A Couple of Notes for the European Office
First, the “she used her spit to clean up my streaming mascara” is a grade-A blog post, and I am very thankful that you were kind enough to embed it in a post about the Mill. That’s just the kind of personal essay everybody is looking for nowadays. Personal essays are hot this summer.
When I said “clown car” I just meant some eco-friendly tiny machine that isn’t single handedly going to swamp the Fijian islands. You know, something like this:
It turns out that when you Google “clown car” the results are frigteningly similar.
Now the Mill is in North America. It is, as you Irish would say, “In the West”, which here should mean somewhere near Montana, but really means somewhere in the Northeast. Mushamaguntic is to the west of both Donn and Brasil, north of Lake Parime, and south of Thule. I like to say that we are in the “Northern United States” (which means Canada), but we don’t want to offend any Canadians, especially since they just had their birthday. Anyway, here in the Northern US, we still drive big cars. This is the car I would like to buy:
If I owned that machine, I would paint it blue and write, in plain block letters, “I apologize to the people of Fiji” on the door. If that car gets 18 miles to the gallon I will eat my hat.
The Mildewbucks Hire
Remember, the most important part of any interview is where you suss out whether the applicant would make a good addition to the softball team. We have to beat our arch-rivals, Standard Publishing, in the “Media Softball Tournment” this year. It would also be nice not to get mercy-ruled by The Ringer for the 15th straight year.
We are looking for a catcher, but pitching is always a need. If they can’t play softball, the candlepin bowling team could use some help, and after that it goes: hurling, cribbage, LeagueOfLegends, “has good suggestions for what to cook for dinner”, and “carries extra tissues and doesn’t use spit as lubricant”.
Not to put too much pressure on you, but the interview really starts after the whole white board nonsense and all the boring talk about “responsibilities”. As the person who has hired every one of the “arthritic complainers” now working at the Mill, I can’t warn you enough that you have to be careful.
The Mildewbucks Hire 2
I think from now on we should refer to “Mildewbucks” as the “Mildew Blockchain” and when people ask us why we shorted them on change at the Canteen, we reply by saying it is part of our “triple-entry accounting.”
Transportation
I like the “Waterbus” option best, but I want you to teach me how to say “Waterbarge” in Danish. Then, when we are with Danish clients, I will refer to the “Water Bus” as a “Water Barge” and you will correct me. Since it will be the only word in Danish I utter during our time with the clients, they will get home and wonder, “How did that guy learn the wrong word for ‘Water Bus’ in Danish?. Nobody even says ‘water barge’. Where the hell did he get that?” It’s a good gag, right? Ha, ha!
The Two Towers
I couldn’t be more excited about the two towers! Here are my suggestions. Understand, these are just my suggestions. We wouldn’t want the European office to feel like it had to conform to some set of standardizing international obligations, so, as always, do what you want.
- “FY” should be the name of our new ad-driven personal essay magazine. Wait, I mentioned a magazine launch without saying “cats”. You have to have cats in there somewhere because cats sell. Let me try again: “FY should be the name of our new ad-driven personal cat essay magazine.” How did I do?
- We have to rent this space out to some hard working group of Scandinavian technologists. That way, when people walk by at street level they will look in the windows and say, “Wow, those folks at the Athenaeum really work hard.”
- This is where we store the ham.
- I think a good idea would be to have weird, neon green light eminating from these windows between 1 and 4 in the morning, or as you would say with the 24 hour European clock, “between 1 and 4 in the morning.”
- I don’t know about you, but I am going to dress up as Edward Mulhare from the “Ghost and Mrs. Muir” and look out of the window all day.
If you want to play along, you can find a shawl or jumper to wear. I already have my black turtleneck ready to go.
6. This is where we should hold our meetings.
7. Doesn’t this space need some spikes to keep pigeons and homeless people away? Do you not have pigeons in Copenhagen?
8. The couple looks happy, and happy people walking by on the bridge all day will make me cranky. At least when I am visiting, can we pipe some kind of audio onto the street? Something that would ruin the mood. Maybe Trump speeches, or Formula One cars going around a track.
The Interior
I would never try to suggest what the European office should do about design, but when it comes to interiors, I much prefer the dowdy scandavian rustic look:
to the German factory:
It’s not that I don’t like minimalism. Minimalism doesn’t like me.
