The last time I saw Travis, he was at my office door upset. Or more like, agitated.  He was interrupting something I was supposed to have completed, some underdone overdue unimportant work assignment.  But I could see that he wanted to talk to me and I honestly liked talking to the guy, I supposed I wanted to be interrupted.  And I could see by the look on his face it was important to him.  I knew that he only came to talk to me when he thought he had a problem that he couldn’t fix himself and these instances were fairly rare.

I can’t even remember the issue now.  I remember seeing Travis and I remember being glad to see him and I remember not being surprised when he started to complain about, probably, not being able to get machines or if he got machines they were all broken or un-ssh-able or he didn’t have the right group permissions.  As he stood there he told me what he wanted to do and then listed all of the ways that he went about it and then all the various steps (in detail) that didn’t work the way that they should have and then, and then, he explained to me how the machine management process should work, what would be the right way to do this very simple thing that was simply now such a huge pain in the ass.

And of course, he was right.

I remember being happy that he cared enough to want to talk to me, to want to try to fix these things.  And that thought made me smile.  I don't know if he thought I wasn't taking his situation seriously, me sitting there smiling when he was upset.  I wish I could explain to him now that I just enjoyed listening to him, I always learned something from him, it didn't mean that I didn't care but the opposite.  I worry that he thought I was just an oblivious idiot manager.

But I was also smiling because it was so quintessential Travis: It was clear that he had interrupted me to tell me about something that he could fix, that he knew he could fix himself.  Mostly he just wanted to tell me that it was wrong that he had to fix it, it should just work.  And all I could do was agree because he was right.  He knew he was right.  We both knew it.  But there was simply nothing that either of us could do about it at that point in time.

And now this image of him is stuck in my mind, Travis is standing there holding in both hands a steaming paper cup, barricading my office door from the row of cubes at his back.  He is insistent that these very basic pre-requisites for doing our jobs should not be this screwed up, that for everyone to waste their time like this is wrong.  And there I am, nodding my head silently, smiling, bathed in the man's pure unstoppable logic in the face of an inscrutable corporate corporeality.

Thinking about going to work today and not seeing him, not ever seeing him again, brings his words back to me.  And again, I can only agree with him:

“This is bullshit! Total bullshit!”