COMIC RELIEF  

You're a star.  You're hip, you're hot, you're happening.  Technically, no one can touch you.  When shopping, you just read the bar code on everything you buy-it's easier than looking at the label.  You're the personification of the phrase, "eating binary steak."  But, you've got a problem....

Slimy, inane marketing people (commonly known as SIMPS).
It's bad enough that the SIMPS have no love for technology.  Oh sure, they'll tell you they hold, "very positive inner repercussions concerning hardware devices," but you always wonder if they're sincere-especially when you consider that their last job was in the marketing arm of a "well known" toilet bowl chemical company.  

And there's a deeper problem, even if they are sincere, you don't have the foggiest idea what in the world the SIMPS are talking about.
I'm going to give you a few tips here that; at best, will help you figure out what the real story is with SIMPS, and at worst, will get you intimately familiar with your corporation's corrective action policies.

First, a little history.  Ancestors of the SIMPS crawled out of the ooze just like you and me.  The problem is that these early ancestors liked to go back to the ooze to visit every summer.  Needless to say, this doesn't fare well for breaking new evolutionary ground.  Don't believe me?  Everyone knows that a SIMP's favorite thing, above all else, is money.  That green color reminds them of the "good ole days."  In fact in a recent NIH experiment, 100 SIMPS were shown a $100 bill and asked to say the first thing that came to their minds; 15% said "gimme that," 12% said "there's no place like home," and, as you would expect, the remaining 73% drew a complete blank.  Unfortunately, the drooling quotient of the participants was not measured.

You've grown to hate SIMPS over the years, but you never recognized them in their other forms.  These were the same people that were in the "Greek system" in college (the pupa stage) and hall monitors in elementary school (the larva stage).

You may be able to hit and run these SIMPS in your car during your off hours, but at work you've got to try your best to communicate.  Here are a few definitions of their most common terms to help you get by in your day-to-day encounters with the less fortunate.

Proactive: Some SIMPS know that they've done something wrong and want to try to blame someone else in the organization before the President finds out.  "I think we should be proactive in finding a solution to the distribution problem."  (The antonym for this word is conactive, meaning the SIMPS know they have done something wrong and admit it.  Now you know why you never hear the word "conactive" used.)

Leverage: Some SIMPS want to try to get someone else to do their work for them.  "We can get the project done on time if we leverage off Buffy's group."

Infrastructure: Trip to Hawaii with free drinks.  "We can get moving on our project once we've set up a good infrastructure." 

Team player: A fool.  "Spiff spends all his time at work, thinks only of others, and never even looks at the stock price.  What a team player!"

A last bit of advice.  If you think that SIMPS are after you and you feel the need to retaliate, the best thing to do is send a memo asking for a meeting.  Copy it to as many SIMPS in the company that you know and make sure each sentence has at least one polysyllabic word that you won't find in the dictionary, and makes no sense at all.  

Try to use words that are conglomerations of real words ("proactive" is an excellent example, though ideally it should be about four syllables longer).  One or two days before the meeting say that you are working on "additional items for the agenda" and reschedule.  Repeat this process until the marketing arm of your company is reorganized and then you'll be off the hook.  

Keep your chin up and don't worry.  Remember, no matter how bad things get it could be worse-you could be a SIMP. 

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Warren Piece is a special guest columnist whose prose will appear in each issue of develop.  You can write to him care of develop and we'll make sure he gets your cards and letters (and cash if you choose to send it through the mail). 

