Are You A Semi-Colon?

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Have you ever had one of those bosses who barely knows how you do your job and yet has no problem giving you advice on how to do your work? Last week, I was trying to reverse-engineer some code written by another employee. I believe his official title now is "former employee" because he got tired of the VP of engineering, who isn't a programmer, telling him how to program. That led to a confrontation between the two which resulted in the VP downsizing my fellow programmer into his new title.

Unfortunately, "former employee" didn't believe in documenting his work very well. So as I was paper deep in my diagrams and his code, praising his work in that universal programming language known as Profanity, who should appear at my back but our friendly and ever so helpful VP. "There is an awful lot of those semicolons in that code," he remarked. "You should give some thought to removing as many of those as you can. Sort of a really good colon cleanse." Then he gave his extremely annoying "I made a funny because I'm superior" toothy laugh. So I said "A really good colon cleanse will be when you leave the company."... to myself. Out loud, I answered "Yes, sir." He walked away with that smug look that he had saved the company and justified his exorbitant paycheck once again. As for me, I'm going to keep the semicolons in place. Not just because the program won't run without them... they do serve a purpose in life unlike some people. No, every time I begin to feel a little superior, I want them to remind me of that part of the human anatomy that I do not want to become to the good people around me.