Once upon a time I worked for the Humongous Electronics Company — HEC — which insiders referred to as HEC, pronounced like the mild “oath or intensifier.” This usage was discouraged as detrimental to consistent branding, but flourished nonetheless.
However, the company having long since gone out of business, I will use the term throughout this post, on the grounds that the statute of limitations for violations of the Humongous Electronics Company Style Guide has long since expired.
Anyway…. I loved working for HEC because, as a writer, there was no requirement to be physically present at any HEC facility, except for occasional staff or client meetings.
Otherwise, I simply plied my craft at home, sending drafts of scripts and speeches winging their way to internal clients through HEC’s proprietary version of the internet.
Also, HEC was a uniquely forgiving environment, my colleagues and managers largely consisting of incorrigible bohemians who insisted upon imbuing the most mundane deliverable with flashes of zany brilliance.
Here’s one example of my own handiwork, from the Security for Humongous Electronics Company Systems Handbook, in which I urge a measured approach to admonishing an employee for a lapse in password hygiene:
“Do not berate the user in inordinately harsh terms. Instead, gently explain why bacu\cod06TNY07X6QW9ndsXLcMczeFTuDWcUFVN2CvuhUzJVA is a good password whereas PASSWORD or 1234 or SCREWHEC are not.
However, if the user seems irremediably befuddled by the intricacies of the system, exercise caution in granting any but the most basic access privileges, thereby minimizing the risk of malicious intruders playing hob with mission-critical business functions.”
This particular project was a lot of fun, as the clients were ex-military members of the Government Systems Group, and I got to attend meetings with Air Force and Navy brass, augmented on occasion by a blond lady from the NSA who seemed to be in charge.
On these occasions, I always wore a trench coat and did my best to project an aura of mystery.
Where was I? Yes. The dancing video. For a high-visibility customer event, one of the more aggressively bohemian producers created a video featuring dancers, portraying happy HEC customers, prancing and pirouetting to spritely music in their corporate cubicles.
This was intended to imply the ease with which previously onerous tasks could be completed with HEC computers.
The producer failed to reckon with the fact that the CEO, a no-nonsense engineer of stolid Scandinavian extraction, might have preferred a more direct, engineering-centric approach.
At the event, the CEO, to whom we will refer as Agnar Jensen, sat stone-faced and bemused throughout the seven-minute running time of the video.
Upon its conclusion, Jensen remarked to the hard-nosed corporate customers as follows: “For the benefit of those less attuned to the avant-garde, the video was meant to convey that with our computers, your company will have smooth sailing.”
I like to think that the sailing reference harkened back to Jensen’s Viking ancestry. Jensen himself might have briefly fantasized about laying waste to an unsuspecting Dutch village full of avant-garde video producers.
Needless to say, the producer and her team, not to mention the internal clients who absolutely loved, formally approved, and lavishly funded the terpsichorean treatment, were rendered prostrate with mortification at Jensen’s chilly response.
Shortly thereafter, every copy, which in those days took the form of DVDs, was crushed, shredded and ultimately burned.
To ensure total destruction, I understand that the guys from Government Systems supplied some phosphorus grenades which they had kept on hand for old times sake.
If you think the creative team and their internal clients were summarily fired, you would be wrong.
Nobody was ever fired from HEC. That, and the working at home part, are two of the reasons my colleagues and myself consider our time at HEC among the best years of our lives.
The End
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