Please turn your calculator off before the performance begins

We all have customers.

This piece of the business lexicon drives me crazy. Customers are not, for example, entire swaths of the federal government. Customers wear flip-flops and pay in cash. The Navy is not a customer.

As I've mentioned previously, I was in New York City two weekends ago because my sister performed at Carnegie Hall. While I was there, it occurred to me that her profession is unique in that her customer just sits and watches her work.

This got me to thinking: maybe I need to rethink my own customer relations. What if I installed a few stadium seats in my office and charged on-lookers 80 dollars to watch me work for 75 minutes?

I'd be granted the same concessions as any performing artist, of course:

Please take note of the bucket of Ricola outside my office and do not hack and cough while I'm running computer simulations. Please do not applaud until I have finished all of the lens designs, and do not rustle the pages in your Playbill while I am on the phone.

In return for these simple considerations, I will perform my work for a continuous 75 minute sitting. I will resist the urge to visit my support staffer during this time to order new office supplies. (And yes, the fact that I pinch the occasional Post-It note pad is just part of the act.) I will also maintain my cool when that knucklehead Johnson stops by to tell me about his weekend.

Oh wait! You're not leaving, are you?
I was just moving to the whiteboard for my encore.