A workplace gone weird

Today was a wacky day at my workplace. It featured visitors from Finland, lightning with eyes, email in stereo, and some of the people becoming all of the people.

I ran at lunchtime, like I usually do. When I came back to the exercise room, with its shower room for changing and bathing, I noticed a sign that said "If you clean up the shower room after you are finnished, the locker room will stay clean for the next time.", or something like that. Someone scribbled underneath it, "Are we all Finnish?" I would have liked to answer that one with "Yes.", or maybe even "Kyllä".

Later in the day, my computer thundered. Then it thundered again. This may sound like Alice in Wonderland, but I instructed my Outlook to sound thunder.wav whenever an email is received with "weather" or "lightning" or even "lightening" or "lighting" in the subject. There was an approaching storm, and our local operations center sent us all an email saying that the lightning watch has turned into a lightning warning, because lighting was sighting. Weird. This meant that instead of someone looking at the lightning stroke, instead the lightning stroke sprouted eyes and was looking at that someone instead. I stayed inside. I did not want to be stared at in the face by a lightning bolt. The second bolt was caused by my local division secretary resending that email out to all of us.

Which brings me to the next topic, duplicate emails. No less than eight times today, I got the same emails twice. An agency at my site would send out a message to everyone, including high level chiefs and secretaries, and including individual analysts like me. Then the secretary would send it out again, so that I got two emails. It's like emails in stereo. Next time it happens, I may tell the second sender that I have already seen it. There is a problem with the mailing or distribution lists.

Then finally was the ruling that all soldiers where I work (which is an Army post) must see a certain safety video or movie. It got emailed all over the place, and by the time it got to me, it read that everyone must see it. Somehow "all soldiers" transmogrified into "everyone". Further, we were asked to go to a certain computer server and find the tape of the movie there. Since when do you find tapes in a computer directory, unless perhaps they are backup tapes. Watch a movie on a backup tape? Not likely.

Then I attended a Toastmasters meeting in which Distinguished Toastmasters called a lectern a podium. A podium is a raised area for the feet (pod- means foot). A lectern is a stand on which you can place notes on.

And so ended a weird, weird day.