Dichotomy...

We had a fire drill a few minutes ago. While baking outside, I decided that the arbitrary way that people take roll (alphabetically by last name) is silly. Yes yes, my name (both first and last) occur near the beginning of the alphabet, so what am I complaining about, right? I dunno. I just feel like if you're going to arbitrarily do it one way, why not a way that's way more fun? I wanted to have them call roll for a firedrill in order of importance. That way if someone like Dave is trapped in the building, people can rush to his aid before saving someone less business-critical, like, say, any of the executives on the 8th floor... But that would of course never fly with the powers that be. I frankly would like to know where I would fall on such a list. I mean, I know where I would put myself, but I'm curious what the organization as a whole thinks. So, anyway, I decided to come up with a better scheme for organizing people - by birthdate. But not just birthdate, I'm talking alphabetically by month, reverse numerical order by day, numerically by year, then, as a tie-breaker, reverse alphabetically by middle name when spelled backwards. So the first person on the list should be the oldest person born on April 30th with a middle name of Zzzzzz and the last person would have been born with a middle name of Aaaaaa on the most recent September 1st. And if all else fails to differentiate two people, use decreasing height measured in light-nanoseconds, then increasing number of eyelashes listed in octal, and finally hair-color as represented by 32-bit hexcode, ordered from 0 to F. I know, it sounds confusing, but just give it a couple of years of practice and it'll be as natural as breathing (through a straw with a mastodon standing on your chest).

Posted by Rev. Adam on Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 4:11 PM | Permalink