Satire of Life

Sometimes life seems like an extended satire.

I traveled to Roseville, Minnesota for work last week, and the "high-speed" Internet access at the Residence Inn there routinely took more than three minutes to load articles from major newspapers around the country. (Thus there was little time for blogging.)

While catching up on the mail this weekend I discovered that DHL has "lost" one of the data tapes my morgage holder routinely sends to Experian (the credit agency), so I should be extra careful about monitoring my accounts for signs of identity theft.

I bit futher in I found a letter from my employer requiring me to sign an updated benefits form--because a dollar amount on the old form was incorrectly rounded by 1 / 250 trillionths of a cent. You read that right: Someone bound by bureaucratic rules and lacking the authority to supercede them spent hundreds of dollars to print and mail corrected forms to fix a mistake that cumulatively amounted to less than a penny.

That last reminds me of a former employer who sent, over the course of a year, at least a dozen letters requesting that I mail them a self-addressed, stamped envelope to receive my last paycheck for seventy-some odd cents.