There once was a time when I was employed by a financial institution.  This company used many paid-by-the-hour contractors who were more concerned with putting in their time to fill out the paycheck than with getting the work done.

One such contractor was a teenaged guy named Joseph.  Joseph was almost fresh out of high school, and doing contract IT work to pay his way through some nameless community college.  (I had respect for him on that point.)  He didn’t have much work experience, so he had to learn certain things (like lessons in busniess etiquette) the hard way.  Needless to say, he had to be taken aside on quite a few occassions to be told what he should or should not be doing/saying… but we liked him, so we tried to watch out for him.

So one day, I’m half-reading a hard-copy white paper while I wander back to my desk.  As I’m passing Joseph’s cubicle, I can hear him typing.  I stopped dead in my tracks to listen, because something about it just didn’t sound right.  Standing on my toes, I peeked over the cube wall to see the back of Joseph’s head and his monitor display.

I got a giggle out of the scene presented to me.  Joseph was typing away in Word, but the text was just meaningless garbage.  The document was simply row after row of random characters.  Obviously, Joseph was just trying to appear busy until the lunch hour came around.  Finding this opportunity to rich to pass up, I snuck around to the side of Joseph’s cube and BURST IN UPON HIM!!!  OMG… did he jump.  I never saw anybody struggle to close Word so hard and fast in my life.  Jocularity!!!

Since he obviously had nothing better to do, I decided to put him to work.  I took him down to our storeroom and set upon him the task of re-organizing and inventorying all the surplus hardware we had on-hand.  After explaining to him what I wanted, he started to give a little bit of attitude about the sheer volume of work ahead of him.  So I had to set him straight…

Me:  Don’t complain to me.  I’m not your Mom.  Just do the work, and consider yourself lucky.
Joseph:  Lucky?
Me:  Yes.  You’re lucky that I discovered you wasting your time, and not our manager.
Joseph:  What do you mean?  I was…
Me:  Don’t try to feed me a line.  You were just trying to kill time back at your desk.  In the future, when you’re trying to look busy… try using the Space Bar once in a while.

It’s true, you know.  For those of you out there in Pirate-land who’re not aware of it, listen to your keyboard the next time you’re typing.  Not all of the keys on your keyboard sound alike… and the Space Bar usually has a pretty distinctive sound all it’s own.

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