I hate Mr. Omniscient.
It’s 8:30 AM and Mr. Omniscient (his name is really Jason) begins yet another absurd story. “I worked in Germany for two years. The food there has no preservatives so you can eat and drink as much as you want and never gain weight or get drunk. Every morning, we’d each bring in a six pack of beer and down one every hour. At lunch we’d each drink a liter of wine. No preservatives, so we never gained an ounce or got drunk.”
I’ve seen fat Germans (no offense intended) so this has to be BS, but I’ve learned not to argue with Mr. O. Not much anyway. Disagree on the minor points. Not that Jason ever changes his mind or admits he doesn’t know something, no matter how obscure the topic. But—and this is a big but—he is tall, extremely thin and although we often each drink a quart, or more, of beer at lunch, he never shows the slightest sign of inebriation or of gaining weight.
There are eleven computer programmers in our obscure section of the brokerage firm. Our boss, Tim Neary, goes to lunch at ten and come back around four smelling like a sour IPA. When you ask him a question in the morning, he says, “Ask me after lunch.” When you ask him when he comes back, he says, “Ask me in the morning.” Mr. Omniscient often says, “I love Tim Neary, as long as he’s not near me.” This always gets a laugh from the programmers, even from me.
The big boss is named Henry. Henry has four teams, like ours, working for him. We release new code to production every second Friday. Henry sets our goals based on the theory that no problems will come up. They always do and we’re often late. On the Wednesday before release, Henry gathers us together and asks each person individually if they’ll complete their goal on time. If a person says they aren’t sure, he says that the new features have already been announced to the users. Every program needs to be completed on time. “Failure to complete means termination.”
On Release Fridays, Henry sits at his desk and plays with his little plastic four-inch axe that he’s named Ethelbert the Executioner. He waves it in the air and says, “I hope I don’t have to use Ethelbert today. Ethelbert is ever ready.” Henry always axes an individual at 5 PM. He wants to get a full day’s work out of his victim before he fires them.
It is Release Friday and my project to build an index isn’t finished. I look over and see Ethelbert in Henry’s hand and Henry’s eyes on me.
At 5 PM, my boss and Henry come over to stand at my desk. Jason and the rest of the programmers stand and look on. My boss says to me, “You failed.”
“I ran into problems,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter,” says Henry. “You broke your personal promise to me. Besides Ethelbert is hungry.”
Mr. Omniscient interrupts. “I don’t know, Henry.”
“What don’t you know?”
“I don’t know if that’s fair.”
“I’m always fair,” bellows Henry as he raises Ethelbert the Executioner over my head.
“Let me show you something,” says Jason. “To create the index, you must use the instruction ‘BUILD-IDX’. It doesn’t work.”
Henry, my boss, the other programmers and I watch as Jason types in the command ‘BUILD-IDX’ and points it to my dataset. He hits enter and a message, “Failure 157484” comes up.
“It happens every time,” says Mr. Omniscient.
Henry looks over at my boss.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this problem?” My boss asks me.
I lie. “I did. Monday and Tuesday.”
“I don’t remember that.” My boss replies.
“It was at 1 PM when you returned from lunch,” said Jason.
My boss turns red and says, “Yes, now I remember.”
My boss, Henry and Ethelbert the Executioner don’t notice all our successfully hidden snickers.
Ethelbert is put away. “Fine,” says Henry. “Have it ready for the next release.” He and my boss leave.
“Jason,” I say. “You know that instruction works.”
“Yes, but if you have a plus sign in the data, it fails. I merely put a plus sign in your data. Those idiots will never know. I think Ethelbert is the smartest of the three.”
“Thank you, Mr. Omniscient.” I blush and correct myself, “I mean thank you, Jason.”
“How could I let the one person who argues with me get fired?” he asks with a smile.
I love Mr. Omniscient. Jason.
Raymond Fortunato writes in Westchester, New York. He has published a short story collection, Joyful, Sorrowful and Ordinary Mysteries. His play, Nothing’s Plenty For Me, was presented in 2022. He’s interested in humans, how we relate to ourselves, each other and the worlds beyond, seen and unseen. Some of his short stories and music are on his website www.raymondfortunato.com. He posts to Instagram @raymondfortunatoauthor and to X (Twitter) @FortunatoAuthor.
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