Our law firm is getting new IT hardware, lawyers ("fee earners") will receive laptops as opposed to desktop computers. You get to choose between two types. I wanted neither - I never take laptops with me anywhere nor have I ever owned one, if I need to do something mobile, I use my BlackBerry. So I write an email to the good people of our IT department:
"A laptop with me is really a waste, can't I have a desktop like anybody else in this firm has who is not a lawyer?"
And this is what the good people of our IT department write:
Thank you for your inquiry. According to our Global Strategy (----> Global Strategy link in our Intranet) laptops are mandatory for fee earners "to nurture a willingness to be innovative, agile, dynamic and disciplined".
Ok, I then felt suitably empowered (as well as - I hasten to add - fully aligned with our Global Strategy in whatever current version it may exist) and just wrote back that the concept of
"innovative, agile, dynamic & disciplined" was really only an update of the age-old principles of
"sex & drugs & rock'n'roll" and could I please have my mandatory laptop then clad in leather with studs? (They replied they would give it a try, but that Judas Priest was a high benchmark to meet.)