Miserable Management

"It's difficult to clear the swamp when you are up to your armpits in alligators"

- Unknown

Both Noo and Lemon were slowly recovering from their frantic run through what Noo now termed as corridors of frenzy.

Noo gasped for air and still shivered thinking of printers incinerating Hivean testers after a third wrong password entry. A chill tickled his spine at the thought of a printer laying waste part of Washington DC with a controlled thermonuclear explosion for the same offense.

Lemon seemed completely out of his mind. He was obviously upset at what Noo had told him, yet he was again grinning like a Cheshire cat on steroids. Noo started to suspect that the maniacal grin could be Lemon's way of showing distress and quickly did a recap of all the times he had seen the grin, then decided he was right.

Vaseline looked at Noo and Lemon in stunned and (he hesitantly admitted to himself) slightly worried. Noo looked at Vaseline and Lemon and tried to speak. "The tests...", he gasped.

Lemon looked at Vaseline and considered breaking Decree number 15623.67: speak customer language at all times. For the moment he thought better not to.

Noo had finally found his breath. "Vaseline, you must stop the tests...", he said, "these printers could start an interstellar war..."

Vaseline looked at him expressionless. "Agnew, printers have been sell, printer must test, customer demands, we give", he said dryly.

"But those printers are weapons of mass destruction! We cannot sell thermonuclear office devices on earth!!!", Noo argued, "It is against all nuclear arms agreements! What idiot decided this sale anyway???"

Vaseline glared at Lemon. Why had he told Noo about this new printer feature? Lemon looked down quietly and grinned like Michelle Bachman on a variety of happy drugs. Vaseline swallowed his next spunge, looked at Noo, and blinked.

Once.

"Me has conduct sale", he said solemnly, "is breakthrough sale for da Heiwa, will put da Heiwa on map!"

"And it will take Washington DC off the map...", Noo added sourly. "Listen Vaseline, I am starting to understand that da Heiwa have a different view on security and product acceptance than we have on earth... but you cannot just go around blowing up cities in the name of security! In the best case you will lose a customer. In the worst case you will be at war with the United States!"

Vaseline again looked uncomprehending. "Me no understand. Worst case is lose customer, war is minor concern. Da Heiwa at open war with many customer but still sell printers and coffee machines..."

Noo's mouth fell open and he slumped in his seat. This day just kept throwing him into wild maelstroms of cultural dysfunction. He was stumped.

"But where did you get the idea to fit a nuclear device into a printer?", he asked weakly.

Vaseline smirked. "Noo should know! It was in mail!", he said triumphantly and pointed at a burnt piece of paper.

'Test 165434', Noo could read, and then a bewildering sequence of da Heiwa characters, all looking like a spectacular set of exotic snakes in glistening oil. The last 15 characters were underlined, and Vaseline translated: "No incinerate, explode"

"But who???", Noo almost screamed

Vaseline would have smiled, if he had taken the course 'earth interaction: happy'. "Customer", he said, "General McDoogle..."

Noo fainted

Medium Management

“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude “

- Zig Ziglar


Vaseline was as happy as a Hivean can be.

50,000 printers sold to the American government in the first week of earth market entry was sure to get him promoted within the Hive. Emotion overcame him for a moment and he blinked.

Once.

He sighed and opened his black book to write down his innermost thoughts.

'Sold 50K printers, ready for promotion' he wrote in intricate Hivean characters, then paused, pursed his lips and finished with 'time to get rid of VP...'

Far away he could hear the pandemonium of early system tests of the printers and he frowned slightly. Maybe he should order that any testing should be done at customer premises. The screams of incinerated Hivean security testers was after all annoying...

He returned to his black book and added 'need sound proof test areas, estimate 51 needed'

Satisfied at his work he closed the little black book and mused...

K'izz (or Lemon as he now called himself) started to become a problem. All in all he seemed to become too close with the earthling, Agnew Tudisz.
And Tudisz, well he was a major nuisance as well...
Why he had hired Agnew Vaseline had forgotten. The recruitment agency had apparently delivered on the skills part of the job description:

"Many discipline sales manager with all languages. Must be clean, earth person, know many people..." and more

But for some reason, Agnew failed miserably on the most important criterion. Vaseline had insisted that this was put in small print at the very bottom as this was the first place any Hivean would look at:

"Earth person must do as he is told by me"

From day one (and this was his first day!), Agnew had completely failed to deliver on this major item.

