In Defense, it WAS an awfully nice sofa

I should warn those of a delicate constitution that there may be a bit of unsavory backstory in today's column.  I'll try to keep it as classy as possible...

So, many, many years ago - back when the internet was just beginning and places of employment generally speaking didn't have any sort of HR policy regarding internet usage - all sorts of things that are unthinkable now just sort of went on without anybody being too bothered about it.

Case in point - 

Back at the time I worked for an organization that I'm going to go ahead and not identify for what will shortly be obvious reasons.  My immediate manager at the time - similarly veiled in secrecy for similar reasons - was bored one day and started playing with the newly created AOL login that he had just set up.

*Note for the young, to whom this probably all seems incomprehensively bewildering - Internet Service Providers (ISP's to the tech-savvy) were a whole different kettle of fish back then.  99% of the people who even HAD access to the internet did so via America OnLine - who sent out CD-roms (themselves a strange new item- earlier they used Floppy Discs - which by that point were no longer floppy) in the mail at a rate of approximately 4 billion a day to every postal customer in the Country. 

Being of a certain persuasion, and having little to no reason not to, one thing sort of led to another and another manager in a different department shortly thereafter received an interoffice e-mail featuring a photo of hardcore gay pornography with the caption 'Isn't that a fabulous sofa?'

   Hard-core man on man action not pictured

She, being also of a certain persuasion (and not particularly prone to being shocked by such things) responded by tracking down her own graphic image of two ladies engaged in their personal business with the caption 'It needs a lamp like this to go with it'

I'm also not going to picture that.

 

He responded with hot group action and a lovely matching end table.  She followed with trans-action and a really quite nice coffee table, and so on and so forth until by the end of the day they had assembled what one must admit was actually a quite stylish living room set without ever once mentioning or acknowledging the extra-curricular living room activities also pictured.

This kind of throws the day a co-worker and I spent far too long looking on line for a picture of Rene Auberjonois dressed as a porkchop* into perspective, now doesn't it.

*No, I don't remember why we wanted such a thing, but it turns out that no such photo exists.