No Joy in Mudville Today

I think my site meter is taunting me. I signed up for many moons ago to track traffic to this site. A few days ago, I got my "statistics" email from the site meter folks and it told me that 0 (zero, zip, zilch) people visited my site last month... and also for the last 12 months. So not even I have been visiting it. It's that bad.

Anyways, the occasion for this writing is the apparent lack of sense of humor at my place of business. For Christmas, my wife got me this really cool Office Space kit which I loved immediately and wanted to decorate my cubicle with. Yes, it comes with a "Jump to Conclusions" mat. Yes, it comes with sample T.P.S. Report Covers. Most importantly for me, it came with that cool banner that says "Is this good for the COMPANY?"

At the risk of being goofy and/or nerdy, I decided to put it up. I also put the mat on the floor for use in difficult decision making, although I don't know what to do when I land on "???" or "Moot". I had assumed this whole experience would be "funny". I guess I probably assumed that lots and lots of people have seen the movie. I even left the box out on my desk so that people would associate the decorations with the movie.

Instead I got more questions than enjoyment.

"Is this good for the company?".... "what's that supposed to mean?".... "are you a company boy now?" Somebody thought that since I hung it over pictures of my kids that I somehow meant that breeding was good for the company. (Nottingus Shittingus, Latin for "I shit you not").

All in all, I think I've had about 4 or 5 people get the reference and about 30 blank stares. Oh, and somebody also told me that my Jump to Conclusions mat was a safety hazard. So I had that going for me too. Since the decorations have ceased to be funny, I took them all down. I don't want to spend all day explaining it. As with any joke, if you have to explain it, it's not funny. And I no longer am getting anything out of this now that it's not funny. Also, I feel that my productivity should increase now that I don't have to take time out to explain it....

...unless I get any more questions about the picture of my father in my cube. People still ask me about that. As I work in a cube farm, I thought it would be pretty sweet to have a picture of my father working in his cube farm. The good news is that when my father's office was moving from one building to another a while ago, they found an old picture (circa 1984?) of him at his desk on the phone and looking very serious. He's surrounded by several other cube farmers as well. If I could take a picture, I'd have one taken of me working in my cube with dad's picture up on the wall in the background so that my son can have it to take to his place of work. It's that cool. At least to me it is.

But that's no longer fun now either, as I have to tell everybody who passes by:
a) Who it is
b) Where the place of work is
c) How old (roughly) the picture is
d) What kind of computer/printer/phone is in the picture

So basically, I can't have anything cool up in my cube without having to devote time to it. I've become like a museum curator... or a park tour guide.

That picture is staying up though. That's my dad. And it's on the wall so it's in theory not a safety hazard. Unless I end up hitting somebody over the head with it. Then, it pretty much is.