Just One More Thing...

Who could bear to leave state employment? And why?

Today was my friend Greg's last day; and a few terse haikus, written for the occasion by my friend Bill, help shed light on the reasons one might seek a job elsewhere:

Daily I move points
Bordering on pointlessness
One point too many.

Work in iPod bliss
Silent manager pops in
What was it you said?

Premeeting meetings
Ten minute subject at most
Hour of my life gone.

One day he will flip
with archeological wrath
Where are the exits?

Computer connects
the Information Highway
check weather, again.

I wonder, if Bill had worked for my former employer, would he have composed some other form of poetry? Epic Norse war sagas, perhaps.

Greg is great fun and we'll all miss him a lot - especially his boss, apparently, who was unusually demanding on his last day of employment with the State. I'd have assumed he'd just be keeping his office chair warm until quitting time, but no. "I have some things for you to work on today," his boss told him. And, this afternoon, when I swung by to get him for break, his boss was in his cube with him, looking deeply engrossed in the task at hand. "I think he was toying with me," confided Greg when he stopped into my office late this afternoon to say goodbye.

We'll miss him, but I guess we should all be glad he found the exit.