Don't Ask, Don't Tell

My Dear Fellow,

I don't like to talk too much about what I do here. IT is just not an interesting enough job. In fact, I have a bit of a complex about it. To explain I ask you to imagine me at a "Two Ronnies" type sketch dinner party...

WOMAN: Oh you MUST meet Gerald!
ME: Hello.
WOMAN: Gerald has the most FASCINATING job, tell him Gerald.
GERALD: Oh, it's not that fascinating really. I'm just a Conde Nast travel writer. Of course my wife here is a fighter pilot...
WIFE: Hello! And these are our friends Tim and Daphne.
DAPHNE: Hello! Nice to meet you! I'm a bit dull really. I just work at CERN, and helped identify the Higgs-Boson particle. 
TIM: My goodness! I don't do anything remotely exciting myself.
ME: Phew.
TIM: I used to be Secretary-General of the UN. Retired now of course, just spend  my time puttering around the allotment and teaching yoga to Sting. I say, have you met my son, Bono? He's in quite a successful band.
BONO: How are ya?
DAPHNE: Oh, and here's my father, the first man on the moon...
GERALD: And what about you? How do you earn a crust?
ME: Um. I work in IT. I'm a business analyst.
GERALD: Oh, I see.
ME: I work in marketing at the moment. You know that annoying little bit of paper that comes with your credit card statement? Well, I help determine whether you get that bit of paper. Or not.
GERALD: Oh.
ME: Sometimes people bring in cake. And on Fridays we're allowed to wear casual clothes.
GERALD: I'm sorry, everyone here seems to have slipped into a boredom-induced COMA. The only reason I'm still awake is that I'm high on cocaine right now. Did I mention I'm a cocaine smuggler in my spare time?
INTERPOL: Come out Gerald! The game's up! We have you surrounded!
GERALD: Oh thank heavens, you can take me away from this DREARY little man.
THE POLICE DRAG GERALD AWAY. I AM LEFT QUITE ALONE.
ME: For excitement, sometimes I ride up and down in the lift. 

So that's why I don't talk about work much. But I'm going to break with policy because I have to have a rant about RE-NAMING things. 

It is the bane of an IT person's life. Database administrators have to drop and recreate tables, developers have to rewrite code and screen designers have to relabel everything. And they all get cross at ME.  

And all because Tony the Senior Manager thought "Portfolio Options" sounds better than "Investment Opportunities". 

MAN: Yes, I know renaming everything for no good reason will cost money and annoy everyone, but on the other hand Tony is a Senior Manager. He's got the blue tie to prove it and everything.

In an attempt to make things less confusing I once wrote a document at Slack explaining that "Asset Classes", "Investment Opportunities" and "Portfolio Options" were all the same thing but that business people couldn't make up their minds. Then I added that yes, I knew it was stupid but that they had made me do it.

At least it was honest.

And today, a chap decided to rename a file. A file which has had the same name for 18 effing months.

MAN: I have decided that the ABC file will henceforward be known as 'The Artist Formerly Known As Prince'.
ME: But why? WHYYYYYYY???
MAN: Because there's more than one ABC file, and it was getting confusing.
ME: No there ISN'T. There is ONE ABC file. There's only EVER been one ABC file. The only reason YOU think there's more than one is that you keep CALLING other files, the ABC file when they are NOT called that. And NEVER HAVE BEEN.
MAN: See? It's confusing.
ME: Damn you!! DAMN YOU TO HADES!!!

So that was my work day. Do you see now why I prefer not to mention work in this forum? And also why I'm thinking of becoming a cocaine smuggler?

Parsones