Salt Mine Elevator

Large bureaucracies breed absurdities that are easy enough to articulate, but it's a challenge to convey the level of mind fuckery and ridiculousness that's a part of normal daily life.

I will do a better job of capturing some of it. If we don't identify evil we are powerless to stop it.

For instance, email requires the use of an "email alias," also known as a UPN; recognizable as youremail@yourdomain.whatev. If you administer an email system, or any other kind of large computer system with many users, it's necessary to decide on a naming standard for things. In the case of usernames, sometimes it's just their last name with a number. Sometimes it's more complicated, because the corporate shit-weasel that's driving the decision doesn't always comprehend the consequences of a poorly thought-out naming convention.

If my company's corporate shit-weasel created a dumb fucking naming convention, consequences will include various techniques for dealing with the inconvenience of Bob's email address being b4x7yyy25-a2@assholecompany.com. One of the best and most readily available ways to do this is to have a directory. Email programs use this to avoid the need to know that seemingly random string of characters when one wishes to email Bob. You've used this when you've clicked on "to" in your email program.

Now, the problem I've noticed; and this could be just a habit of the morons I work with, is to use this string, this pointless clusterfuck meaningless eyesore of digits. It's colloquially known as a "nic," (for nickname.) People write these down and share them.

"Ok, I'll email you that thingy. What's your nic?"

No, no, a million times no. Do not ask me for my nic. You know my name. Look it up in the fucking directory. Holy crap why does this make me so damn mad?