I don't ask much from life. I want a nice car, a big apartment, maybe a dog ... and I want to be able to come home and play Dungeon Siege like a religion.

The problem is my new manager here, the guy in charge of our whole product division. I've almost gotten used to his micromanaging. It's the narcolepsy that's killing me! He'll be standing over my shoulder saying: "I want you to start filling out weekly inventory reports. I've come up with a new format. First, I need you to fill in the product numbers here, here, and here. Next..." and then suddenly his head droops down and splats into my arm. Next thing I know he's drooling on me and dozing.

What do I do? Do I wake him up? Do I continue to fill out the report and risk that I didn't do it his way? In a panic, typically I'd just sit there, unmoving, staring forward, waiting for him to wake up. On Tuesday I missed lunch, just sitting there, while he slept on me. Some days I have to work until nine or ten o'clock just to make up for the time he's cost me.

Finally today I decided to work this to my advantage. I got this idea from those subliminal sleep tapes you see at the bookstore. So my new manager was trying to explain to me how I should address letters to our offsite distributors when he collapsed onto my mouse hand and starting snoring.

Very, very slowly I leaned close to his ear. "Phil needs to take off early to play Dungeon Siege," I whispered. "It's important that Phil takes off early today, to play Dungeon Siege. You need for Phil to take off early. Phil needs to play Dungeon Siege. Phil. Early. Dungeon Siege. Dungeon Siege. Dungeon Siege..."

Half an hour later he woke up with a start and picked up where he left off. "Yes, right. As I was saying, it's 'Dear Sir' to our Waltham warehouse but 'Hello Joey' to our manager at Pittsburgh. And Phil, when you finish these, take off early and go play some Dungeon Siege." He stopped short, looked around, scratched his head, then walked away.