opium.com

The name of the place is The Odian Corporation, which I suppose was a radical enough name for when it was created, which was the mid-1960's.

Odian Corp. decided to get an Internet server in 1993, and of course, they had no one on staff at that point who knew anything about the Internet -- this was before the Great Web Boom of '95, mind you. As a result, they did what all the corporations at that time did -- they telephoned some snotty, bitter, acid-dropping ex-film majors who had decided in 1987 to drop out of life and start their own multimedia company. This, of course, is why all those snotty ex-film majors are millionaires now, in 1996, and what allows me, a snotty, bitter, acid-dropping (ex-acid-dropping) art major (graduated art major) to get a $34,000 job at a place like The Odian Corporation. History is one long series of seemingly random, small decisions that snowball until they are out of control -- much like when a quirky, minor character on a bad sitcom suddenly becomes popular and, three years later, you tune in one night and find out the entire show is now built around them.

It's still not certain whether there was a simple miscommunication over the phone (as the snotty ex-film majors claimed) or whether the snotty ex-film majors were just taking too much acid the night they set up the server and decided it would be cool to fuck up The Establishment. In any case, the happy, excited little workers of The Odian Corporation came to work the next day, anxious to start sending secret notes to their lovers across town, who were also trudging away in another nameless, faceless skyscraper. And when they booted up their computer, logged on to CC:Mail, typed their message and sent it, they quickly found out that their domain was, in actuality, called:

opium.com

A meeting was held that afternoon to determine if, in actuality, this was wrong. After a half-hour of furious debate, it was determined that yes, if fact, the name of the domain was supposed to be:

odian.com

A call was placed. "Odian? Oh, sorry, dude, we thought you said opium. Well, no, we didn't question it. Look, man, it's not our jobs to question what a place wants to be called. We're just hired to do it."

What is certain from all parties involved is that the wrong approach was taken by The Odian Corporation in regards to soliciting help from the multimedia company as to getting the problem quickly fixed. For, you see, instead of the mild-mannered summer intern who was originally ordered to "handle the Internet thing," who was the initial liaison between Odian Corp. and the bitter ex-film majors, this new call was placed by the Assistant Manager of Computer Facilities, Emerging Technologies Department. This gentleman made the unfortunate mistake of assuming that all of Mankind responded to him the way his employees did. He unfortunately was not able to see that his employees responded to him the way they did simply because their jobs depended on it. He didn't realize that his employees silently cursed him behind his back; that they quietly stole all his pens whenever he was away from his desk; that one particularly feisty employee got very drunk at a company picnic in 1989 and actually spit in his drink, without him noticing. He wrongly assumed that everyone in the world responded to him this way, because he had Power, because he Took Charge; and as a result, he treated everyone the same, from his wife down to the $4.25 an hour McDonald's teller.

Popular rumor has it that the Assistant Manager of Computer Facilities, Emerging Technologies Department's exact words that day were, "Tell you what, boys, why don't you get your heads outta your asses and get this thing fixed, or I'm gonna come down there and then you're really gonna have some problems." This, of course, is just rumor and cannot be verified.

What has been verified was the response of the bitter ex-film majors, which was to say to this gentleman, "Okay, we'll get it cleared right up," then hanging up the phone and laughing at the gall of that asshole; deciding that The Odian Corporation could go fuck themselves as far as they were concerned, 'cause shit, man, they had already set up four more corporate servers just on the strength of the Odian contract, and had three more lined up; agreeing with each other that they had dropped out of school precisely so they wouldn't have to deal with dicks like this guy; and ultimately choosing to close up the shop early that day, go home and smoke a little weed that, in fact, had been purchased with money from the Odian contract.

Just in case you're wondering, I did briefly consider dropping out of college in the mid-'80s and starting up a multimedia company myself. But I was too chicken-shit. I ultimately trusted in what had been taught to me, that nothing can ever beat out a college degree in the long run. In my defense, I would remind you that Ronald Reagan was in office at the time.

An internal investigation was started to find the cause of this error. It, of course, fell squarely on the shoulders of the Assistant Manager of Computer Facilities, Emerging Technologies Department. But it just so happens that on the exact day of the original phone call, the day that the summer intern said, "Hold on a second," curled his hand around the mouthpiece of the phone so that no one on the other side could hear, jutted the receiver out into space towards the Assistant Manager of Computer Facilities, Emerging Technologies Department and said, "I got those multimedia guys on the phone. You wanna talk to them about the server?" the Assistant Manager of Computer Facilities, Emerging Technologies Department happened to be putting papers in his briefcase and heading out to a secret attendance of an afternoon Cubs game. "Jesus Christ, what do they need to know?" he said. "Just tell 'em we're ready for 'em to plug the godamn thing in! Can you handle that?" And with that, he was gone.

