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IP: the spirit of the Apple announcement
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 10:49:55 -0500
Dave, Submitted for IP, in the hopes that it catches the mood of the moment for the many people affected by Apple's 4:30 announcement today.
From an IPer
_______________________________________________________________________ Please redistribute with attribution. Excerpted from "The Complete Geek" by Johnny Deep (johnd () albany net) Publication Date: June 7, 1997 (Broadway Books, Division of Bantam Doubleday Dell) also visit, www.the-geek.com (goes live, 4/97) Please redistribute with attribution. The Migrant Apple-Picker by Johnny Deep (johnd () albany net) Once I went for a job, as a "Migrant Apple Picker." I figured I would be great at it. Apples are my favorite. They're way better than other computers. =20 Plus, I like an honest job title. I mean, "Migrant Apple Picker" really says it all. Any other title that you might expect, like "Temporary Quality Control," would be just a lot of corporate-speak. My only problem was, it was damn hard to find the facility. All you could see was a lot of trees. Now I knew the company had fallen on hard times. But this=97it kind of made you feel Wall Street's pain. Finally I found a guy at the front gate. Since he was just standing around I figured he had to be a security guard, or management. =20 I went up to him and said, "I'm here for the Apple-picker position." He looked at me for a second, and then he said, "What are you, some sort of geek?" Right then I knew=97threatened by individuality. Must be management. So I started talking to him, like I always talk to management, real clear and loud. "Well, WHERE will I be WORKING?" I said, the way you might talk normally to an idiot. He answered me in the same tone. "In a TREE," he said. That's the way management talks, too. In fact having a conversation with management is pretty much a battle of idiots the whole way. And I didn't even know what he meant, at first. Then it hit me. A TREE=97that was another name for the pecking order, management at the top, everybody else at the bottom. To let him know I got his drift, I said, "exactly . . . and WHERE in the TREE?" And then he got a real serious look, like I had asked a tough management question. "Well," he said, "Most workers START at the TOP and WORK THEIR WAY to the BOTTOM." I thought to myself, that=92s refreshing. management that tells the truth. But the truth was, I was starting to get annoyed. "SO TRUE, SO TRUE," I said to him, still real clear and loud, "But, WHICH TREE, exactly?" "Well, you PICK IT," he said. With that, he started laughing like hell. I was about to start laughing, too, because that's what you have to do, when you talk to management. You have to laugh when they do, even when there's not a damn thing funny about it.. But then I thought, Screw it. I'm not laughing anymore. "No, I'm not going to PICK IT." I said back to him. And then I used the four letter word I had never had the nerve to use before. "I quit," I said. =20 As soon as I said that, he got a knot in his brow. It reminded me exactly of that story, =93A&P,=94 by John Updike, when the store manager gets a knot in his brow, right when the kid quits. Let me tell you, he was pretty surprised. All he could do was look at me real strange, as if he hadn't heard me or something. To be honest, I was kind of surprised myself. Geez, I hadn't even given him my resum=E9 yet. I still had it in my hand, and it was feeling a little warm=97and not because it just came off the copier, either. So I told him again, "I said, I quit." I thought saying it again might calm me down. I get nervous as hell in certain situations. And later, when I thought about all this, I was glad I did say it again. I mean, you don't get that many chances in life to say that sort of thing. But now he looked at me like he was the one getting warm. And I could tell he was going to say something smart=97which, with him being a management type, wasn't all that easy. I had to give him a second, and then he finally said, "What are you, some sort of psycho?" "Yeah, that's right," I said. And honestly, I could almost see his point. "I'm a real psycho-geek." Then I turned around and started to beat it, right the hell out of there. Over my shoulder, though, just for the effect, I said, "But it's too bad. This company really needs people like me, that are psycho-geeks." I was trying to be dramatic and all, so I would remember the moment. And the very last thing I said was=97actually, I sort of shouted it, on the slight chance that even old Steve Jobs could hear me, through all those damn trees=97 "APPLES FOREVER." Please redistribute with attribution. Excerpted from "The Complete Geek" by Johnny Deep (johnd () albany net) Publication Date: June 7, 1997 (Broadway Books, Division of Bantam Doubleday Dell) also visit, www.the-geek.com (goes live, 4/97) Please redistribute with attribution.
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