UTTER NONSENSE
A ONE ACT PLAY
Dramatis Personae:
MR ROMAN, the Chairman
TREVOR, our hero
STEVEN
GREG
DEAN his colleagues
LESTER
PETE
FRANK
ALICE, a receptionist
TREVOR’S MOTHER, a mother
This play is set in a regular grey office with fluorescent lighting on a standard rectangular stage. ***
SCENE ONE:
Enter Manager, Receptionist, Colleagues
MANAGER: Alright team, as I mentioned in my email, Mr Roman is coming in today to assess our department. He will be conducting his interviews in the conference room, and for those who have been summoned, you know who you are. As your manager, I wish you all the best of luck, and I am certain that your performance will do our department justice. Hopefully, this assessment will go off without a hitch.
Exit Manager
STEVEN: Today’s the day, Dean. After I nail that interview, I’ll be the new VP.
DEAN: You mean, if.
STEVEN: When. It’s already in the bag. Mr Roman loves me, I’ve done my time in the kiddie pool, and of all the people getting an interview: I have the best qualifications. I do my numbers, my customer sats* are high. Dude, I’ve bled for this job. I’m clearly the best choice. I deserve this promotion. *satisfaction ratings
DEAN: If you say so, mate.
Enter Trevor
Trevor has an immaculately tailored suit, with a shirt three sizes too big. His shoes are Italian leather but are incredibly scuffed.
ALICE: Good morning, Trevor.
TREVOR: Yes! We are just beginning our obfuscating journey on the enlightening growth potential that this nascent calendar day presents to us.
ALICE: …Okay. Good talk Trev.
Receptionist rolls her eyes.
Trevor walks briskly towards his cubicle with an air of nonchalance, and announces his arrival.
TREVOR: The anthropogenic market today, in its ever illusory synergy, creates rapid synergistic growth from the imminent backdated distribution of our new outdated products and their positively negative acceptance.
DEAN: What did he just say?
STEVEN: I’ve never understood a word of it.
DEAN: How does he even still have a job?
STEVEN: …What IS his job?
DEAN: It’s Post-Delivery Supervisory Assistant to the Executive Change Management Departmental Head.
STEVEN: Of course it is.
Trevor logs into his computer with his favourite password. It’s a 742 character long alphanumeric adaptation of the lyrics of the song ‘Vienna’ by Ultravox, converted into binary.
TREVOR: I think I need to work on this password more, it’s still not secure enough.
Trevor’s phone rings and he picks it up.
TREVOR: You’ve reached Trevor, can I help you with increasing the uptake of your business intelligence adoption process agreeance in RE mission critical acquisition?
UH huh. Uh. Huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. No. Oh, so you have a problem. We don’t do problems here; we only do solutions. And if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Tell you what your solution is, sir. First off, you need to log into the Dh394573Hre System, because I suspect you’ve been logging into the Dh394753Hlk system. You wanna backwards and forwards reverse the double entries, because what they’ll be doing is they won’t be totalling against the triple totals. You get bad integer reverses from doing that, and that’ll be causing the b17 database to create backward lookup records that are probably not making it to the fiber optic back uptakes which is causing the b17 CPU to create a memory link that is corrupting the file allocation table.
Hangs up
High five!
Trevor holds his hand up for high five.
He continues to hold his hand up for as long as it takes for someone else to get up from their chair, walk over, and give him a high five.
Greg gets up from the other side of the room, sighing the whole time.
LESTER: Why do you keep doing that? You’re just encouraging him.
GREG: You don’t think we’ve all tried? I’ve been here 6 years, and he does not stop until someone gives him a high five. His record is 3 hours, 14 minutes, and 43 seconds. We all went to lunch, came back and he was still there. We could all go home and come back, and I guarantee you he would still be there.
The phone rings again and Trevor picks up.
TREVOR: Good morning, this is Trevor, I hope you’re ringing about our new high performance open-source PPPoE firewall with auxiliary bandwidth Ethernet SSL to quantify the multi-byte DDR array wireless protocol. You are? Great! I know what you’re struggling with, it’s common. What you need to do is this; interface the RX processor through the Unicode MP3 malware. When the screen goes blank attach the neural transistor so we can inject the SSD program. It’ll create quite a big spark, don’t worry about that, there’ll be a bit of smoke so just turn the fan on. What this process will do is transcode the program by navigating its HTTP gateway. When this is complete you’ll be ready to go. Done.
Trevor hangs up immediately, without waiting for an answer. He holds up his hand for another high five.
GREG: Frank.
Greg indicates to Trevor. Frank reluctantly gets up with a sigh, and shuffles over to Trevor like a bored toddler to give him a high five.
Trevor gives a final whoop.
TREVOR: This day is strategically streamlining for a survivable, sustainable synergistic future that is win-win for all of us. I’m telling you people this is the “new normal”, a real paradigm shift.
Trevor does air quotes around “new normal”.
STEVEN: (to DEAN) you know what man? When I get this job, the first idiot I’ll be firing is Trevor.
They shake hands
DEAN: You have my support on that one, Steven. Good luck.
STEVEN: Pssh, thanks, but I don’t need it.
