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  • Spectral Insights September 2024

    Spectral Insights September 2024

    My dog always gets the zoomies after their bath and this is what it has taught me about scheduling your time in the office right.

    By Altessa Amhuluk­

    If you are a dog owner then you know how crazy your dog gets as you are drying them off after a bath. They’re clean and they are ready to zoom around the house with more joy than you can even imagine feeling at once. Once free from your grasp they bolt off at full speed to do figure eights around the coffee table until they collapse with a huge grin of satisfaction followed by a prompt nap. This efficient use of time is inspiring and got me thinking about how I can be more productive during the workday.

    Here is my pup inspired tips to make you more productive:

    1. Take the bath first. We all have that list of unpleasant things we want to avoid, like reading that long email you definitely will need to respond to so your coworker knows you read it fully and care. That’s why we follow the pups lead and start with looking really sad and huffing quietly to ourselves the whole time. Make sure to plead with your inbox regularly so it knows it’s torturing you enough or else it will start sending you more emails. It’ll make the rest of the day easier. 
    2. Dry off and get hyped. You can’t just jump out of a bath and straight into relaxing, the house would be soaked. You have to first dry off and prepare yourself mentally for changing tasks. Drying off for me is checking LinkedIn for job postings I technically could do even though it’s a stretch, then half applying before opening a new tab to look at cat videos. A good low stakes transitioner task can lighten your mood and get you psyched up for more fun tasks like making that spreadsheet for accounting or finally adding in those memes to your powerpoint presentation. 
    3. It’s Zoomie Time! Now you are ready to do those tasks that put a huge smile on your face and help you lay down at night with a satisfied sigh. That’s right, it’s time to lead that team building meeting with extra memes and make those pivot tables, because you’ve earned it! Ending the day on a high note will remind you of why you love capitalism.
       

    Following these three easy tips will not only make you more productive but it will also leave you so super focused all day that ghosts won’t even have a chance to sneak in and distract you with their horniness and their gossip. I don’t care what Sue from HR did last week while on the clock, I’m too busy making the best meeting agenda you will ever see in your life!

    Meatball Corner

    • Quote of the week: “Mrrrp…puuurrrrrr….Mrrp.”
    • Hairballs: 0*
    • Zoomies: 3
    • Meetings Led: 16 scheduled, 22 unscheduled
    • Crystal Ball

           *Leadership is looking into what this means for the near future.

    Quiz: 

    Did your BFF just ghost you or are they literally a ghost now?

    1. You text your BFF asking if they want to hang out and watch a movie. How do they reply?
      1. They text back “sounds great! What time? 🙂 “
      2. They possess your phone and it speaks in a distorted voice “sounds great! What time?”
      3. They leave you on read for like 12 hours and then just message “:)” which isn’t really committing to anything. 
    2. You’ve set up a perfect chill movie night with the gang which includes pizza and snacks galore! When does your BFF show up? 
      1. 20 minutes before the start time to help you set up of course!
      2. Directly on time but doesn’t eat anything, how weird!
      3. Slips in after the movie starts and peaces out while the credits start rolling. 
    3. It’s twin day during spirit week, what are you two doing for it?
      1. Matching pink tank tops and black leggings because it’s Wednesday. 
      2. Insists you just match her outfit which is weird. Also, isn’t that what you saw her wearing yesterday? 
      3. Doesn’t respond to your text about coordination and just shows up in the usual pink Wednesday attire but totally a different shade than yours so you don’t really match, ugh. 
    4. Your crush is texting you out of the blue but it’s about your BFF. He’s asking a lot of weird questions so before you answer you decide to screenshot it to your BFF. How does she respond? 
      1. They immediately respond, “Creepy and rude! You deserve bette. Let’s ghost him.”
      2. They possess your phone (again ugh!) to tell you they’re going to haunt his butt for a week to get him back. She also says you deserve better and you have a sweet heart to heart despite the creepy possessing the phone thing. 
      3. They leave you on read (again?!) so you text him back some vague answers. He doesn’t respond for a whole hour and just says “thanks for ratting me out. see ya never!” 
    5. The first Saturday of the month you two go out for a late night of Batsquash hunting (maybe this month you’ll get a real pic!). You’re dressed in all black and have your fancy camera with you parked at the usual meeting place. What happens??
      1. Your BFF tries to sneak up on the car and spook you but you hear the crunch of the leaves under her feet and scare her instead. You both cry laugh and then head out to the spookiest road in town. Watchout Batsquash! 
      2. Your BFF sneaks up and get’s in the passenger seat without you even seeing her once then says “so which road tonight?” which scares you so bad you scream and bolt from the car running into the woods. How embarrassing!
      3. You wait at the usual spot for like an hour and keep texting “where are you? Are you okay?” She eventually responds with “Sorry, what is happening?” She forgot again. Ugh!

    Scoring: Give yourself 1 point for every a., 2 for every b., and 3 for every c. Now add’em up!

