LUDIC LOG

"Leonard, can I see you in my office?"

"I doubt it. We're both right here at the moment."

"This is serious."

"What is it?"

"I'm really concerned about your internet usage, and the amount of time you spend on personal projects here at work."

"Me too."

"So what I'd like..."

"But there's so little work for me to do, I have to pass the time somehow."

"Well, I need it to stop."

"Do you have some work for me?"

"Uh, not at the moment, but..."

"Does anyone else have work for me?"

"I don't think so. But that's not the point."

"What is the point, exactly?"

"We don't pay you to do nothing."

"I'm not doing nothing. I'm just doing things that don't have anything to do with your company."

"Fine. We pay you to work, not to write and surf the web."

"So you're going to stop paying me for the time I'm online?"

"No. We just need you to work."

"But there's no work."

"I appreciate that. But you're just sitting there. That's a problem."

"It's not my problem, though, surely."

"Sorry?"

"I would think that if you created a full-time position with less than part-time work, that would be your problem, not mine. I mean, I don't complain to the cable company that I don't watch a lot of television."

"I think you must misunderstand me."

"I must."

"When you're sitting there and people see you not working, that reflects badly on me."

"Well, again, I don't really see how that's my problem instead of yours, but let me indulge you for a moment. You're saying you don't pay me to write, or to surf the internet, but to work."

"Correct."

"Do you pay the receptionist to play solitaire? Do you pay the vice-president to check his stocks? Because if you do, I'll take their jobs."

"No, but we're not talking about them."

"Maybe we should be."

"I don't think so. I don't know how much simpler I can put it: we aren't paying you a salary to goof around. We're paying you to do a job."

"But there's no work a lot of the time."

"That may be true..."

"And just today, you told me how busy you were, and I asked if I could help, and you said it would take longer to explain than to just do it yourself, so you didn't want any help. So not only do you not have work a lot of the time, but sometimes when there is work, you don't want me to do it."

"I wouldn't put it exactly that way."

"So what are you getting at?"

"It just looks bad when other people see you're not working."

"Shouldn't they be concentrating on their own work? Maybe they don't have much to do either. It's enough to make you think that an 8-hour day is absurdly overlong."

"The point remains: it looks bad. It makes you look bad, and it makes me look bad."

"Well, if there's not enough work, why did you create the position? Why don't you just lay me off?"

"Because there's too much to do. We need an assistant. Just not every minute. We need you for when there's work."

"Huh."

"The rest of the time you should at least look useful."

"So what you're saying is, contrary to your previous statement, you ARE paying me to do nothing; you just don't want it to LOOK like I'm doing nothing."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Anything."

"When you say you're 'unemployable', is this what you're talking about?"

"I dunno. You tell me."