The Keeper of The Matrix

My job varies from the very boring to very urgent (and urgent=exciting.) Some days I stare at the computer screen until the gray walls start to throb around me and I can taste the air getting stale. Some days I meet fascinating people and they say fascinating things and I leave feeling like I know a little bit more about the world, or at least know how to ask better questions. Sometimes we have to deal with the beast of bureaucracy.

I am The Keeper of the Matrix. The Matrix, which is our fancy name for an excel spreadsheet, has all sorts of information that is changing every day. In order to eliminate an excess of matrices, everyone is supposed to forward the information to me, and I update The Matrix. Otherwise, we have many matrices, and many informations, and none of them match and that is inefficient times ten. Then I send out the update to everyone who needs to know. This is not that hard. If it were just our office that dealt with The Matrix, things would go swimmingly.

But there is a different office, one who thinks they are in charge of The Matrix, although they clearly are not, since I am The Keeper. They think that they are helping out by taking an old version of The Matrix, changing to format to be more user-friendly, and then sending it out to everyone. This, as you intelligent readers can clearly see, only serves to confuse every single person who gets the e-mail. This New Matrix has different colors and outdated information and then I get to go through it - again - and update all the information, which has already been updated on The Original Matrix. This is a Royal Pain. I keep telling them that it is a pain and that if they do not want to upset The Keeper, they should leave well enough alone and stop messing wth my Matrix without my permission. But they heed not.

I think from now on I will put at the bottom of my e-mails, "$20 reward to anyone who finds, tars, and feathers those who are sending out obsolete matrices without my permission."