Lawrence and Pete
But in keeping with the modern new-economy tradition that everything, no matter how trivial, deserves its own web page, I have written the complete story so far of Lawrence the Fish.
Ironically, it still was a pretty good place to work, because they really believed in treating everyone with respect. I don't know how much of that came from Corporate Philosophy as promulgated by our Dear Leader, and how much simply came from the genteel friendliness of people from smalltown Central Florida. Even people who would have been the unapproachable frosty popular ones in high school, turned out to be open-hearted and caring.
When I started on the job, the workplace was in the closing stages of an infatuation with something called FIN, which stood for Fix It Now. That was all about how, if you see something wrong that you can do something about, but it's not 100% within your job description, you should still take care of it. The idea is to ensure a better guest experience. If you're a security guy and you pass an overflowing trash bin, if you think "I'm security and trash is not my job", you're ultimately risking a less-wonderful guest experience. You ought to realize that, since you can empty that trash bin, you probably should. It's all about the guests, not about job descriptions.
By the time I got to the company, the FIN craze had died down, to the point where people still had their FIN buttons on their cube walls and there were still some FIN posters in the breakroom. I was even given one of the last remaining FIN pamphlets and there was a two-minute segment on FIN in my orientation, but things had passed the stage of all-company half-day meetings run by professional training consultants.
Eventually the FIN posters got covered up by announcements of weddings and baby showers and birthdays, and got ragged, and came down. Eventually the FIN buttons on the cube walls got displaced by charts and graphs and new photos of grandchildren.
One day, out of the blue, all us tech operations folks were Outlooked to a meeting where they showed us a video about the Pike Street Fish Market in Seattle. You order a fish. They yell the order out to the guy at the register. Another guy grabs a sheet of wrapping paper and holds it ready; someone throws the fish through the air and the guy catches it! Another guy picks up a salmon and waggles its mouth at the camera, lipsynching "WELCOME TO SEATTLE".
There were interviews with the fishmarket guys, in that usual modern style where they're looking to the left of the camera, talking about how it was fun to work there because there wasn't any stupid corporate touchy-feely cheerleading.
Then they gave us a book about the Fish Philosophy, whose tenets are
which I read in one sitting. You know where.
I thought that was it, but a week or so later they called the ENTIRE INFORMATION RESOURCES DEPARTMENT in to see the fishmarket video, and at the end the Big Boss started tossing these stuffed fish through the air to us. From the labels it turns out that the stuffed fish were made by the same company that made the video and the philosophy book. Ruthless exploiters.
So, finally I'm sitting alone in my office, with this stuffed fish on top of my monitor. And the fish is looking at me with his googly eyes, and I realize, "That's a stuffed animal. I certainly know how to play with stuffed animals. And they did say "Play." Aha, an enjoyable opportunity for subversive misbehavior."
So I named him Lawrence, after the next-door neighbor in Office Space. He talks in a sort of generic-surfer slang, saying "Dude" and "Cool", and he's friendly enough; he's also xenophobic, selfish, petulant, and sometimes quite dim. Dogbert with the brain of Ratbert.
Here's some e-mail I sent out at the time.
The very first Lawrence-related goofiness came when I printed out a slip of paper with Lawrence's name on it, and affixed it to my ID badge. One thing that let you know you were dealing with a classy company was that when you joined the company you got a name badge, just like hotel staff wear -- and it doesn't use a little pin or tack that will poke holes in your fresh new Information Resources golf shirt. Instead, there is a metal bar with two strong little magnets on the ends, which adheres through your shirt to the metal backing on the badge.
So I snapped this on his dorsal, and he was now:
LAWRENCE THE FISH Information Resources
A Lawrence antic that happened soon after was that he put on the FIN button, perhaps reasoning that it and him were somehow kin. Also it said FIN on it, which is an important word for him, so he likes to keep the button around to remind him how to spell it. (He likes the ends of old French movies for the same reason.)
Then he started wearing signs on top of his button, made from sticky-notes. The first one said IT'S NOT JUST A TOY, IT'S LAWRENCE THE FISH. The second one said LAWRENCE IS GREAT.
I even took Lawrence with me to meetings for a couple days.
Attempting to get money for the Coke machine, Lawrence put up a sign saying "Guess the secret number and win $5. Only 50 cents to play." His plan was to get people to pay him and have them say a number, and then he'd just say "nope" and have a Coke.
Oddly enough my co-workers all saw through this gambit.
Rhonda was fairly understanding, and doesn't really think I'm crazy.
Lawrence was sitting on the monitor for my FreeBSD box, so he was plainly an important peripheral device, and I labeled him /dev/fish in BSD style.
Around this time other people were beginning to discard their stuffed fish, and I was able to snag a couple extras. I was going to put them on top of my monitor with Lawrence, but he got all cranky and morose, not wanting to share his space with others. Lawrence doesn't have very good people skills; he wants to feel special, and if he's not the only fish then he might not be special enough.
Remembering our Big EMC Disk Array, and to make Lawrence happy, I labeled them:
You'll only get this if you have seen the feminist bumper stickers they used to sell when I was in college.
Update: I happened to park my bike in my office; Lawrence has a note saying "GOT ONE!" now.
One of the droids got tired of riding around all folded up in the back of a speeder, and being bossed around by the sargeant droid, so he quit the Droid Army and went to live with Lawrence. Lawrence treats him sort of like a combination of a kid brother and a favorite pet. First they made a hot tub for him out of a bottlecap, and he was taking a bath for most of early December. They decided he was going to be named "Pete the Robot".
Lawrence and Pete
I cannibalized the patrol speeder and made Pete his own speeder
bike, which he quite enjoys.
Then the other droids got bored sitting around doing nothing, so I made the rest of the speeder parts into a little performance stage for them, with guitars and a drum kit, and they have a little Battle Droid Rock Band.
One of my co-workers saw this and said, "Oh, a little rock band! That's great!"
"Not that great," I said. "They only know one song, and it's Louie, Louie."
"You already have a blaster left over from the Droid Army. What possible use can you have for a railgun?"
"Plinking."
"What in the world are you planning to plink?"
"Old satellites."
So I gave him the railgun. It only took him about an hour for the idea to develop in his cybernetic brain that (a) we are inside, so he can't see the satellites, and (b) if he shot holes in the building anyway, he'd get us all in trouble.
So he gave it back and we're looking for something else to do with our high-energy power supplies.