A changing of the guard
Jul. 23rd, 2013 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueJust found out from my day job that Marc Okrand is retiring in two weeks. He's one of the billing/accounting/payroll guys, and he's been with the company around 34 years, pretty much since the beginning. 100% of my interactions with him are through e-mail, and the e-mails go like this:
Him: Romie would you please sign off on this program you forgot to sign off on so that we can process it for billing.
Me: Ack, sorry. Done. Sorry about that.
But my interactions with him also go like this:
Hey it's Marc Okrand! Hey! Hey! He wrote Klingon, and here he is sending me an e-mail! Hey! Hey Marc Okrand! Hey!
I have of course never said this to him, nor has he mentioned Klingon or any aspect of conlanging to me, because we are professionals and we have a job to do that doesn't involve Klingon. (Although if we ever did have to caption Klingon, we would be covered.) If we all went around Trekking out all the time, nothing would ever get done. Some of us already occasionally come to the office in Starfleet dress, and perhaps make comparisons between voice regonition software and the Enterprise, and perhaps have some ideas about how our committment to diversity and our mission to improve accessibility are in line with the vision of Gene Roddenberry - but we have to maintain a line.
Anyway, work is about to get a little less glamorous, if you consider it glamorous to occasionaly get e-mails politely letting you know you have accidentally inconvenienced the guy who wrote Klingon. Which I do.
Him: Romie would you please sign off on this program you forgot to sign off on so that we can process it for billing.
Me: Ack, sorry. Done. Sorry about that.
But my interactions with him also go like this:
Hey it's Marc Okrand! Hey! Hey! He wrote Klingon, and here he is sending me an e-mail! Hey! Hey Marc Okrand! Hey!
I have of course never said this to him, nor has he mentioned Klingon or any aspect of conlanging to me, because we are professionals and we have a job to do that doesn't involve Klingon. (Although if we ever did have to caption Klingon, we would be covered.) If we all went around Trekking out all the time, nothing would ever get done. Some of us already occasionally come to the office in Starfleet dress, and perhaps make comparisons between voice regonition software and the Enterprise, and perhaps have some ideas about how our committment to diversity and our mission to improve accessibility are in line with the vision of Gene Roddenberry - but we have to maintain a line.
Anyway, work is about to get a little less glamorous, if you consider it glamorous to occasionaly get e-mails politely letting you know you have accidentally inconvenienced the guy who wrote Klingon. Which I do.
