February, 1997

From my little cubical, surrounded by gossip, I hear that it's payday for the employees at CrayOn. I'm told that RowZero, my new technology pimp, will throw money into my account, too. One guy in the coffee room was revealing his strategy of working with semi-monthly versus bi-weekly paychecks and how he has to cut back on this and that and so on. I'm guessing he makes about a fifth of what RowZero is paying me for roughly the same job. I'm standing there half smug and half bewildered. Smug over my windfall and bewildered as to just how this happens.

Further, I'm amazed at the corporate stupidity, redundancy noted, I've experienced in the Fortune 500 yet grateful for its existence. Even within the walls of CrayOn, this computer graphics company -- Cray, as in the supercomputer, On as in the switch -- the employees have not looked past softball, hockey on TV, having kids and crashing cars far enough to figure out how to improve their lot in life. It is likely that they do not know how much Silas and I make, just as we do not know how much RowZero is making by pimping us but the numbers would stagger the average person here. Then, if they found out what we do for all this money, well, riots would ensue.