Vaseline for a moment looked as if he was trying to swallow a medium-sized spunge. This was not good. He had hired Agnew Tudisz, and if Agnew failed this would reflect badly on him.

Again he swallowed a spunge as he calculated the damage that a recalcitrant Tudisz could do to his promotion. VP would just love to rub his face in it!

Vaseline decided that this would not do. He took his black book and again wrote down his deepest thoughts.

'Investigate on incinerate Tudisz'

Just as he closed the black book, the door burst open and Noo and Lemon burst in.

"Stop the sale! Stop the testing", Noo shouted incoherently and out of breath from six miles of running through endless corridors.

"Noo meeting now!", Lemon grinned deliriously.

Vaseline looked at the disheveled twosome and this time swallowed a large indeed.

Insights...

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

- Albert Einstein

Noo and Lemon ran to Vaseline's office through the endless corridors that made up the inexplicable infrastructure of the Hive. Machines to the left and right would burst into rabid song unexpectedly, turning the corridors into echoing madhouses.  The few Hiveans that they encountered stared at them with their large, round and unblinking eyes.

“How do you guys keep from going deaf?”, shouted Noo at Lemon.

Lemon grinned and produced two earplugs. “No funding yet for volume control”, he explained, “Sin T’zin 2000 comes with two free earplugs!!!”

Noo stopped dead in his tracks. “You gotta be kidding! NOW you tell me???”

Lemon grinned a maniacal grin and handed him the earplugs. Noo put them in.

Immediately the printer pandemonium became a heavenly sweet silence, sweetly interrupted by a angelic voices humming hit songs. Noo sighed and smiled, then frowned and took the earplugs out for a second…

Raging madness again hit his recently pampered ears, making his stomach turn. Printers screaming and belting, evil hisses, whales on helium… Noo reinserted the plugs and was back in sweet heaven…

He looked at Lemon who was still grinning his maniacal grin.

“This is brilliant, Lemon…”, he said, “this is what you should be selling here on earth…”

Lemons grin sagged, and he seemed to relax. “No Noo, printer is brilliant, coffee machine is brilliant, earplug is old…”, he answered, “in da Heiwa nobody interested.”

Noo groaned, Lemon’s answers for some reason maintained an exponential incongruity with his version of reality.

“OK Lemon, in that case please explain to me what is happening here…”, he said, “let’s start with the coffee machine…”

“Ah, high security coffee!”, Lemon exclaimed, “da Heiwa took old idea and made new!”

Noo looked at him questioningly

Lemon smiled and continued, “We analyze all earth commercials many years and see earth people likes coffee… so we make coffee machine”. Lemon smiled some more.

“But, at da Heiwa no coffee, only K’abbage”, Lemon further explained, “so da Heiwa make coffee from K’abbage”

“What is K’abbage?”, Noo asked

Lemon fidgeted with his Goggl Translat, then spoke to it, “K’abbage”

Goggl Translat clicked to life and translated, “Cabbage”

Noo’s mouth fell open. Here was the answer to Merlin’s question, the reason that da Heiwa coffee was undrinkable, the one and final cause for his migraine (though new reasons were developing fast)…

“At da Heiwa, we many da Heiwa people and little coffee machines, so coffee is restricted”, he went on, “this is normal capability at da Heiwa, we very good at restricting!”

Noo nodded, he had come to the same conclusion. “So you mean that any machine made by da Heiwa sees a customer as a security threat?”, he asked.

Lemon’s smile widened, smart earth person, this Noo.

“Yesss, is true!”, he beamed, “if customer can identify, he receives coffee!”

“And if the customer cannot identify himself?”, Noo asked patiently, fearing the answer confirm his worst fears.

“If customer does not identify, he terminated”, Lemon said smugly.

“Terminated?”, Noo asked in disbelief, “you mean fired?”

Lemon nodded vigorously. “Yesss, incinerated! Look there…”, he pointed, “successful security test!”

Noo looked and saw a Hivean burst into flames after typing a wrong printer access password for the third time… he looked back at Lemon wide-eyed.

“You must be mad!!! You can’t do this to people!!!”, he screamed at Lemon.

Lemon looked back not understanding. “Is just one da Heiwa, we have many…”, he said, “…and you should be used to this. We have also seen earth news from years ago: bad economy, many earth people incinerated…”

“You idiot!”, screamed Noo, “people get fired, no incinerated!!!”

