We love our swanky new offices, but the swanky new phone system doesn’t inspire quite the same affection. In fact, the swanky new phone system can go take a long walk off a short pier (if people still use that expression, which they should, it’s funny). Having just lost or incorrectly diverted my third phone call today, I’m thinking it would be better if we didn’t have a phone system, then at least our beloved clients wouldn’t think we’d intentionally just hung up on them or sent them to an intern rather than the Head of Sales. And it’s not like I’m painting my nails here, I’m trying to get this right, but when there is an enigma in the office it is usually met with cries of “this always happens” and “when’s the guy coming in?” rather than anyone actually battling through and working it out.
We have a few of these office enigmas, as does every office, and they can be anything from the scanner that breaks after every third page to the ghost that has been stopping e-mails coming through for the past four hours (it could be because we’re not popular, but we refuse to accept that).
We wish we had a codebreaker who could unravel these enigmas. We wish we had Dilly. Alfred Dillwyn Knox (Dilly) was one of the leading figures in the British codebreaking successes of the World Wars. In Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas, Mavis Batey, who was one of the young female codebreakers sent to help the great man break the various Enigma ciphers, brilliantly tells the story of Dilly’s triumphant life’s work and his vital role in the triumph of Britain over Nazi Germany.
Even if we haven’t got Dilly in the office, we’ve still got the book. But I don’t think it’ll help us or the next person who dares call reception.
Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas is out now in paperback for £9.99