All that talk about the roaring 20’s yesterday gave me a hankerin’ for a gin martini.  Daisy and Tom say “hi” by the way.

Obscure literary reference aside, actually it was the boop boop-ee doop thing that started me thinking of something else…

Back when I had a job (THANKS FOR BRINGING IT UP!  stink eye, stink eye) there was a time when several colleagues in my group worked remotely – in some combination of home or regional offices.  In other words, there were plenty of us who weren’t located at the Mothership…er…company headquarters.

This life-goes-on-outside-the-Mothership was such a bizarre concept for those employees who had been fully subsumed into the Borg that they had to come up with a name for us to fully encapsulate our appalling, renegade spirit.  The name?  Remotees.

I know you were trying to make US sound like robots to deflect some of the robot talk from your ownselves, ya Borgy Borgers!

But we Remotees fully embraced the term.  And even went so far as to make the title completely soul-less by eliminating names and instead giving ourselves numbers.  I was Remotee Three. 

And whenever we needed to ping each other during work via instant messaging, we would have some fun with it, “Remotee Three requests access to Remotee Four.  Please respond, Remotee Four.”  And we would throw in “beep boop” or similar roboty noise-words to add to the fun. 

Mostly this “instant chat” stuff would go on during conference calls being led by the Borg at the Mothership.

One such time, when I pinged Remotee Four, he responded with, “Remotee Four present and accounted for.  Interface granted.” 

But instead of the expected “beep boop,” he made a typo and what actually appeared on the screen was, “beep, boob!”  Change that p to a b and it becomes a whole different show, doesn’t it? 

At which point I begin laughing.  So I type back wondering why that particular word got spell-corrected.  Did he use that word often?!? 

He types back, “yes!” and the hilarity level escalates from there.

We’re typing back-and-forth.  I’m laughing so hard tears are streaming down my face.  I can barely breathe, when my manager calls on me with a question.

I’d been on “mute” this whole time.  So when I take myself off “mute” the only noise that comes out is fffwheeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEP!    [picture pinching/pulling the opening of a blown-up balloon so it makes that gawd-awful screeching noise.  Yeah.  It was exactly like that.]

Pull UP!  PULL UP!!!  But I quickly realize I can’t recover from this nosedive, so I hit the “Disconnect” button on my phone.  When I catch my breath, I dial back into the conference call and act like I’d been talking the whole time, “and so those would be some quick ideas off the top of my head…”

At which point, my manager is yelling something about “didn’t catch that…technical difficulties!  Start again, please.”  And so I start in again.  This time from the top.

Why won’t anyone hire me?!  As you can see, I’m fun and creative.  I think quickly on my feet.  

Remotee Three available for work.  Beep, boob!