Lemon’s face assumed the maniacal grin again. “That’s not good! You mean people not have job???” He couldn’t believe his auditory facilities, “da Heiwa would never be so cruel!”

Noo fell silent at this radically new concept of cruelty. “You mean that not having a job is worse than dying?”, he asked

Lemon blinked. Once.

“Of course!”, he said, “Job is all!”

Noo sighed. “Lemon, that still doesn’t give you the right to kill an earth person for forgetting his password… On earth we are quite attached to life, and we’d rather give up our job than our life”

Lemon reluctantly considered this. “Noo…”, he hesitated, “…then we must change machine for America government…” He burped in embarrassment, “Our engineers increased security in new version, Sin T’zin 2001…” Again he blinked. Once.

“Lemon, think hard…”, Noo answered, dreading what might come, “what do you mean by ‘increased security’?”

Lemon shrugged. “Machine explodes thermo-nuclear when no identify”, he said.

Noo started running to Vaseline’s office again, followed by Lemon who was again grinning like a maniac.

More Song and Dance

 “I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

- Robert McCloskey

"Don't be daft...", said Merlin, "why would you quit? This is a great opportunity! you're the first person on earth that actually does sales for an alien civilization. Think of all the experience you'll get!"

Noo grumpily looked at his phone and said, "Well, being nearly strip-searched by a coffee machine isn't the kind of experience I was looking for..."

"Ah, but it certainly is interesting! So what can you do to make this machine more successful?"

"Smashing it to bits with a sledgehammer comes to mind…”, Noo grumbled, determined not to let Merlin’s unwavering optimism break his sullen mood. “How can this…”, he hesitated, looking for the right word, “…monster ever be sold here? It’s a paranoid maniac! And then the coffee! It’s hideous!!!”

“Is it indeed?”, Merlin grinned, “and why is that?”

Noo shut up as he pondered that question. Why was that coffee so bad? He sniffed his cup and snarled… surely, it wasn’t…? Hmmm, maybe Merlin was right…

“You know, Merlin, I don’t know… yet”, he said after a bit, “Listen, I have to go now… investigate…”, he grinned. Merlin had done it again.

Merlin laughed, “No problem Noo, have fun and let me know. Let’s call again soon.”

Noo put his phone down and squeeked as he stared right in Lemon's friendly smiling face.

"Where did you come from?", Noo gasped

Lemon pointed at the door and his smile grew wider. "Helooo... Noo? You, meeting now"

"You shouldn't sneak up at me like that", Noo hissed, "you damn near gave me a heart attack..."

He packed his laptop and walked with Lemon to the meeting. It would be a long walk, for some reason the Hive offices came equipped with incredibly long corridors. The walls of the corridor were lined with machines looking grim to morbid to even plain ludicrous. Most machines were labeled ‘Testing. Please don’t touch’

"Why is sneak?", Lemon asked, smiling but obviously puzzled.

Noo laughed, "Sneak is when you walk to me without me hearing you...", he explained, trying to use words that would be in Lemon's grasp. "On earth it is considered...", he struggled to find a word that would not trigger the next 'what is...' question, "not good.", he finally decided.

Lemon’s answer was cut short as a machine that looked like a printer suddenly exploded in a screaming falsetto rendition of ‘Cherish the Love’

“Why are they doing this?”, Noo shouted, clasping his ears

“Is testing…”, Lemon explained in what he hoped was a friendly and non-threatening way. Going from Noo’s reactions, the Hive products could use some good marketing. Or maybe Noo was just a difficult customer, excellent study material though. He smiled as the machine screeched:

“Cherish da loooove

Cherish da Hiiiive – oh yeah

Cherish da love we have – while we is [digger digger]”

Noo almost cried, “On earth we torture people with this!!!”, he screamed.

Lemon’s smile widened, “So you like?”, he shouted back.

“No!!!”, Noo squealed, “please make it stop!”

Lemon was confused. “Noo, machine is printing, can no stop…”, he screamed back in his friendliest and most comforting voice, “why you not like Sin T’zin 2000 printer? Is latest and largest!”

“Me praise that mine dram will come truth”, the machine’s falsetto intensified to a piercing wail, “Cherish da Hiiiiiiiiive”

Lemon took the brochure and shouted convincingly, “The Sin T’zin print unit guarantees lower Total Clash of Owners, it provides a richdom pallet of colors ranging from black to white and improves slave morale by providing voluntary access to music to be chosen by management.”

