The Bitterness of the Asterisk

/ bensbitterblog
The rewards of hard work.

The rewards of hard work.

You probably think you work hard because you work like 5 days a week and 8 hours a day. You are definitely right. That is way too much work. As I’ve spoken about before I think 3 1/2 days a week is enough. Why should work be done on more than 50% of our weeks. Who invented the weekday vs. the weekend and made the weekday much longer? People would stay alive much longer if they knew they didn’t have to wake up on Monday mornings.

Speaking of work, at mine we are always trying to find something in our operating system. And we have these customers that give us so little information, that finding something is like being Sherlock Holmes. Luckily, as Sherlock Holmes we have a Watson that does all our work. (Asterisk is Watson.)

Customer: “Can you send me an invoice for a radio we ordered 7 years ago?”

Me: “Do you have the order number? Or PO number, or date it was ordered?”

Them: “No.” Pause like I’m supposed to figure out their precise order with no information whatsoever.

Me: “Alright, give me just a lifetime and I will get back to you never…” is what I say in my head. “Let me see what I can do..” Is what I actually say.

This is where the asterisk starts doing all the work, while I sit on hold rolling my eyes at my customer. I hit the little starry shaped symbol on my computer and she goes to work. She scans everything in their account. The order numbers, the purchase order numbers, the serial numbers, the bad decisions he made, his criminal background records, his late bill payments, she is even checking his journal entries about his crush on a girl in junior high. She is Watson on steroids. And 3 minutes later when she comes back with all the info, I report back to the customer.

Me: “It looks like nothing came up. Sorry.” Asterisk, bitterly rages in the corner at me and guy for making her work so hard and using none of her hard work.

What I do to asterisk's all the time.

What I do to asterisk’s all the time.

Asterisk is also a get out of jail free card to say whatever you want. You make some absurd claim about something, put a little asterisk next to it, and people have to suspend their bitterness against whatever is said until you read the whole story at the bottom of the page or end of the book. Or where ever you want to put the asterisk. And you have to find the asterisk and try to connect the thoughts somehow. Or they just end up being too lazy to find the asterisk and you get away with everything*.  Asterisk has to do all this running around and explaining things, while hoping that someone, anyone find the information at all useful. Again she is stewing at the end of pages, at the back of books, or dangling in the air knowing she will never meet her matching asterisk in bitter hopelessness.

Doing all the work, getting all the blame.

Doing all the work, getting all the blame.

Asterisk is the beep equivalent for written words. While beeps get all the laughs and pub on TV covering up bad words, asterisks are relegated to the printed word. She is in charge of covering up the bad words of people in books, webpages, comics or magazines. She continues to do it, despite the fact that everyone knows exactly what is hiding behind her. She gets the printed word that is permanent, that conservatives can rant and rail against her even though she is doing her job to cover them. Even though she does her best to hide them, it only draws attention to them. She sits there bitterly thinking of many words she would like say, but censors herself.

Why do people have such a hard time figuring out passwords. They all look like this.

Why do people have such a hard time figuring out passwords. They all look like this.

Asterisk is every password. Whether it is 6, or 8 or even 16 digits, asterisk is every single password. At least visually. Again, she is in charge or guarding or protecting people’s passwords. She would be happy about it too, but because of her doing her best to protect people’s private information, people just get mad at her for making them forget their passwords. And she ends up being so bitter that she sits in the corner stewing. Now she can’t remember her password.  *****!

AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGH

Bitter ******** Ben

*I can’t remember what I was supposed to put here. Blame asterisk.

45 thoughts on “The Bitterness of the Asterisk”

  1. I like using asterisks on work documents when I think I only have one comment. Except I keep finding more things I need to explain. Three asterisks seem to be the limit before I need to find something else for the next comment. People don’t like counting asterisks

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  3. Love this topic.
    1. in Europe, until about wwI, every second day was a holiday. You put on your fancy clothes, went to church in the morning, and had a half day off. They built cathedrals, we*******
    2. actually you might check your spell-checker. Asterix is probably what you mean, a small roman cartoon figure who always fights the romans, and always wins. Send him out, and you could probably go home for a couple of days. Just saying.

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  5. “Alright, give me just a lifetime and I will get back to you never…”
    As a receptionist, this is my official comeback for everything ever now.

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  13. Dangit, now I’m going to have to change all my passwords. I didn’t know everyone else was using the same one. I wonder, is the asterisk anatomically correct? Well, thanks for raising my asterisk awareness. I will think kind thoughts of her during those times she shows up unexpectedly while I’m trying to type the number 8.

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  15. I hate it when I find asterisks on items and I try to find the matching one to see what’s so important to hide from people’s first glances, and there is none -_-

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