Recreative Uncreative exercise

This morning I wrote up an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for my boss, and a small part of me actually enjoyed writing it—using the formal, step-by-inane-insane-step and mildly-disdainful-of-idiotic-inferiors tone that SOPs use (complete with occasional Army-esque grammatical mistakes). I’ve always been reasonably adept at imitative writing & parody, and it gave me a perverse delight to force my mind (temporarily) into the anal-retentive brain of a bureaucratic system and write their SOP the way they’d have written it, had they deigned to dirty their hands doing actual work. It’s much the same twisted, thinly-cruel delight that Billy Prior derived in subtly parodying the accent of his upper class “superiors” in the Regeneration Trilogy. In other words, when I occasionally get mad, I work off steam by (ironically) doing excellent work—well, what they define as “excellent” anyway. This attitude, “you-want-it-your-way-you-bloody-get-it”, is admittedly not very nice (even though they’re not very nice either), but it keeps me sane.

Apologies, but it appears I’m human. *thin, sardonic, self-mocking grin. Think Raistlin if you've read Dragonlance*