Caffeine is the drug of choice (Open)

[Jamie Kober]

Jamie dragged his sorry carcass into the only place where he could even hope of salvation. The only place where he could expect a little something to pick him up right before he went to That Place. The most dreadful of dreadful places. Tortured every day until his shift was up. Okay, so he was being a little overly dramatic here, but stupidity hurt. A lot. Especially when said stupidity caused abuse of very innocent, hard working little computers who didn't deserve to be treated like glorified typing pads.

He slowly made his way to the counter, gave the person behind the counter the most pitiful, woe is me, I have to go to work and I hate it look in his arsenal. "Could you please be so kind and alleviate my suffering with a single hot, grande espresso con panna quad, skinny milk? Please?"

A little later, he had his chosen drink and picked his way to the table. He sank down in his seat and took a sip from his espresso with the most blissful look on his face. He'd had better drinks, but this close enough to get him all fired up and energetic and whatever else sort of nonsense his boss like to see when Jamie and his fellow minions had to direct one or other incompetent on how to select that 'funny looking font, the comic thing' or something equally traumatizing.

Oh yes, Jamie just loved his job.

[Pryderi 'Fidget' Smith]

Pryderi Smith adored caffeine.

It was a magical elixir which made the universe a better and more tolerable place.

Usually he got his fix through tea, but... well.

Idiot clients, the need for sugar and a general desperate desire to get a fast boost...

He doesn't even know what he orders really. Just that it's hot, strong and there's a cookie in his hand. ...And that the barista is giving him an odd look.

He's used to that though.

Looking around for somewhere to sit he saw...

Someone with a look on their face which he knew very well.

It's the one that's quite frequently on his own face.

'Dear god, is everyone around me as bright as a rock? How do my clients manage to dress themselves? Do they even know how to add one and one and not get fish?'

"So, what circle of hell do you work in? I work in Accounting."

His voice, with the sing song of it's Irish lilt, is hopefully not unwelcome.

But it's not very often he gets to speak with someone who might understand his pain...

A bit nervously, he fidgeted with his suit. It might has well be a uniform. Black slacks, black jacket, white shirt, black tie. And of course, his glasses.

He just counted himself lucky that his clients got over the whole 'Shouldn't you being wearing braces and suspenders and pants up to your armpits with a pocket protector?' thing within one meeting.

[Jamie Kober]

Jamie was just singing the praises to the godly nectar, the ambrosia that was caffeine, quietly because the last time he did it out loud people looked at him weirdly and he was still a little concerned that someone might have put him online and, seriously, he didn't need that kind of attention.

Viral video material he was not.

Anyway, just in the middle of his Ode to Espresso, someone talked to him. People didn't often talk to him. He looked up and blinked, cataloguing the input and coming up with a way to respond. He was quick about it, not more than a fraction of a second had passed before a rueful smile spread over his features.

"'Lo and behold, the lowly grunt of the IT-world. The tech support guy. He who tells the ambling morons that they can't plug round pegs into blue square sockets, even if they're both blue and who has been trying to teach, in vain I might add, that putting one's keyboard in the dishwasher is a bad thing."

Bitter? Jamie? Just a touch. If one thought that the Himalayas were a cute little hill ridge, then yes, just a touch bitter.

[Pryderi 'Fidget' Smith]

Sitting down, worrying a bit about being told to leave, he grinned.

"Ah, you have my sympathies. If it helps, I know how to turn on my computer, how to make sure it's plugged in, how to restart it and even how to do some basic problem solving on my own."

A sip of his coffee, shoving up his glasses, he added with a chuckle "I get to tell people why they can't deduct their vacation to Hawaii, why it's not a good idea to try and cheat the IRS and, of course, that yelling at me won't make taxes go away. Oh, I'm Pryderi Smith by the way. Most people call me Fidget."

He lifted his cup up.

"To dealing with the ambulatory evidence of the unfortunate flaws in evolution and the fact that we haven't killed them yet, even though they richly deserve it."

To be honest, it wasn't often he found someone to talk to who... well, understood. Then again, he couldn't tolerate most of his coworkers, who tended to be only slightly brighter then their clients.

And he hated his clients. The trouble customers, the ones no one else was likely to endure and the best accountant in the firm. ...That last bit didn't keep him from getting treated like dirt.

[Jamie Kober]

"That makes you one of my favourite people in the world. If I have to explain why a computer should be plugged in before one can expect it to work, I will not be held accountable for my actions." He lifted his own cup to Fidget's and grinned. "More than deserve it. Herbert Spencer practically demands it." And he would be delighted if his new found companion in misery understood what he meant by that. Darwin-shwarmin.

"Jaimie Kober, pleasure to meet you. Now we can start a support group. We can call it 'we hate our customers and wish they would step on white-hot legos', but that's a bit wordy, isn't it?" He'd have to work on that. As it was, he managed to cope by dumping the worst and dumbest idiots on Not Always Right.

"Just the other day I had to explain to a particularly daft blight on the gene-pool that only filling a word document out, not saving or attaching it to an email meant that no one would get it. Best thing? Idiot claimed to have studied computer sciences." Probably one of those party guys who only showed up to class to sleep through their hangover.