The machine stopped abruptly and aggressively spat out a piece of printed paper. ‘Test’, it read.

The phrase ‘voluntary access to music to be chosen by management’ rang loudly through the corridor, and Lemon grinned an amused hiccup. “Good time, 6 minutes”, he concluded as he picked up the paper. Six Hiveans appeared out of nowhere and Lemon quickly instructed them in da Heiwa. The six quickly disappeared and Lemon turned his attention to Noo again.

“Soooo… what you think Noo?”, he asked, “Impressive, yes?”

Noo blinked.

“Is good Noo…”, assured Lemon, “I can see you emotion”. He smiled and was even a bit impressed himself, looking at earth’s first emotional response to the Sin T’zin 2000

Noo sighed. “Lemon, we really need to talk…”, he said, “I’m sorry to burst your bubble but this will never sell…”. He watched in wonder as Lemon blinked. Once.

“For starters”, continued Noo, “it took the machine five minutes to print one paper with the word ‘Test’ on it…”

“Da Heiwa minute?”, asked Lemon hesitantly

“Earth minutes”, Noo said and went on, “On earth, printers can print 1000 pages in that same time easily! This will never work in an office environment!”

“Ah, but Sin T’zin 2000 no spell errors… many checks”, Lemon objected.

“But Lemon…”, Noo rolled his eyes, “a printer should not check for spelling errors, it should print…”, and he yelped as the machine started singing again. This time it sounded as a whale on helium.

“Let’s take a wok together near the ocean short”, it slurred in a high squeaky threatening voice, “Manually, You and meeee”

“And what’s with the singing???”, Noo shouted, trying to overcome the machine that seemed to increase volume as he tried to make his point, “If I am emotional it’s only my desire to…”. His heartfelt desire got lost for posterity as the machine belted “Me often pry before me lie downward by your siiiide”

Again the machine stopped abruptly and spat out another piece of paper. ‘Test 2’ it read.

Lemon seemed overjoyed. “Big successss”, he said, “We now apply mood-skins to machine emotion!”

Noo blinked. Not once but many times.

“Lemon, I don’t understand… this time it took the machine even longer to print out the same amount of data…”

“Ah Noo, but more letters to check and more letters to print”, Lemon admonished and held up the two prints as proof:

‘Test’

‘Test 2’

“More important: Sin T’zin can now print in new mood!”, Lemon laughed merrily.

“New mood? What do you mean?”, Noo asked and then wished he hadn’t as Lemon touched a button on the machine, sending the conversation into sonic hell for the third time.

Finally, Noo picked up the third print (‘Test 3’) which was the result of the most morbid session of ‘Cherish the  Love’ so far. Noo was still shaking from the menacing evil voice that had hissed ‘Could me make it through the night?’ at him. He handed it to Lemon and said, “We really have to talk. This machine could bankrupt your company… and please do not test while I tell you a couple of things”

“First: the singing… what do you want to accomplish? It will probably scare the heebyjeebies out of normal people. Nobody will want that”

“Ah, but singing is differentiator…”, Lemon suggested politely.

“Singing will get us thrown out of any serious bid…”, Noo retorted testily, “who says it is a differentiator?”

Lemon looked uncomfortable. “Product managers say”, he finally said and quoted the brochure, “Your employee ratings will rise because heavenly voices (“heavenly???”, shouted Noo) make slave day bright as Sin T’zin 2000 performs high security print”

“High security print…”, Noo mused, looked at Lemon and approached the machine. The ‘Print’ button beckoned him in inviting pink. He pressed it.

The machine roared to life. “Access to [digger digger] restricted!”, it barked and would have squinted at Noo if it could have, “Please insert employed passss!”

At the bottom a hatch opened exposing a small slot…

Noo looked at Lemon perplexed. “You haven’t…”, he stammered.

Lemon smiled broadly. “Yes! High security print!”, he replied proudly, “and we just sell 50,000!”

“To whom?”, Noo gulped.

“Ah, big successss, we sell to American government!”, Lemon beamed, “them start test next week.”

“We have to speak to Vaseline immediately!!!”, Noo croaked, “This could start a global war!!!”

“Yessss…”, Lemon smiled enthusiastically, “You, meeting now!”