An Open Letter to Work Colleagues, Receiving Messages from Out of the Blue, and Requesting Everything Be Dropped For An Important Task...

I really love gift cards

I know what you're thinking. It is very flattering to get THE Newsletter author Owen Muir, M.D. sending you, whoever you are, a text message.

I always use the same format in those text messages. Everybody in senior leadership in medical devices uses the same format. I got a message just today from my colleague that I swear ripped off my format:

The first thing to clear up: I like people to message me on my clinical line. Using my Spruce Health number and not my personal phone. I always like to think it might be a patient.

The reverse is not true. I will only ever text you from phone numbers that are not mine. I will demand you to text me back promptly.

My good friend and cofounder at NTAPConnection does the same thing:

I like to know you're available to me. Anytime. I have a task I need people to help me with. It is always a split second. It is like being on standby for a super secret mission.

Robert does the same. This is our secret handshake. This is the way we know who is in the club and who isn't. If you're going to be down with people in medical technology, especially mental health, especially people who build cutting-edge artificial intelligence-guided tools to alleviate human suffering…

We need to know you're ready.

You need to be ready to do something now.

What thing?

I need you to get me a gift card.

The entertainment for me is knowing that you can be there for me. Knowing that you don't need to confirm my identity, that it doesn't matter how implausible a gift card is, that you'll drop everything and hustle over to Sephora, the Apple store, or something like that, and get any gift cards.

I love gift cards. I love them. I don't know; maybe it's a thing from childhood, maybe I'm just sentimental, maybe I like a trust fall. I'm not sure what it is. But I do know that I love gift cards. And I do know that I love coercing work colleagues into getting them for me. The less I know you, the better. The more implausible the request from me to you, the more I enjoy it.

I like making sure that whoever is getting me the gift cards I want is doing so based on a complete lack of diligence, good sense, credulousness, or any other human quality¹ that might block the one thing I love most in the world— gift cards.

I love them from people I barely know. I love it when I get them for me just based on the text message, not based on hearing me on the phone. Please, do no confirming. Anything that I might know in real life? Verboten!

This is my dream. A world of endless gift cards on request at a moment’s notice, not based on any confirmation of our relationship or history together, just based on blind faith.

Ironically, this restores my faith in the world. Don't ask questions. Just give me gift cards. Thank you. Yes, it's me. It's always me. This is just the way I am. I'm the kind of person who asks for gift cards immediately. I need you to roll with it. Ironically, this restores my faith in the world. Don't ask questions. Just get me gift cards. Thank you. Yes, it's me. Yes I repeated those phrases. Not because it is a glitch. Again, I find my joy. It's absolutely always me, and always out of the blue. Please don't check with me. Don't ask. It will ruin the magic. Just get the gift card. And make sure you send it to exactly wherever they tell it to go because that's definitely me asking.

Sincerely,

A work colleague with poor boundaries.

1. that would get in the way