More like MagUNsafe Adapter
When I started at Gumroad last October, I set up at a desk with two large monitors to give myself the kind of command center I always wanted as a kid, albeit with less of a geopolitical/secret ops/Batcave array of utensils. Hipchat, Spotify, and daily to-do stickies on one screen, Photoshop or InDesign or Final Cut Pro X on the other, Chrome on my laptop. It was all great until I hit 5% battery one morning and… wait.
“Did somebody borrow my adapter thing?”
“Uh-oh,” I heard. “It happened again.”
I was briefed on the issue. For some reason, MagSafe adapters seemed to disappear from the office. And it was escalating.
“I bought about twenty of them two weeks ago,” Delk said. “This is insane.” He said it was the second large batch he had purchased for the office.
And sure enough, over the next few weeks, many more MagSafe adapters went missing. A few times, adapters were confiscated after public accusations. And nobody wanted to be suspected of being the the bandit. One morning, when I saw that my adapter was missing again, I turned to Ben and said, “It was you. I know it was you.”
Two days later I received a package in the mail. Two MagSafe adapters from Ben. Was he distancing himself from the crime… or was he making amends for it? We all had theories. We all pointed fingers. Eyes darted from foe to foe.
So many questions. Who is doing this? Why are they doing it? What’s the street value of one of these things? Does someone on the team have a kiddie pool full of them that they just roll around in at night? Are there hyper-intelligent mice in our walls racing around on tiny, magnetic hovercrafts? Is this some sort of incredibly ineffective tech-industry sabotage?
Or another question. Why does Apple change how their stuff plugs in so often?
The MagSafe adapter dilemma slowed to a halt a few months ago. A huge batch was purchased, flooding the market to the point that the dang things were everywhere and thus basically worthless. And further, perhaps the culprit(s) found help for their strange habit or finally acquired enough to build whatever terrifying machine they were constructing in the shadows of the after-hours.
And all was quiet. All was calm. It was over.
In the thick of it, Jake once said, “There’s a world where these things are the dominant currency.” For a while, that universe made attempts to overlap with our own. But not this time. Not here.
Last Friday, we cleared off our desks and boxed up our stuff so the desks could be swapped out for ones that go up and down (sitting is the new smoking, after all). We labeled our monitors, shelves, and boxes and put everything in the kitchen.
When I got back on Monday, after putting my things back in my spot and seeing how high and low my new desk could go, I pulled out my laptop and found… this.
A small reminder. Nothing ever truly ends. There is no ultimate safety. The world is cruel and hard and full of betrayal and disappointment. Hoard your treasures and hide them under the floorboards. You cannot adapt. You have no power.
