The Motel Pager Story
Several years and ex-girlfriends ago, I was in a long distance relationship (I think?) with a girl who lived a few hundred miles away. When she visited, she would stay in a local cheesy motel, because at the time, I was living with my mom.
I had just gotten a job as a network consultant and having only been there for a few weeks, I didn’t feel as though I was in a terribly good position to be asking for days off so soon. I was part time then, so I was only going to be at work for two of the days she was visiting which seemed good enough. It was a good job, it paid pretty well for my age — and what I liked about this job the most was that they had issued me a working e-mail pager, which was rather novel for 1997.
I gave the girl my work e-mail and my pager address in case she needed anything during the time I was working, and naturally, she decided to send me some interesting pages. And when I say interesting I mean lascivious, ribald and just plain indecent pages from her location at the motel.
WHICH
WERE
GREAT
This went on all day… and well, as it neared 5 o’clock I figured, heyyyyy it couldn’t hurt to ask my boss if I could have a few days off, right? Who needs “jobs” anyway! I decided to ask him in a roundabout ‘just throwing an idea out there’ fashion where I did not really expect any results. Surprisingly, he said that this was fine. “Yes, yes, of course Jay. We can be flexible with your hours! Just let me know! Take as many days as you want!”
Friends, things were finally beginning to go my way.
It was only years later when I thought back to this incident, my boss’s sudden strange demeanor, surprising schedule flexibility and some other unconnected incident later, did I realize that he was getting copies of all my pages and simply never told me.
Ladies and gentleman, I am slow. Like, several years slow.