokes.

You have a 12 year old employee?

Riddle me this, Batman: Why does it seem that everyone on Typepad is an IT professional?

[Skoolgirl]

The company I work for lets me work in the office. Hooray for not being ugly. lmao
and I don't think I want to know where you got the Prince William post card thingie

[Kymberlie R. McGuire]

I'm sad that I'm ugly and that I never got anything cool like this with my laptop.

[Melanie]

Now I know exactly what to do when I send in my various non-working laptops. The challenge will be to send something even better than Hasselhoff.

PS: It's true, the entire support team keep our mirrors covered with sheets.

[Colleen]

So hurtful. I work from home because you fools can't handle my sexy.

[oof! blam! argh!]

I always assumed the support team worked from home because they caught a glimpse of Hippy McNeckbeard once and didn't want to chance it ever happening again.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=714654216]

Too bad you couldn't fit a corndog in there Doug.

[Kevin G.]

It looks like Doug has managed to make one of my dreams come true today--I'm more popular with the support team than he is! (at least for the moment).