One Or Several Matthews

In the summer of 2015 I started a contract gig at Adobe. I was hired to conduct an audit of their current documentation for some of their internal documentation sections, tell them how much the current stuff sucks, fix it, tell them how I fixed it, and what they can do to do better next time. You know, process, organization, review, that kind of stuff.

After a brief interview process, I had a start date. Arriving on time with a Starbucks coffee in hand, I signed in at the front desk as a visitor. The receptionist greeted me, and pinged my supervisor, and handed me a visitor badge.

After flipping through a J Crew catalog, my boss appeared from a side door and beckoned me in. She was happy to see me again, and was pleased to show me my desk, and gave me a second to put my bag down, before I was brought immediately into a conference room to jump on a WebEx with her boss in Quebec who was taking the call from her car, the boss of the business unit I was going to be writing a report for, one of their bewildered looking content people, both of whom were in another office.

"Good morning everyone, this is Matthew."

"Hello."

"H-Hi?"

"Allo."

I wave at the webcam and greet everyone, everyone tells me their name and what they do. I take a few notes, at least to have the veneer of knowing what to look like I'm doing while on a webcam.

"Matt here is gonna be our... uh... Guru about docs!"

Using my most disarming voice, I say "please don't call me that. I am not a Guru, I don't like that term."

The people on the webcam seemed to agree with me, to my relief. My boss continued reviewing why they hired me and what the role entailed. I explained to the folks the scope of my mandate as my boss had explained it to me. I ran down some of the ideas I had as a start point, which was met with nods of enthusiasm, and we managed to end the call in relatively short order with an agreement of the final deliverable of an unspecified length to be delivered at an unspecified time in the future.

Once that's done, she takes me around what, to me, seem like the ruins of an ancient civilization. While the name was on the side of the building. very few floors remained in their possession. I'm introduced to a few of the engineers, and I immediately clock both a Nine Inch Nails tour poster on the side of a cubicle wall, and a guy's neck tattoo as he stands to shake my hand.

"Jason."

"Matt."

I never did manage to figure out what his tattoo said, but I did make a point to indicate my appreciation for his musical taste. While Nine Inch Nails is a fairly well known band, few people are familiar with their oeuvre outside of like "Closer" or maybe "Only", and if you're lucky "Head Like a Hole".

At a blood donation clinic back in University , I was wearing a Nine Inch Nails band t-shirt, while giving my donation. As the phlebotomist jammed the draw needle into my arm with the grace of a draft horse, she asked in an East Coast accent, "what are Nine Inch Nails? Oh a Band? Really? I'm pretty up on bands these days. I know about NoFX but never heard of 'em."

Back at Adobe, my tour is finishing and our final stop is the front desk, and I trade my visitor's badge for a contractor badge, ending my visit at 10:15, and beginning my contract at 10:16. I celebrate the occasion by heading to my desk and beginning work on some truly gruesome docs, and the permission to change whatever I needed in the section I was assigned.

My cubicle was nothing too fancy. I had a name tag on the outside, and inside I had a standard desktop computer with access to the Internet and a bunch of writing tools which I immediately swapped over to Atom, enabling line numbering, blank space characters, and return indicators.

At about 3:00 PM, my boss said we were having a social event down in the first floor lounge, and I was welcome to join.

Finishing up what I was doing, I use the elevator and head down to the lounge on the first floor. I was a few minutes behind my boss who was already talking to the guy with the neck tattoo, the other engineer I met over the course of the day. Heading over to the cooler, I reach in and assess my options.

Kronenbourg. No.

Kronenbourg Blanc. No.

Stella Artois. Maybe.

Hoegaarden? Really?

Heineken.

My colleagues notice me selecting my bottle from the icy abyss of the cooler, and offer me a bottle opener while also inviting me to join them.

"Nah it's ok," I say, "I got it."

And in probably my most graceful movements in my life, I managed to pull the lanyard attached to my keys in such a way that, I swear to god, my keychain bottle opener landed directly between my thumb and my index finger, and in a single smooth motion, I open the bottle, palm the cap, and stick my keys back in my pocket.

"OH YEAH," I hear Jason yell, "LEAVE IT TO THE TECH WRITER TO ALWAYS COME PREPARED!" I throw a finger gun, and head over to join the conversation.

About halfway through the contract, I was feeling really great about the project. The report was coming along really well, and was kept tight and brief, I had fully tuned up two sections to rave reviews from the stakeholders, and was starting in on my third section of work. The sun was shining, at lunch I dipped out to an interview downtown, signed a contract with a new client, for later in the fall after this one ended.

"You're not Matthew Buttler."

"Excuse me?"

"You're not Matthew Buttler. I hired Matthew Buttler. You are not him."

I spin around to see a man in a gray lab coat holding a cup of coffee in his hand. On his head was some kind of plastic device that were attached to rabbit ears, which had some kind of sensor resting against his forehead. As he spoke, the ears went one way, and when listening the ears oscillated a different way.

I stood up to face him. I could see him examining me as much as I was examining him. Both of us stood trying to negotiate this situation.

I was off-put because I'd just been accused of identification deception by a grown man in an rabbit headset. He was off put because I was not who he thought I was.

I say the only thing I could think to say.

"Yes I am."

"No, Matthew Butler doesn't work here anymore," and I catch on.

I had known for a few years that there is another, older Matthew Butler who lives in Ottawa. He also works in high-tech and some relation of his shares a first name with my sister. I've never met him personally, and I'm not sure he's aware of me, but I know who this leporine individual is referring to.

"That's the old one. He's from the East. I'm from the West."

He makes an odd sort of dismissal noise, and walks away. I report the interaction to my boss, who says, "Oh yeah, don't worry about him. He's a bit weird."

"Tell me about it."

As seasons end, so do contracts. I managed to deliver a five page report on progress made, tools used, process suggestions. After needing to cut an entire section on HTML and Markdown, the four page report was deemed "great work" by all concerned on our final WebEx.

My boss chose this exact moment to offer me an extension, after I'd already signed with another client starting Monday. We say our goodbyes at the end of the day, swapping contact info around, I gain a bunch of Twitter followers, and head off into the sunset.

Years later, it's 2025 and on one of my regular office days, I was shooting the shit with our office administrator.

"Yeah I interviewed at Adobe once to be an Executive Administrator for a guy. He was like, so weird though."

"How so?"

"Something about him you know? I remember that he said to me... he didn't ask, but said 'My current assistant makes sure to schedule time for my workouts as part of my day,' which was a weird thing to bring up, I thought."

"Yeah, like a little," I say, taking a sip of coffee.

"So I asked him if he wanted me to do that if we wound up working together. 'No, but my current assistant does that and I really like when she does,' and I wasn't sure what to say. Anyway the vibes were off and I wound up somewhere else."

There was something about the modulation of her voice when she was impersonating her would-be boss that I recognized almost immediately. The tone, the way of speaking, and particularly the note of 'weirdness' to him.

"Hold on."

I whip my phone out and bring up LinkedIn and pull up the rabbit eared engineer's profile.

"Is this the guy?"

"Oh yeah! What a weird guy!"

"Tell me about it."