Once upon a time there was a poor Admin Tech named Prudence. Prudence worked for a destitute state agency that had no budget for computer hardware or software. Or anything else, for that matter. Prudence's job was to keep various databases updated. She had to keep track of personnel and financial matters and a whole slew of other things, too. She found this increasingly difficult because she had no computer on her desk. Since times were tough, her boss told her that he was going to lay her off.
    As Prudence was returning home in tears, she met a nerdy old lady with a pocket protector.
    "Why the tears, toots?" asked the nerdy old lady.
    "Alas!" said Prudence. "Since my job requires a computer, and I don’t have one, my boss is going to lay me off!"
    "Don't cry," said the nerdy old lady. "I have just the thing for you." And she whipped out a laptop on the spot. "Watch this," she continued. "It has a real slick GUI. All you have to do is select 'Little Computer, Compute!' from the pull-down menu, and this baby will do all the work you need. Insert, update, delete? You’ve got it! Reports? All you want. Here! It's yours."
    "Why, thank you," said Prudence, almost speechless. "How do you stop it?"
    "Simple," said the nerdy old lady with the pocket protector. "You just enter ALT> <CTRL> <SHIFT> <ESC> <BREAK>."
    "Uh, I don't want to appear ungrateful," said Prudence, "but isn't that a bit complicated?"
    "Look," said the nerdy old lady somewhat testily, "I had a shipping date to meet."

    With the Little Computer in hand, our heroine's stock at the agency went way up, and there was no more talk of layoffs. Everything went smoothly until Prudence decided to take a day of annual leave. That very day, the Auditors came, demanding Reports and Data! Since the agency had absolutely no back-up, Prudence's boss was at a loss. However, the Auditors were insistent, and he had seen Prudence click on "Little Computer, Compute!", so he decided to have a go at it himself.
    The Little Computer responded like a champ until it was time to stop. Contrary to expectations, the pull-down menu had no "Little Computer, Stop!" The print was beginning to pile up. Frantically, the boss scoured the menu for a likely command. He tried everything. He clicked all over the screen. He tried typing in commands: <ESC>, <BREAK>, "quit," "stop," "exit." Nothing worked. The print piled higher. The boss called in all his computer experts. They tried everything he had. Then they tried the more arcane stuff: ":q," "kill 9," "@@x tio," "klaatu barada nikto." It was no good. The print was pushing out the windows and doors.
    When Prudence looked out her window and saw the tidal wave of paper coursing down the street, she had a notion what all those phone calls she hadn't been answering were about. Off she went to the office to bail the guys out. Not too fast, mind you. It never hurts to underline one's value to the organization. When the dust had cleared, there was six months worth of paper to plough through just to get to the front door.
    Still, everyone was happy with the Little Computer. The taxpayers were happy because it hadn't required any new taxes. The legislature was happy because work was being done by magic, which they had always contended was possible. Management was happy because they could more easily realize their goal of 5% per year staff reductions. The workers were happy because they didn't have to look at their cubes for six months, and because they didn't know why management was so happy. The Auditors were happy because they had never seen so much paper before, and nothing is dearer to an auditor's heart than mountains of paper. Prudence's boss was happy because his stupidity hadn't cost him his job. And Prudence was happy because she had discovered what job security meant.