I had to go out of town for a few days, so I asked Jake ████ from IT to keep an eye on Charlie's computer activity while I was gone. Of course, I couldn't explain the reason for the surveillance, Jake didn't know anything about the capabilities of the special account, even though he's the one who restricted its access for me. But IT is used to doing things without knowing why, so that wasn't a problem, I just told Jake to let me know if Charlie was spending unusually excessive amounts of time on his computer.
I remember that I flew back into town on a Tuesday night, and when I walked into my office, Jake was sitting there, waiting for me, which was a surprise, because it was way after hours – but like everybody else, Jake knew that I always stopped in at the office on my way home from the airport. No, he said, Charlie hadn't been spending unusual amounts of time on his computer – but he had been spending unusual amounts of time on his iPhone. I said that I was surprised to learn that Charlie even had an iPhone. "Well," Jake said sheepishly, "Charlie didn't have an iPhone until the day you left town. But then he came to me and asked if there was any way he could access that special Facebook account from anywhere other than his office PC – you remember you had me configure it so that's the only place it would work?" I confirmed that I did, but I could see where this was going.
"Well, anyway," Jake continued, but slowly, as if something about the look I was giving him was making him uneasy, "I told him sure, he could access it on his iPhone, but only as long as he was in the building, maybe a hundred yards outside but that's as far as the signal reaches, and you can't access that account through any other cell. But he said he didn't have an iPhone, which I thought was weird, because I thought that everyone in the office had an iPhone. But sure enough, I checked, and there's no record of him ever getting one. So I issued one to him. Was that OK?"
I wasn't sure, but I reassured Jake, who by now was thinking that maybe he was going to get written up for some kind of security violation.
But Jake was now looking positively glum, and I realized that he had more to say. He told me that he had monitored Charlie's iPhone feed for a few minutes – "just to make sure that it was working," he insisted, "I wasn't spying on him or anything." Of course, we both knew that that's exactly what he was doing, but he wouldn't have told me about it unless he had discovered something important, so I let it go.
"I don't know what he's supposed to be doing with your special account," Jake said, actually making little quote marks in the air. "And I don't want to know," he added, which was good, because we both knew that I wasn't going to tell him. "But he's doing this cutesy little personal stuff that people do when they start using Facebook for the first time. And that all he's doing. I think he spent an entire day looking at LOL cats, they really crack him up."
You probably know what "LOL cats" are, but I didn't, so Jake had to explain them to me. I imagine that you've seen the photo that's floating around the Internet, it's a little gray cat who's staring straight into the camera, with an oversized caption that poses the question "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" Hundreds of your cat-loving friends have probably sent it to you by now. And yes, it's supposed to be funny.
And it turns out that the "cheezburger" cat has spawned a cottage industry of people who create photos of their cats, complete with misspelled captions and bad English. I guess the point is that these are the kinds of images that cats would create, if only they knew how to use Photoshop.
Personally, I can't stand them. I think I'm pretty easily amused, but those grammar-impaired felines have always struck me as more annoying than funny. So you can imagine how surprised I was to learn that they're called "LOL cats" because there are legions of fans out there who love the stupid little furballs so much that they literally "Laugh Out Loud" every time they see one.
And it seemed that Charlie Carruthers, a serious man with no noticeable sense of humor, had turned into one of those fans.
"I guess you told Charlie that he couldn't stay in the office at night," Jake said sadly, after he had filled me in on the LOL cat phenomenon. "So he takes his iPhone and hangs around outside the building for hours. I'm not even sure he's going home."
I want to emphasize that I was very tired, I might have had a drink or two on the plane – I won't say that I wasn't thinking clearly, but let's just say that I was not as sharp as I could have been. At any rate, I figured that this particular issue could wait, so I told Jake that I'd speak to Charlie first thing in the morning.
At that, Jake looked even more morose. He looked down at the carpet, sighed, and shook his head. "There's something else you should know," he finally said. I waited. Jake shook his head again, then he finally looked me in the eye. "He's out in the parking garage right now. And he doesn't look so good." I think his voice actually cracked just a little. At that point I remembered that, although I tended to think of Charlie primarily as a personnel problem (no disrespect), a lot of the younger guys looked up to him as sort of a father figure. And I guess that Jake was one of those guys.
| Next |  |
[ Everybody's Friend Home Page | Selected Writings ]
©2013 Henry Charles Mishkoff