    ­
    5-9 points
    BFFs forever!­
    You are just being paranoid for sure. You’re BFF loves you and is always down to have a great time. This is great news because you may have accidentally hit Batsquash with your truck and they totally won’t snitch on you so you’re safe.­    		­
    10-15 points
    Ghost Alert!
    ­Remember when you thought you hit Batsquash just after you dropped off your BFF at her place? That wasn’t Batsquash, so you two better sit down and have a good talk. If that doesn’t work, get some soap and finally have that funeral.­    		­
    16-20 points
    Worst Ghoster Ever!­
    Your BFF is totally not your BFF anymore. The good news? She’s alive and well. Bad news? She’s a jerk and you should stop inviting her out. She no longer deserves that Batsquash painting you were making for her. Make it for yourself because you are too fabulous to worry about this person anymore.­

    The Opinion Hexagon

    Why are people obsessed with being physically warm? Saunas are everywhere and now spas are also offering “warm rooms” where the temp is just higher and you sit in it. Isn’t that just a sauna but drier. Who is this for? Definitely not people who like to be at a comfortable temperature and have anything to do ever. 

    I’m worried this is being pushed by lizard people to make them seem more normal. Nice try aliens, I’m not falling for your sweaty agenda. We all know you are out there creating global warming so you can take over as the dominant species and many of us are not falling for your tricks.

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  • Haunted Team Building

    Haunted Team Building

    Team building retreats are necessary to encourage family like vibes in the workplace and EctoWash is a must to keep the drama at bay so your team can trust fall in peace. 

    We all know the best team building retreats include nature, isolation and open hearts. However this is also the best formula to get trapped by ghosts who love to stir up drama between mates. That is exactly what happened to the fun loving team at Hedgehog Bros Co, repeatedly!  

    “From spa weekends to glamping, we tried every retreat we could think of and they got us every time!” says COO Blayke Hudson.  Yes, if the love and comradery is flowing, there’s a ghost lurking in the shadows ready to lure off your most vulnerable team members! 

    Office Manager Jayden Moore remembers when he knew it was time for professional help. “We did the usual seance with the spa staff before checking in and I even personally went around and smudged every door frame. We were so careful and still one got Becca from accounting wrapped up in some crazy he-said-she-said fight with Leon from marketing. Ridiculous! Everybody loves Leon.”

    Blayke Hudson listened to Jayden’s clear reasoning and contacted EctoWash as soon as he was in the car headed home. “They saved our team and now we can go on retreats twice a year, as long as we give our EctoWash Rep a call first.” These retreats have been such a success that Hedgehog Bros Co abandoned their original business plan of AI controlled military drones and now rents themselves out as professional retreat attendees! 

    Take Blayke and his team’s experience to heart and don’t book another retreat before you secure your own personal EctoWash Rep who make sure your team has all the right tools in the toolbox to open their hearts wide and strategize next year’s marketing plan to extra success! 

  • Ghost in the Machine

    Ghost in the Machine

    Code compiling by candlelight, seances in the server room – just another day at InfoSys Ops Solutions before the team discovered EctoWash.

    When we arrived at the Silicon Valley startup, it was clear something paranormal was afoot. Developers were huddled under blankets, mumbling incantations over their keyboards, while managers attempted arcane rituals to appease the network sprites. CEO Amanda Vanbernell reached out in desperation after the ghost in the machine became too much to handle. 

    “It started small,” admitted lead engineer Brent Bellacruise. “Strange glitches, stack overflows, the occasional windows.dll possession. Then our Docker containers started taking on lives of their own, sprouting avatars made of pure energy and taunting us with threats of technical debt and legacy code bugs.”

    Systems architect Patty O’Byrnes tried every exorcism script and deliverance routine in the DevOps bible to no avail. “The spirits mocked our YAML pipelines, crashed our Kubernetes clusters on a whim. No one was safe – even our Atlassian suite turned against us, filling our Jira with cursed epics.”

    That’s when the team knew they needed expert help. When their COO James Byres wrote out the EctoWash URL during an sleep walking incident, they reached out right away. We gathered our team of techno-wizards and arrived at the next solar eclipse, armed with artisanal IDEs pre-loaded with EctoWash’s unique ghost management formula. We carved a powerful function into custom soap bars and distributed them around the server room. Within just two months, things were looking up.  

    “It was like a million RedGate angels blessed my RAM,” beamed a rejuvenated Brent. “Our sprints are back on track, our CI/CD is exorcism-free, and to celebrate we raised the prices on all our service tiers!”

    If your own code ninjas are being haunted by phantom bugs and poltergeist commits, don’t try to Git blame your way out. Contact the EctoWash team today!

  • Troubled Travel

    Troubled Travel

    No per diem can prepare you for the chilling horrors that lurk in hotel HVAC vents and airport lounges. For corporate nomads, EctoWash is an essential carry-on.

