In court - Greg v. Microsoft

All rise!

Hear ye! Hear ye! The court is now in session. The Honorable Roy Bean presiding. All those with business before this court come forward and make yourselves known.

Our first case today is Greg v. Microsoft.

“You honor, I am Greg appearing pro se. I am here today on a complaint containing numerous items in controversy, first and foremost the claim for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress.”

“And what is that claim based upon, counsel?”

“Your honor, on numerous occasions, various Microsoft products – most notably Excel and Word – have ‘crashed’ (a technical term, I’m told) without warning, resulting in the loss of untold hours of work, and often resulting in the duplication of effort. On this claim, your honor, I’d ask that the court certify class representation.”

“And you say this is intentional?”

“Yes, your honor. According to the book Bill Gates Rules The World, And You Are His Slave, the programmers at Microsoft deliberately added bugs so that we would capitulate and be assimilated.”

“Objection, your honor! Hearsay!”

”Overruled. Are you sure you haven’t watched one too many episodes of Star Trek: TNG, counsel?”

“No, your honor. I also read it in Playboy, and more importantly, The New Economist. Moreover, I have recent evidence of this claim.”

“And what is that evidence?”

“Your honor, I was attempting to access the Internet today, when my MSN service told me it didn’t have any numbers to dial. This despite the fact that it had accessed the Internet without complaint the day before. I was forced – forced – to sit for over an hour attempting to dial into their ‘toll-free’ number to get new connection numbers. Once I got through, I discovered that all the 773 numbers – my area code, for the record – had disappeared, replaced by – gasp – 847 and 630 area code numbers.”

“And this has caused you emotional distress?”

“Yes! My God, your honor, have you seen the price of a phone call over 15 miles? And now, with this SBC-AT&T merger, it’ll be broke inside of a week. How am I supposed to get a job?”

“Your honor, we renew our objection to this whole proceeding.”

“Overruled.”

“Your honor, we strenuously object – “

“You strenuously object?”

“Yes.”

“Then I strenuously overrule.”

“Motion for recess, then, so that we may engage in discovery.”

“Granted.”


One, day. I swear, one day. I’ll do it, then you’ll see. I’m not crazy, but I’m getting there. In the meantime, I’m gonna go try and find some local numbers I can dial.