MTI

Department of minor technical inconveniences (MTI).

MTI was created with one idea in mind: Profit.

P r o f i t.

Director Craig Stanton got his position in Antar Corp through listening to people. He was one of the few senior managers in history who wasn’t a founding member or a cut-throat on his way to become a shareholder. People under him respected him, he was faithful to his wife, spend quality time with his children and did E only once at a university party – decades ago, never touching anything stronger than tea in his day to day life.

His ideas didn’t make extraordinary profits, in fact his ideas made ordinary profits. Constant ordinary profits. The genius of Mr. Stanton was that he really paid attention to people, even people like Sean.

Sean was an engineer. He was quirky and perpetually single. Perhaps because his natural manner was to be condescending to anyone not in his position, perhaps it was his impossibly high standards coupled with low self-esteem or perhaps it was as simple as his gods-awful tobacco stained teeth. He was a very important part of the culture. He was a much-needed quirky technical guy who was still approachable and could be understood. Perhaps it was because he didn’t actually have a technical background until he got this job. A dark secret known only by a select few. One of those was Katrien.

Katrien, or Kate for anyone lazy/creepily overfamiliar, loved people and gossip. She also loved holding pointless grudges about trivial arguments over irrelevant matters long past, but was an absolute angel of comfort when it came to big life changing decisions. Oh and nails, she loved getting her nails done. She was dedicated to her job and to trying to find a rich husband to whisk her away, even she consciously knew that it’s not that easy and you still unsure if it’s O.K. to feel like a feminist for wanting to have an easy life at expense of a man. She knew everybody in the office, including Janet, who everybody saw, but never knew anything about.

Janet was a woman. She was higher up in the management, but it was unclear whether she was on the same level or above Mr.Stanton.

Mr. Stanton was having a rare slow Friday when he noticed his printer blinking at him. He shifted his chair, but it was uncomfortable. He shifted it back, the printer was still blinking. He stood up, walked over to it and inspected the light. The printer seemed to be in perfect working condition: it was full of aligned paper and fresh colour cartridges, but the one of the lights was on…and blinking. Mr Stanton turned the printer 90 degrees so that the light faced the glass office wall instead of his desk, and walked back to his chair. He settled and glanced at the printer. The glass office wall was blinking at him.

He opened his skype and messaged IT. Couple of minutes later, shadowy and forgettable figure of IT guy appeared: “Hey, Paul, can you take a look at my printer? It’s blinking something irritating from that corner.” Paul took a look, shrugged, went away, then returned with a piece of electrical tape, covered up the light and left with the words “Hope that’s better, Boss”.

How funny, Mr Stanton thought, that we hire best specialists in IT to cover up printer lights with electrical tape.

And then it hit him.

Antar Corp hires best IT specialists to cover up printer lights with electrical tape. What if….just what if.. Antar made products that required Antar specialists to cover up with Antar made tape?

And thus it was born. The Department of Minor Technical Inconveniences.