Of course, the Assistant Manager of Computer Facilities, Emerging Technologies Department knew he was in trouble. So one afternoon he closed his door and typed up a memo to the intern, clearly and concisely laying out all the detailed instructions of what to say to the multimedia company, how to get things set up, and the wishes of The Odian Corporation to have the name "odian.com" for their server. He pre-dated the memo for three days before the phone call, printed it out, signed it, snuck down to the copy room, made a xerox, then made a xerox of the xerox, went back to his office, wrinkled the memo, smoothed it back out and stuck it in his files. Later that night he took the original printout and burned it in his north suburban fireplace.

When the investigator came to talk to the Assistant Manager of Computer Facilities, Emerging Technologies Department, the Assistant Manager "hmm"ed and "ah"ed for a bit, went to his files, rummaged around, pulled out a piece of paper and said, "Ah, I do have a copy of that memo," and happily turned it over. It was determined that the intern was indeed at fault, but since it seemed to be an honest mistake, no mention of it would be made on his performance review. It was decided to just wait a few weeks and let the multimedia company straighten out the whole affair.

Six months passed. And one day, the Vice President of Emerging Technologies found himself standing next to the Assistant Manager of Computer Facilities, Emerging Technologies Department in the bathroom, the two of them currently pissing into strange-looking porcelain bowls, and he mentioned, "Say, Bob, whatever's been happening with this whole 'opium' thing, anyway? Keep me in the loop on this."

A call was made. By now, of course, the multimedia company had more business than it could handle and as a result had quadrupled its staff, including a person who actually did nothing but answer phone calls, all day long. The bitter ex-film majors had been told that such a person was called a "secretary," but they refused to believe that men such as themselves would have a secretary, so when they had business cards printed up for her, they listed her profession as "She-Ra, Queen of Voice Mail." And this, of course, suited her just fine.

She-Ra told this rather irate gentleman on the phone that she was perfectly sure she had no idea what he was talking about, that yes, she'd be happy to leave a message for her bosses but no, they weren't in, they were all currently attending a conference in San Francisco, and no, sir, she would not call them at their hotel, no sir, they left strict instructions not to be bothered except in case of emergency and well, sir, is your server actually running? Then I wouldn't classify it as an emergency, would you? and eventually she employed a trick taught to her by her bosses, which was to click the "disconnect" button on her phone while in the middle of a conversation so that it seemed to the caller that the line suddenly and innocently went dead, instead of, in fact, the caller getting deliberately hung up on, and then letting the multimedia company's voice mail answer the next call that came in from that same phone number -- She-Ra, of course, knowing when the phone call was from that number because of her having Caller I.D. as any self-respecting multimedia company in 1994 had.

Two weeks later, one of the bitter ex-film majors finally took the call. "Yeah, well," he said, "We checked into that. Turns out some Dungeons and Dragons group in Arizona's already taken the name 'odian.com.' Hey, dude, it's outta our hands. Hey, you listening to me? There's nothin' we can do about it! Sue us? For what? Breach of contract? Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Yeah, all right, dude, go ahead and sue us. If it makes your dick hard, do whatever you want, man. See you in court, asshole."

Two weeks later, the Legal Department of the Odian Corporation determined that a lawsuit would be a worthless endeavor -- the multimedia company had shown good faith in trying to correct the problem, and ultimately it would come out in court that the entire set of directions, due to a fault of one of their summer interns, was directed over the telephone, and Odian Corp. was ultimately to blame for any miscommunication.

Three weeks were used setting up a committee to look into a solution. A squabble broke out as to whether the committee would be comprised of employees of the Emerging Technology Department or the newly formed Information Services Department. Eventually the President of Operations had to step in and decree that the committee would, in fact, be comprised of two employees from each of these departments.

The Internet Reconfiguration Committee, as they were known, met once every two weeks for three months. Each meeting was held at a nearby restaurant, and the lunch bill for the four members were each put on the Odian corporate account, totaling at the end of the three months approximately $480. The Committee endlessly debated their options, ultimately deciding at the end that the most prudent solution was to simply rename the server, something that would not exactly be "odian.com" but would certainly be better than "opium.com."

