Manolo says, it is Monday and you are back at your desk doing that thing that you do to earn your panem cotidianum. Unfortunately, the computer on your desk is not pulling its own weight in this relationship. Indeed, it is actively hindering you, by making weird clicking noises, flickering its screen menacingly, and frequently crashing. (If it were the strange cat acting this way, you would throw the stones at it.)

And, although you have tried everything in your bag of techo-tricks, to include repeatedly pushing the On button, jiggling the power cord, shouting imprecations, and banging the console with both fists, nothing has worked.

Which means you must now call the IT guys.

And as you dial the phone you whisper the short prayer. “Nice Greg. Nice Greg. Nice Greg. Nice Greg.”

And when the voice on the other end of the line answers, “Information Technology” you realize that it is neither Nice Greg, nor Creepy Greg but someone much worse. It is Angry Anna, the recent hire who replaced Pranav, who went back to India to get married and never returned. (You remember him because he loved the movie Spaceballs so intensely that he showed up to three Holloween parties in the row dressed in the remarkably realistic Darth Helmet costume.)

Anyway, you are not happy to hear the voice of Angry Anna, because from the moment she was hired it was evident that she came with the elaborate routine of shoulder shrugs, eye rolls, theatrical sighs, and muttered asides pre-installed. And every interaction with her over the past two months has been like the trip to the particularly stern dentist, one who is always shaking his head and tsk-tsking loudly and saying strange things under his breath.

And so you explain the problem to Angry Anna.

“Um, my computer is like not working and stuff,” said with the sharply rising inflection, which is not what you intended to say, and certainly not how, but Angry Anna has flustered you.

There is the heavy sigh on the other end, followed by the lengthy silence, and then, finally,

“Alright,” heavy sigh,”I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

And five minutes later she stomps into your workspace, her black hair all askew, and her eye makeup five shades too dark and three layers too heavy, muttering like the street person.

She taps the few keys sharply, and then bends down under your desk and fiddles with the back of your machine. When she emerges you are expecting that she will give you the usual withering look of disdain, but instead she says something completely unexpected.

“Are those the Nike Cole Haan Veronas?”

“Yes,” you answer, shocked that Angry Anna has made reference to your shoes, rather than disparaged your technical abilities.

“I have a pair of those,” and here she launches into the spirited, mostly one-sided conversation about how she was wearing her Nike Cole Haan Veronas two weeks ago when she met this really great guy who, like her, was “into LARPing the H.P. Lovecraft universe”, and how they totally hit it off over the technical discussion of how best to build the Elder Ones costume using foam inserts and denim. And now this is her new boyfriend, and it’s all because of these shoes.

“Yes.” You reply, realizing you have now bonded with Angry Anna the IT nut.