Some Sole Winners are More Equal Than Others

The whole company has gone nuts over Dinh's Earth Hour iPod victory.  

Today I counted 17 emails of praise, each conceived by the careless tap of a Reply All finger. 

In most of the emails (few exceptions) Dinh is lauded for being the "Sole Winner". 

Sole winner?

Then it hit me.

It's Socialism. Everyone is equal. It’s like a school fete for retards. You have to make sure every one wins. 

Yet during one hour last week, when (most of) her lights were turned off, Dinh and made a break for another world of praise and iPods. And her peeps are loving her for it.

I want to achieve this level of popularity in Vietnam. And I want it bad. And I want it now. And for a desperate moment I nearly take my Reply All button for a spin. My victory announcement will be about how much I got paid last month for my housing allowance. Surely my colleagues, who don't even get a housing allowance, would laud me as some kind of Sole Winner for getting a sizeable one.

In the middle of all this fervour a different kind of email arrives for me. This one is not filled with joy. This one is filled with a series of stupid questions. So many stupid questions that for a moment I thought I was being telemarketed. 

For example:

"Whereabouts in document XYZ can I find the section which outlines the client's requirements?"

My answer comes in two parts:

a) It's on page 3, after the Table of Contents

b) It's in the same place you left it 2 weeks ago when you wrote the document.

Welcome back, Edwina. I hope you had a pleasant flight.