This is Skeeter. See that look on his face? Means I just asked him to do something that I’m supposed to do but I’ve asked him to do it because it’s less work for me. I like to think of myself as a liason. The liason between work that Will Oldford wants done and Skeeter.
You can tell by his expression that he wants to climb over the desk and take my life. Fortunately, he won’t do that because that’s his beloved calculator by his side. He would never risk damaging it – as he might if he jumped the desk. He loves that thing. He even sleeps with it.
Skitter-Boy’s true love is this. If you zoom in you’ll lots of slobber on the screen.
That’s Excel. The man can do miracles with Excel. As for myself, not so much. I can, however, regal young Skitter-Boy with tales of the days “BE”- Before Excel. While Skeeter does my work, I sit on the desk and fondly reminisce about the forerunners to Excel: Lotus 123 and VisiCalc. Now those were some programs. Men were men in those days. VisiCalc allowed us to add and subtract relative cell addresses and Lotus 123 gave us the ability to bold and underline the numbers. Truly amazing stuff. I’m not sure why they added subsequent functions – really ruined a good thing if you ask me.
0. This is the number zero. It has special significance to McMillmott. Scooter is on the interest rate committee. That’s the committee that determines what the bank pays the customers on certificates of deposit and stuff. The difference between what the bank pays its customers and what the bank earns on investments is our net interest margin. Scooter figured out that if we lowered what we pay our customers then we’ll make more money so he’s contrived a myriad of ways to pay the customers less and less on their deposits. Even more impressive, he’s come up with a plethora of ways to do this without their figuring it out. Today, we don’t really pay them anything at all. Scott has attained the ultimate cost of funds – zero! This has made him a very fast rising star at the bank. Yesterday, he even proposed charging our customers interest because, after all, they should have to pay for keeping their money safe. The guy is a banking genius.
It was in fact, this genius that led to his real nickname: The Evil Bishop. I was new to the bank and – as we walked from the board room back to our desks after one of these interest rate committee meetings - sheepishly asked if he felt comfortable tricking the citizens of our community into zero interest. He replied, “Yes, of course. If they want us to manage the money then they should hire us to manage it.” I then asked him if he went to church on Sundays and he enthusiastically declared, “Why yes! In fact, I’m the bishop of our church!” I don’t know too much about churches so that’s when I asked him, “Are you a regular bishop or some kind of eeeeevil bishop?”
Okay, I’ve said too much. That’s kind of my reputation at the bank. People dive into empty conference rooms and such when they see me coming because I never shut up. Fortunately, all the conference rooms in our building have glass walls so they can run but they can’t hide. So I’ll only share one last thing: This is where Scouter works. The view is obstructed by an empty box of donuts in the foreground. I take a lot of heat about eating more than my share of donuts but it’s really a bad rap. Scott eats most of them – and this is proof.
.
Happy Birthday Evil Bishop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment