It was St. Patrick’s Day and my family was gathering at my brother’s house for dinner. He hosts a gathering every year for the holiday- he is a private chef and works very hard to put out a celebratory spread. We aren’t Irish but we love food. My brother’s corned beef is amazing and it’s the best I’ve had. He also makes a Shepherd’s Pie, Irish Soda Bread, Colcannon, and of course, cabbage. We love to eat and hang out together as a family and every year my brother also dances an Irish Jig, which we all record on our phones and then send to each other and laugh.
While we were driving I would hear a strange whirring sound that would come and go. Wwwwwhhhhhhhiiiiiirrrr-Wwwwwhhhhhhhiiiiiirrrr and then nothing. I would be talking to my wife or my daughter and I would hear it. Wwwwwhhhhhhhiiiiiirrrr- Wwwwwhhhhhhhiiiiiirrrr and then nothing. By the time I’d get around to wondering ‘what’s that noise?’ it would disappear. I rolled the driver’s side window down to listen for it. Was there something going on with the tires? I finally said something.
“What is that noise? Does anybody else hear it?”
My daughter laughed and said, “Dad, that’s my fidget spinner.”
“What’s a fidget spinner?” I asked, relieved that the sound didn’t meant there was anything wrong with the car.
“It’s this little toy I spin when I’m bored. They used to be very popular but no one uses them anymore. Well, I do sometimes.”
And since she had just explained it to me, it took no giant logic leap to realize that she was super-jazzed to be listening to me talk. I was a big old drag, and she had to fidget to endure the boredom.
When she showed me the toy I made the visual connection. I’d seen these fidget spinners at checkout counters and registers for the last few months, but had never cared to wonder what they were.
What a concept. Something you can do when you are bored and can’t be doing the things you want. People don’t bring fidget-spinners to the Bowling Alley or to miniature golf or the water park. They take them to school, or to meetings, or on boring drives where Dad won’t shut up.
I started to think about naturally occurring fidget spinners and there are plenty. Things people do when they are bored, or when they are stuck somewhere they don’t want to be.
We recently began delivering full IT services for a wonderful local business here in the valley. As we were going through the onboard process we discovered multiple things have not been getting done. There were no current backups, their hardware was out of warranty and their support contracts with their software vendor had expired. None of the machines had gotten security patches in years. When we brought our findings to the facility manager, she was shocked.
“But they were always doing so much. I was getting reports every month of all the things they’ve done.”
Yes, they were getting some monthly reports from their MSP, but the reports were in technology-ese and also bogus. That’s when it hit me.
They were getting fidget spun! They knew they weren’t getting proper service, and when they would enquire the MSP would bury them in a barrage of tech-heavy reports.
“See everything we are doing for you? It’s a LOT. It requires multiple pages.”
Do you hear a whirring noise when you reach out to your MSP? Do they bury you in paperwork when you wonder why something happened or why something didn’t get done? Can you see how bored they are with you? The fidget spinnerER, (the one who spins) is a brutal critic. They telegraph their displeasure with a soft Wwwwwhhhhhhhiiiiiirrrr- Wwwwwhhhhhhhiiiiiirrrr.
