Today, there was failure. I expanded the scope of my efforts, pulling more and better bodies into the shower of fail. First, someone made the mistake of gathering my attention by asking a question. I went to their desk and proceeded to waste 20 minutes of my and their time in an unfocused attempt to ignore what they were saying and reach no tangible or useful end point. Having done them this favour, when I was later faced with a conundrum of my own, I decided I now had the capital to spend, and so, reached out through the ether, and asked them if they could "just pop over for a quick second".
Bwahahahahaha!
They arrived. And, unlike myself, were focused on my communication, and shortly had an answer. I asked them to try it. It failed. They then came up with another answer. I asked, knowing full well the outcome, if they could, ahem, try it. Failure. At this point, their eagerness had dissapated, but they were comitted. They couldn't walk away without defaulting on the contract they'd signed when asking for my assistance, and because of their initial joi de vivre, couldn't, in good faith, leave and promise to come back later with an answer. Oh no, they were trapped.
At this stage, I wandered off with a "I'll be back in a bit". Went, had a coffee, found a fellow failure, discussed the slowly dying man back at my desk, then wandered back to see how much of his soul had eroded during my short absence. The answer was sadly evident.
"So, how's it going"?
"I wish this thing would just f-off. Just fuck right off".
"You know...maybe I should ask someone else and let you get back to your thing".
"No, I need to do this. I'll need to know anyway".
"Weeeeellll.......if you're sure".
Vein popping followed. There were curses. There were further failures. There was a strong sense in my chest that, yes indeed, all was as it should be; my fellow failure swung by to observe the suffering, looked knowingly at me, sadly smiled, and shuffled off to another lonely night.
After about an hour, the poor mangled mess of a man I'd pulled into the pit of my issues sorted it out. There was no celebration. Just a kind of weary acknowledgement that this particular piece of horror had been addressed...but that there would be more. I know why he felt this way. There will be so much more failure. Endless seas of failure remain to be sailed by this good ship.
