Hey, I’ve been thinking about you!

        Just last Saturday I was feeling bored with the city, so I took a meandering drive out of my usual territory and stumbled across the coolest little brunch place that you’re going to have the best time ruining.

        Fletcher’s Kitchen is a old converted Victorian mansion. Cracked white paint on the outside, green shutters, a porch where you can hang out while waiting for your table. Of course, after you’ve taken to Twitter and announced your new find to your 1,100 jaghole followers, the porch will be roped off when stamped-out cigarettes are found there too often.

        Inside is a handful of little round tables, salvaged from a local train station cafe after it closed. They’re perfect for a party of four, or for one person to spread out with books and a laptop. I’m sure they’ll be willing to drag four of them together when you arrive with your group of twelve, including three people who won’t be there for half an hour because they have to hit the gym first.

        The walls are lined with shelves of gorgeous old books: you can pull one off the shelf and read while you’re there. The owner and chef, a woman named Alex Fletcher, is a retired librarian; The books are her private collection. I leafed through Treasure Island while waiting for my order. I forgot how beautiful the original illustrations are. The books will be removed when your buddy’s three-year-old, Maxim, tears the pages out of an early edition Bleak House.

        The menu, printed on old parchment card stock [they’ll switch to laminated copier paper when your followers keep stealing them to admire for a month and throw out] is simple: pancakes and eggs. Most of their ingredients are local but no, they won’t be able to tell you which farm produced the cilantro. Or “scrounge up” a balsamic reduction because you can’t eat eggs without it these days. Or make half a pancake mixed with barley for your dog.

        A big basket filled with homemade muffins sits on the counter:  a server brings the basket around to your table and you choose your own. After you lose your mind that the last peach-cinnamon muffin was given to the person before you, the basket will stay in back. The only flavor will be bran.

        An old upright piano sits in the corner; Sometimes local musicians, friends of Alex, will stop by and play. When I was there a woman sat at the piano playing jazz, and a young man — maybe her son, or a high school student — accompanied her on violin. Soon they’ll be drowned out by you shouting directions into your phone for the friends coming from the gym, or shouting some new goddamn impossible omelette item to your server.

        When I visited, Alex even came out from the kitchen to see how I liked the eggs. I told her they were perfect, and she glowed with pride. [You’ll eviscerate them in your Yelp review for being cold after you let them sit on the table for twenty minutes while taking pictures of them.] “I’d always dreamed of having something like this,” she told me, wiping her floury hands on her apron. “The first six months have been promising. Please, tell your friends!” I promised her I would.

        Six weeks from now Alex will be diagnosed with heart palpitations from chronic stress. Remember to tip your server. [You won’t.]

Ms. Mayer, Empress of all Yahoo!,

Hello. My name is Tim Sniffen. I’ve been a Yahoo! junior server administrator for eleven years.

It was with a stab of terror that I read your memo asking “all employees with work-from-home arrangements to work in Yahoo! offices.” I realize we’re in a time of crucial transition, and many people will benefit from more personal contact and unscheduled brainstorming sessions.

I am not one of those people.

Ms. Mayer, you do not want me in your office.

For eleven years I have worked at home, thrilled with the arrangement Yahoo! provided. Free from distractions, free from traffic. Free from the burning, judgmental stares of other humans, from the deafening roar of each one drawing breath into their lumbering carcass.

Personal contact, Ms. Mayer? The darkness is my companion now. That’s all the contact I need.

To be clear, where I work should no longer be described as a “home”, but more a “Bunker of dark Elven magic.” Eleven years have allowed me to transform this garden apartment into the perfect symbiotic workspace, drawing from the best aspects of the Batcave (Burton-era), Tony Stark’s workshop, Cerebro, and the Batcave (Nolan-era).

From my motorized chair/exoskeleton I can maintain every server on the grid. Displays on hovering glass panels indicate data flow, cloud assets, employee location and emotional state. (Green = joy. Blue = despair.) Having tied all system function to eye movement, I can work up to fourteen days completely motionless, aided by the feeding and waste removal tubes in my lower back. (Once I emerged from a coding bender with a fine, downy moss on my legs and trunk, a colony of moths in my hair. Are you honestly ready to bring such a symphony of efficiency to a halt?)

Obviously you know the need to customize one’s work environment. The nursery connected to your office is common knowledge. Now instead of a nursery, imagine a one-tenth scale LEGO model of Rivendell (yes, including the broken sword of Elendil – this isn’t amateur hour) and you see why I can’t just fill a cardboard box and show up on Monday.

In your cursed memo, you mention the need of “physically being together.” Marissa, I assure you, I will be there. On every conference call; in every web cam, activated or not; behind nearly all the building’s mirrors. I will be there.

But from the incantations I must speak over my equipment each morning to prevent its’ gaining sentience and rebelling, to the thick smoke produced by sunlight interacting with my skin, you do not want me in your office.

Ms. Mayer, don’t drag Colonel Kurtz down river. Leave this alone.

If you agree to my request, simply say “yes” out loud. I will hear.

Still proud to be a Yahoo! even if I’ve long forgotten what it is to be human,

Tim Sniffen

PS: I didn’t leak the memo.

PPS: As a server admin, I know who did.

PPPS: I’m already blackmailing them for several other things, so releasing their name to you at this point would upset our complicated agreement.

PPPPS: Is it way too late to take the ! out of our name? I always feel compelled to shout it. Granted, with larynx atrophy it only comes out as an anguished gurgle. Still.