Ummm… okay, Ev.

As most of you know, Ev’s been sending me these drawings for a while now without any explanation. I decided to start posting them when I realized he was just going to keep sending them to me. So far, each one has been somewhat of a mystery, but this one is different.

Ev titled this picture “validthing.jpg.” I know what this means.

Ev and I used to work together in cubeland at the corporate headquarters of a huge company. A large part of our job was to be proactive problem solvers. We would seek out and identify common systematic problems within the company, then delegate that problem to someone else to correct. We were tremendously effective.

I picked up on one particular issue on some random workday. The issue could have easily affected thousands of the company’s employees across the country, but there was a simple solution to the problem.

So, I described the problem and the solution in a detailed e-mail and sent it to the one guy who could correct it. That guy worked in another department within the same office complex in cubeland. Hours later - no response. I e-mailed again, this time indicating the urgency of the issue.

A couple of hours went by. Then it happened. I got the most ridiculous e-mail of all time. The guy who I had never met face to face, my peer in another department, a guy who is supposed to be professional and courteous sent me this exact e-mail:

“THIS is NOT a valid thing.”

I think Ev and I ended up fixing the problem ourselves. To this day, I still think that other guy is a cock.

Apparently Ev decided to try to illustrate what a valid thing actually looks like, but he obviously failed. Instead, the image shows something that is clearly not a valid thing.