The debate, of course, was not over this decision but, rather, the best way to implement the change. Details had to be determined for any number of related items, including but not limited to: how to alert Odian Corp.'s clients of the name change (it was determined that a four-color postcard, depicting a cartoon computer with the new name, would be best); how to best alert the 1500 employees of Odian Corp. of the change (a one-day seminar for all, spaced out over three weeks, explaining how to archive all their old e-mail so that they wouldn't lose any during the change, and explaining how it was of the utmost importance that they all call their client contacts to personally remind them of the change); and how to best replace the approximately 300,000 business cards and roughly 700,000 sheets of stationary that will suddenly become obsolete with the name change (a gradual six-month roll-out).

An employee of the Marketing Department was put in charge of assembling an analysis report of how to best choose a new name. This gentleman did, in fact, graduate in the last place amongst all his peers in the Marketing Department at Michigan University, a state-run four year college whose primary motivation is athletics. Athletics, in fact, were the primary diversion of this particular Marketing employee while in college, along with drinking obscene amounts of beer, hitting on women in sports bars and then date-raping them back at his fraternity house, and listening to fairly innocuous top-forty bands. Truth be told, this particular employee was, in fact, quite dumb. Michigan was the only school that would accept him, and he chose Marketing for a major because nothing seemed to really interest him and someone told him once that Marketing majors "can make a fuckin' bucketload of money, dude."

This gentleman spent exactly 62 man-hours compiling this report, at an hourly wage with the company of $22 an hour, for a total of $1,364. His executive summary stated that "it is recommended that Odian, Corp. choose a server name that most closely resembles the word ODIAN without currently being used by another company." His boss was so happy that someone had volunteered to do this report, that he promoted this gentleman to manager position three months later.

A fight broke out over who was to pick the new name. Alliances were formed between workgroups and a special lunch meeting between the entire Emerging Technologies Department and Information Services Department had to be scheduled in order to get the two sides back on friendly terms with each other. The lunch shut down all work in both departments for an entire afternoon and cost Odian Corp. approximately $800 in food and $3,520 in paid time for lunch.

Finally, during an unusually tense meeting, the President of Operations stood up and, in a fit of anger usually unseen in the man, yelled, "For God's sake! I'm going to pick the new name! And that's the end of the damn discussion!"

Ten months after originally conceiving the idea, the new server name was chosen:

odianco.com

It was determined that the roll-out date for the new name would be exactly one year from the date that I am currently writing this sentence.

Frankly, I like having "opium.com" for a server name. It adds a little panache to our company that a lot of places don't have. It makes me feel like I'm working at one of those crazy multimedia places where they smoke pot during office hours and put things like "She-Ra" on their business cards -- instead of where I do work, an advertising agency with 1500 employees, where I'm paid $34,000 a year to tell accountants over the phone how to change their margins in Microsoft Word, where the singlemost important and lucrative event in the history of the agency was when someone wrote down the phrase, "Have you had your break today?"

So would you like a nice little wrap-up to this story? Like those movies that run the end credits by showing pictures of each character along with a sentence that reads something like, "Charlie McGee left for Vietnam in 1968. He was killed in combat two years later"? Well, okay:

-- The snotty, bitter acid-dropping ex-film majors eventually sold the entire company to a conglomerate for an amount in excess of $12 million. As a joke, they sent in their resumes to the multimedia company after it was being run by the conglomerate. They were never called for an interview. They currently live in Prague.

-- The summer intern eventually got a job with Sega for $84,000. He happens to be a friend of mine and also happens to be a friend of the bitter ex-film majors (circles run tight in Chicago), which is why I know what their reaction to Odian Corp. was.

-- As the early '90s became the mid '90s, computers eventually took over and now control The Odian Corporation. Entire full-time staffs had to be created from scratch: a staff to do nothing but watch over the network; a staff to do nothing but run around and install new computers, fix old ones; a staff to do nothing but design Web pages for our clients; and the staff I belong to, who do nothing but sit in a room all day and answer endless phone calls, telling art directors how to insert page numbers into Quark Xpress documents and change text color in Powerpoint and create tables in Microsoft Word.

-- Eventually "Computer Facilities" was merged into the Information Services Department, which now handles everything from document production to laptop computer checkouts to the doling out of high memory storage disks. The Emerging Technologies Department was scaled back to what they always wanted to be: six nerds sitting in a windowless room, playing endless amounts of Black Sabbath on their group stereo and sitting around testing beta versions of virtual reality animation programs and thinking about how they could be used to sell more hamburgers.

-- And our old friend, the Assistant Manager of Computer Facilities, Emerging Technologies Department? Oh, I thought you knew. He's the new Vice President of Information Services.

Copyright 1996, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.