More From the Inbox.

Progress continues!

Some peculiar messages from the inbox today.

Director Arketer

I am presently serving in one of our listening posts and am finding a peer increasingly difficult to deal with. Specifically, I will say something to them and they will go silent a moment before- for want of a better word- bristling with offense before replying in a hostile and unkind manner to things I have not said.

Now, when I say I am saying something- I do not mean I am calling them names and criticizing. Let me give you an abbreviated dialogue. M: Shall be Me, P: Shall be said Peer.

M: Good morning!

P: What makes you think your morning is so much better than mine?

M: I... didn't say that.

P: How dare you say I am too stupid to tell what you mean with your snide comments!

M: Is something wrong?

P: Accusing me of mental illness now? Ugh, go die in a fire.

That was the first and most memorable incident. Every interaction since has followed a similar pattern. This is not a personal grudge, they have been behaving the same to almost everyone except the sub-director thus far, but even then they seem to tremble with offense.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. That is troubling behavior. Yours was not the only such complaint from your Listening Post and Auxiliary Lab and I intend to look into the issue. I would hypothesize that they are having some sort of personal crisis. I hope to have a discreet inquiry launched.

Director Arketer,

I must object to the removal of my favorite cereal from all cafeterias over what is very clearly a typo. Surely you do not seriously believe they are using 'witch sugars' and 'witch saturated fats' in their goods? How long will it take to correct this absurdity?

For the record, I do sympathize with your annoyance and yes I can see how that seems a bit absurd. However if you knew what Witch Sugars and Witch Saturated Fats were I think you might understand our caution a bit better. Even now some of our best chemical analysts are running tests to determine if said products are perfectly safe at which point your cafeteria will be resupplied. If anything we may be overconfident in not having launched an immediate health screening of all employees potentially exposed to the product.

I can only ask for everyone's patience as we do our best to ensure everyone's health and safety in as minimally intrusive manner as possible.

Director,

I for one really like this little blog of yours and would encourage you to keep up with it. Us on the ground here rarely get to hear what their boss-of-bosses thinks about any given thing. Betcha this is true of most organizations but especially ones of our more secretive nature.

Keep up the good work!

Thank you for your support, though I would like to discourage too many messages like these. They can be very hard to distinguish from brown-nosing and no one worthwhile should appreciate the latter.

Not that there have been many messages like these. In fact, yours is the first and only.

So. Thanks.

Progress continues.