M comes into my office and looks at my white board on which I have drawn a complex diagram representing the layout of the intranet website that I am developing. He stares at it for a while, and then asks what “Warratees” are. He is a sarcastic bastard, knows that it is a misspelling of “Warranties” – he just likes to pick apart faults.

When he acts this way I tend to react in one of two ways: 1) Ignore him and change the subject, or 2) Go with it and have a little fun.

This time I chose the second option:

Me: “Are you familiar at all with the Manatee?”

M: “Those big sea things?”

Me: “Yes, sea cows.”

M: “Ok”

Me: “The Warratee is actually the warrior caste of the Manatees.”

M: “Ummm, okay…”

Me: “You don’t believe me?”

M: “Well…”

Me: “I have a picture of one, if you don’t believe me.”

M: “Oh really…”, cocks his eyebrow.

Me: “Yeah, I will have to find it, I will bring it in tomorrow.”

M: “I look forward to it!”

I flexed my Photoshop skills and came up with the following:

M was suitably impressed.