Last week a guy with the same name as me joined eBay in the Taiwan office. Then all hell broke lose . . .

On Thursday I started to notice my usual email/minute throughput rate had dropped significantly. At first I thought I had become more efficient in communicating my thoughts thus people had stop sending me thier usual questions in responce to my cryptic stream of consciousness emails. Even before I started to pat myself for a job well done . . . a few guys dropped my cube and told me that I had missed a few meetings because their emails were being routed to some guy in Taiwan utterly confused by the meeting request, deck revisions, and model edits . . . (imagine its only his first day at work)

No big deal I thought. . . I’ll just email this William character and demand to get my name back . . . no such luck . . . its his name as much as it is mine. . . just cause I have “seniority” doesnt really mean anything. I tried to get him to put his middle initial in the corporate directory but that didnt fly. Despite a full semester in a negotiating class taught by a former NFL agent, I wasn’t able to make any progress. In the end, we compromised. . . he will forever be know as “William Hsu (Taiwan)”, and I’m “Will Hsu (NABU)” . . . yes. . . just like Star Wars . . . you know, like Queen Amidala of Naboo. . . So for as long as I’m at eBay. . . that will be my name. . . blah blah blah of NABU . . . or until I travel to Asia, begin my quest, vanquish my nemesis, and reclaim what is rightfully mine!

(Adding insult to injury, for the sequel, this morning IT had me completely erased from the company Outlook directory . . . my whole row was cracking up while I tried to explain to the help desk what had happened . . . “eh. . . I cant email to myself “. . .” why do you need to email yourself?” . . . “I mean other people cant email me” )