It is now no secret that DougMart's December, 1999 Y2K compliance test caused a shutdown of all office equipment and appliances, plunging the office into darkness and eliciting whoops of savage joy from technology-weary staffers. "I am the Lord of the Flies!" proclaimed shipping manager Doug Elmore, before fashioning a makeshift spear and inviting his coworkers to hunt wild animals for food in the "verdant wilderness" of the suburbs surrounding DougMart. "It’s very primal," Doug told DougMart interviewers, gleefully fashioning a necklace from a mouse cord and a short stack of now-useless floppy disks. "[My pack of savages and I] hope to have completely regressed to a pre-civilization hunting and gathering community before the next all-hands quarterly meeting." Despite intervening months in which the Y2K crisis was demonstrated to be, in the words of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, "a complete load," the situation at DougMart has steadily grown worse. Many employees refused to join Doug Elmore’s hunting and gathering tribe,
choosing instead to sit in their cubicles in e-mail-withdrawl-induced catatonia. These employees, who have since died without giving notice, have contributed very little to DougMart's activities in the last quarter. |
