September 8th Post

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls;
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing,
'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
and makes me poor indeed.

-Shakespeare, Othello (Act 3 scene 3)

I had an evil teacher in high school who made us all memorize this and recite it in front of the class. I still don't know what to do with my hands when reciting prose in front of 40 people. I either feel like a mannequin or a participant in charades. Incidentally, she isn't evil because of making us memorize this poem--she was evil completely independent of her assignments. MY only detention in high school was in her class for having my hair so long that it (barely, with my head tilted back) touched my ears.

Also incidentally, the last 2 lines have always bugged me. Does it make me poor indeed because it doesn't enrich the filcher? Alternatively, is the emphasis on the fact that I am made poor indeed, or the fact that I've become poor? I love Shakespeare. These are the things I think about when the fish aren't biting.

But this came to mind because of an interesting turn of events which occurred last week: You may recall my entry about the Dell Battery recall and how I finally came to feel acknowledgement of the problem I had with my laptop smoking out a year or so ago with my child at the keyboard. Then I noted that I got some hits from Dell in Round Rock, Texas.

After posting that, I got an email from Neil in Customer Service at Dell, who was extremely professional and offered to help me if my computer mess hadn't been solved to my satisfaction. He even told me that he had enjoyed reading some of my ramblings and named some things specifically (which of course changed my whole tune and then made me feel a little guilty about being so critical). See? That's where they get you! It's psychological warfare! Just kidding, Neil.

Anyway, I put myself in Neil's position--you can see that he has a lot of pride in his company, and I thought that this recall must really bother him, since it's on such a large scale and since it seems to be from a supplier but still reflect on his company somewhat. Also, when you work for a large company, the people who work there can become the "face" of the organization, and when something goes wrong, you realize that other peoples' actions, for better or worse, reflect directly on you. Like the unhelpful, smarmy rep who was particularly annoying when I was in a pinch. Hopefully, Neil has had him taken out by now...Just kidding, Neil.

No, seriously, I told him I would send back the defective laptop and he promised to ship a 52" flat panel Hi-Def TV to my house and we would call the whole thing even...okay, maybe not.

But I did ask Neil to do a favor for me--I knew that an old friend with whom I had lost contact (16 years ago!) now works for Dell in Austin. I'm sure there are thousands of people who work there, but I told Neil what department my friend was in and I got an Email back from my friend a couple of hours later.

I asked him to hook me up with my old buddy, Dave, who lived across the street. I remember being friends with him when we were eight or nine, walking around the block, shooting arrows straight up in the air and scurrying for cover, and having violent chess tournaments (I know, we walked on the wild side). He is the guy who helped get me the job where I met my wife, and we roomed together when we were very poor after I left my parents' house.

When we went our separate ways, we were both under a lot of stress and were dirt poor--we had a third roommate who pretty much ate us out of house and home--he sat down with a spoon one time and ate all the jelly out of the jelly jars in the fridge! Pretty crazy times--no food in the house, and one time I thought I caught Dave sneaking up behind me with a huge kitchen carving knife muttering something about "six months' worth of flank steak"... Anyway, we both moved on and haven't seen each other since then, so I thought it would be interesting to touch base.

But the point of the story is that I really admire people who have a lot of pride in their work, and guard their good name as if their life depended on it. If more people felt that way, well, there wouldn't have been so many Shakespearean tragedies, but the world might be a little nicer.