September 01, 2004

Old School vs. New School

Old School vs. New School

My department consists of mainframe and PC/LAN/WAN folks. The mainframers are on one side of the building and the rest of us are on the other side. We think of them as COBOL, green screen, dumb terminal, programmers and they think of us as HTML, too many colors to be useful, laptop-carrying, latte drinking, young punks. It’s actually a good system. It’s another example of Old School vs. New School.

I used to think we could get beyond our differences and exist in a utopian, Walden Two kind of society, but alas, I don’t think that would happen. We seem to be too far apart to meet in the middle. Case in point:

You may remember me mentioning the toilet paper problem a week or so ago. Well, much to our chagrin, it has continued for the past three weeks. To combat this, both sides have taken to leaving subtle notes outside the offending stalls. You might be asking yourself, “Hey, how does Howard know what the other guys have on their stall?”. Simple, their side is my safe haven

To continue. As I said, both sides have taken to subtle reminders.

Week 1

The Old School reminder is a 3x5 yellow Post-It note that says, No T.P, written with a black Sharpie.

The New School reminder is a 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper containing a roll of toilet paper with a red line through it and the caption, “Be sure to bring the latest memo, TPS cover sheet, or Disaster Recovery schedule with you since we seem to be out of toilet paper.”

Week 2

The Old School reminder is a 3x5 yellow Post-It note that says, No T.P, written with a black Sharpie.

The New School reminder is a two-parter. The top is a picture of Lumbergh saying, “Uh, yeah, uh, we’re going to need you to, uh, put some toilet paper in here. Uh. Yeah.”

The bottom half is a picture of Terry Tate, Office Linebacker , saying, “C’mon Baby! If you fill the bowl, you gotta change the roll! You know da’ rules!”

Week 3

The Old School reminder is a 3x5 yellow Post-It note that says, No T.P, written with a black Sharpie.

The New School reminder is a picture of Mr. T with the caption, “I pity the fool who comes in here to make a stink ‘cause there ain’t no toilet paper”.

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