BUSINESS NEWS

January, money’s tight, simple pleasures are important. Thumbed through some travel brochures that came free in the Guardian last night, the deals look cheap, cheap, cheap, but tourism pornography is a lousy kind of escapism – at £139pp for four nights in Bruges, suddenly the cogs are turning and the pulse quickens, how fast can I raise the dough, who can I pitch, look at those canals!! I’m making plans and strategising, I’m stressed.

Far better this link my colleague Roddy forwarded me today. Nothing beats a good office forward. Can’t stand people who roll their eyes at office humour. As far as I’m concerned, it’s what separates us from animals.

Anyway this one is a searchable database of Enron employees’ inboxes, made public during legal proceedings against the famous firm of ambitious crooks. If you look hard enough you can probably find various smoking guns lying around, but more interesting are the prosaic emails from peripheral employees: spare tickets for the Astros game, marathon sponsorship requests, enquiries about parking spaces etc. I’ve been immersing myself in the office culture of a defunct company all afternoon, like an archaeologist unearthing rare treasures.

For instance, I chanced upon this budding office romance between Julie and Scott:

03/15/2001 03:12 PM
To: Julie A Gomez/HOU/ECT@ECT
cc:
Subject: Re: The New York Energy Risk Management Seminar
That would be fun...is your hotel taken care of through the weekend??? I
have an old unused domestic ticket that I may be able to apply to New York.
Maybe I could even take Friday off....
Scott

Julie replies:

Yes - you have a hotel room with me (can you handle that!?!?!), but it will
not be at the Four Seasons...
:-)

Saucy! The flirtation continues as Julie takes a trip to Prague.

Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 6:58 AM
To: Hendrickson, Scott
Subject: Hello from Prague

Hello Scooter,
Hope you had fun on your three dates this weekend!!! (you slut!)
You know I am jealous. Peggy says not to spread yourself too thin!!!!
You would not believe how cheap it is here. Today at the musuem I had a
sandwich, snickers and a cafe latte for $1.50!!! A three course dinner last
night cost $3.00.
The bad news is that your gift cost $0.20!! (ha, ha) I really haven't bought
it yet.
Take Care,
Miss you,
Julie :-)

Oh, the playful flirtation. Scott replies:

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 10:57 AM
To: 'onvacation '
Subject: RE: Hello from Prague

I doubt you will get this b4 you get back, but I'll write anyway. Yes, I had a GREAT weekend, but I was partying way too much!!! Went out every night from Wednesday to Sunday!!! I'm paying the price now though. But I had a really good time and kept very busy :). I've been two times to your house so far. Everything seems fine.

Sounds like Prague is treating you well. Is it beautiful? Tell Peggy I'm not spreading myself TOO THIN...but remember, you can never be too thin or too rich!!! I can't believe the prices. And if you get me something that costs 20 cents you better get alot of them!!! HEHEHEHE
Miss you! Hurry back!
Scott

I’m obviously quite enraptured by this point. But then comes the twist!! Scott writes to friend Connie:

Connie --
Actually, they reacted very well - or at least as well as can be expected. They were sad, but not horrified or anything. They respect me and know that it's not a choice. It was just so weird, because I did not have any agenda or intention on telling them that at that point, we were just talking about stuff (and drinking) and I just told them. And I told them, you can't be totally surprised by this - and they said no. They had questioned it before, but had not wanted to offend me by asking. At the same time, they were holding out hope that it wasn't true. But now they know. They didn't really have alot of questions or anything, but were just accepting of it. I'm very happy to have it off my chest.
Sorry to hear about your stomach!!! That doesn't sound fun at all. I had a pretty bad hangover yesterday, because I drank profusely before durning and after the whole outing myself to my parents ordeal.

Scott

He was gay all along!! Further examination of his inbox reveals that he has recently split from Rayfael, who works at NASA. Rayfael is a bit of an ingrate, in my opinion: other emails see Scott buying Rayfael books, trying to get him an interview at Enron, and moving his pet dogs outside the house to accommodate Rayfael’s allergies. But hey, judge for yourself.