    We all know the risks that come with life on the road – jet lag, rental car dings, rubbery convention center chicken. But few recognize the true peril faced by those who spend more nights in Marriotts than their own homes: the pervasive threat of paranormal activity.

    “I’ve had my briefcase fly open and papers scattered more times than I can count,” admits management consultant Devin Wyndham, who logs over 200,000 miles annually. “For years, I just assumed it was aircraft pressure changes or my own absent-mindedness. I never imagined it was…them.”

    The “them” Devin refers to are the malicious spirit realm’s most aggressive specters – corporate phantasms hellbent on sowing discord, unraveling meticulously crafted keynote decks, and pushing the limits of expensed minibar tabs. With ties to the material world still entangled in red tape and regret, these ectoplasmic entities view business travelers as ties to be loosened, laptops to be drained of power, and souls to be sapped of motivation.

    “I used to wake up at 3AM in cold sweats, my PowerPoints randomly rebounded into regards-style Latin fridge magnet poetry,” recalls Devin. “Contracts would sprout ominous redlines about claiming my soul for the underworld. It got so bad I had to flee the last Hilton just to avoid whatever was stalking me on the road.”

    That’s when an eccentric Uber driver clued Devin into the secret power of EctoWash’s portable spirit management line. A few travel sized bars of our organic, artisanal soaps between his hotel sheets and carry-on were enough to break the spectral harassment cycle. 

    “It’s like my whole career did a hard reboot – no more embarrassing typos in my speech transcriptions or toner cartridges being demonically depleted before board meetings,” Devin raves. “The ghosts gave up and moved on to easier targets like middle managers and life coaches. I actually won Road Warrior of the Year thanks to my newfound supplier agreement feng shui!”

    So don’t become an apparition’s corporate punching bag. Unleash the wonders of EctoWash’s spirit squelching line and take back control of your travels from the paranormal world.

  • Trouble in Shoreline

    Trouble in Shoreline

    Escalating disturbances, failed capture attempts, and endless faxes brought the team at Applied Design Services to the brink. EctoWash got them back to doing whatever it is they do.

    When we met the team at Applied Design Services, they were a frazzled crew. The 25 person team was nervous, several appeared to be suffering from lack of sleep, and many had severe paper cuts. We knew it would be a challenging case when their CEO Alison Franky reached out to us and asked us to make a visit to their Shoreline offices. Alison explained that the group had been dealing with an intense series of activities for the past six months, and though the management team had taken the matter seriously, all previous attempts had failed to resolve the issue. The team had become so distracted that they were weeks behind schedule on several projects and only one person had attended their previous month’s regular team building pajama party.

    The Applied Design Services offices are located in a stately Victorian mansion overlooking the sea. The companies COO, Drake Goil, explained that due to the nature of their specialty, it was imperative that all team members be able to see the ocean at all times, that they all live together in a single building, and that non-management team members remain in the building. They seemed to be a close knit and extremely dedicated team, but problems began to emerge almost as soon as they moved into their new offices.

    Technical Specialist, Verma Appleboat, explains how it began “When we first moved in, it seemed perfect. I was finally able to get a standard 13 hour work day in with the ocean views, but then the faxes started.” Head of IT, Amy Longer, called attention to the situation immediately “Due to the nature of our work, it is not unusual for us to receive a dozen faxes a day, but as soon as we hooked the system up in this house, faxes began arriving from an unknown source, I knew it wasn’t normal.” The faxes each contained a single cat themed meme and the frequency only increased. “At first we tried to decipher the meaning of the faxes, but it became clear that they were nonsensical. We thought we could ignore it, but soon the house was overflowing with paper.”

    Amy Franky and her team immediately attempted to resolve the issue themselves. “We tried replacing the fax machines, setting the faxes on fire, sending our own faxes back to the source with threatening messages, but more and more faxes kept coming. When our daily stand-up tarot readings began to turn up The Tower, the Nine of Swords, and the Ten of Wands everyday, we knew we needed professional help.”

    Luckily, Amy reached out to EctoWash. When our evaluation team arrived at the next new moon, we found an office overrun with piles of paper and fax machines running 24 hours a day. Considering the content of the faxes, we brought along our resident psychic cat, Meatball. Upon arrival, Meatball ate one of the employee’s plants, threw up, and then slept in a sunbeam. Our plan was clear. Our team was able to quickly create custom scented soap bars based on Meatball’s clairvoyant revelations and distribute them to the team members. After just one night, fax frequency reduced by 50% and after a week, not only were no cat memes received, but tarot readings began to feature the Ace of Pentacles and the Four of Wands frequently, also, all readings began to feature the Three of Cups but we feel that is unrelated.

    “I couldn’t be happier with EctoWash!” says Amy Franky “Our team is back to being productive, we’ve been able to returned to normal 3AM brainstorming sessions, and revenue is up by 8%.”

    We’re happy we could help Amy and her team get back to business. If you have a need for spectral management whether routine or unique, contact us anytime!