Steven walks into the conference room.
Exeunt.
SCENE TWO:
Enter Steven and Mr Roman
MR ROMAN: Thanks son, I’ll let you know. Oh, and Steven? Could you tell Trevor I’ll meet with him after lunch?
Mr Roman shuts the door before Steven finishes. Steven looks confident but apprehensive.
Exit Mr Roman.
STEVEN: Oh, uh, yes, of course Mr Roman. I’ll do just that.
DEAN: How’d it go?
STEVEN: Really well. He asked me a bunch of questions which I totally nailed, he seemed quite happy with me. I’m confident. Anyway, did you know Trevor had an interview too?
DEAN: No, holy shit. This is gold. How did he even swing that? Hey Pete!
Pete walks over from his desk to Steven and Dean.
PETE: Yo, wassup?
Steven and Dean look at each other then back at Pete, confused and disapproving. Pete brushes it off like he doesn’t care. He does.
DEAN: Trevor has an interview with Mr Roman today.
PETE: Really? Oh man, I would pay to see that.
DEAN: Anyway, let’s go to lunch, your shout.
Exit Dean and Steven
PETE: Yeah, cool. …What? Yo, wait up!
Exit Pete
The phone rings. Alone in the office, Trevor picks up.
TREVOR: Trevor here, how may I help you synergising and mobilising your hyperlocal KPO ROI today?
A faint noise can be heard from the phone, it sounds angry.
TREVOR: Oh, hi mum. Sorry, yeah I kno-, yeah, sorry, okay, yup, sorry mum. Yeah, yeah okay I will, alright. Just milk? Oh and bread, okay. Yup, yup alright. Yes okay mum. Okay. Okay bye mum. (Whispering) Okay, love you too. Yeah. Okay, okay bye.
Trevor brings the phone closer to the base as he says good bye, eager to hang up. He hangs up, looks at his watch and realises it’s time for lunch.
Exeunt.
SCENE THREE:
Enter Trevor, colleagues and Mr Roman
Trevor is already at his desk as his colleagues re-enter, Steven, Dean and Pete entering last.
TREVOR: Yes sir that is standard operating procedure for the Systems Development Life Cycle, especially in beta. Differentiated instructions in the content management will parse the DRM in the big data algorithm RX protocol through the unicode GB driver. We’re going forward with our plans to implement synchronised organisational capability as there are unspoken benefits of AngularJS. With all this in mind, obviously your product becomes more localised overall.
STEVEN: Hey Trev, Mr Roman told me to tell you he’ll see you in a few minutes. You ready?
TREVOR: I was born ready!
Steven returns to his own cubicle. Once Trevor knows no one’s watching his face drops. He looks visibly confused and a little frightened. He frantically flips through his calendar. He then gathers his composure, whispers some affirmations to himself. He does a quick Wikipedia search on yoga, then leaps from his chair full of confidence and walks directly into the room.
TREVOR: Pleasure to see you again sir, you’re looking well. How’s the missus? I hear her yoga school is competently reconceptualising effective infomediaries. You know, the origins of yoga have been speculated to date back to pre-Vedic Indian traditions, but most likely developed around the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, in ancient India’s ascetic and śramaṇa movements.
MR ROMAN: You’re on the money there Trevor, you a bit of a yoga fan?
TREVOR: Oh completely sir, I love me some Bikram.
Holds his hand up for a high five and Mr Roman slaps it enthusiastically.
MR ROMAN: So Trevor, what’s your role here?
TREVOR: To be honest sir, I run this place. I distinctively reintermediate resource maximizing communities, and assertively aggregate error-free web services. Let me give you a heads up: I would definitely open source at this point. It’s important to think streamlined.
MR ROMAN: Looks like you and me are on the same page Trevor. Everyone’s jumping on the cloudless Big Data ASAP, but here is no other industry equally streamlined. Let’s close the loop on this.
TREVOR: Sir let’s not drink the Kool-Aid here, for a company of this size to succeed in such an intermediated market we need to diversify in the most effective lateral penetration method we can execute quickly. Like I tell the guys around here all the time we need to distinctively synergize exceptional catalysts for change to energistically seize compelling communities.
MR ROMAN: Trevor, I had a list of questions for you here, but let’s face it, I’ll be wasting my time asking them. Trevor, how would you like to be our new VP of Corporate Strategy?
Trevor leaps up from his chair, and holds his hand out to shake.
TREVOR: Sir, I thought you’d never ask.
They shake hands and walk into the main office.
MR ROMAN: Could I have everyone’s attention please? I’ve finished all of my interviews for the day and found great success. I’d like to introduce you all to our new VP Corporate Strategy, Trevor!
People look around confused and some begin to clap. Steven stands up and flips his desk over with great force. He kicks his chair away and pulls the finger at everyone with both hands.
STEVEN: Fuck you, fuck you all. I’m done, I quit. I’m leaving this fucking madhouse.
Steven kicks some more things and hits a few small objects off desks as his storms out.
Exit Steven.
TREVOR: Looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays!
Trevor and Mr Roman laugh jovially and point at each other like they’re in a sitcom.