Humour

Decoding DeVito

T A Balasubramanian on what makes DeVito so irresistible.

“A CIO has to find ways to make himself heard authoritatively by those who are to do what they are expected to do, and he cannot have his words undermined by a junior,” you say, thoughtfully. “DeVito is proving to be a difficult person to manage, if he can be called a person, that is; and I have tackled many hard-to-manage persons in my career, believe me.”

As Papyrus Bytewala, CIO at Baffle Corporation, you have been given a new humanoid CTO, Danny DeVito. Within a week of his arrival, DeVito has been taking more things into his hands than he ought to have, as per the rules of doing business at Baffle. Originally, his scope of supervision had been to take charge of Chaibo, the tea-service robot.

To get to the source of the matter, you are now in consultation with Ms Ironica Asimova, the beautiful chief of Ironica Robotica, the robot laboratory, who also happens to be DeVito’s sage creator and surrogate mom, so to speak.

“Difficult to manage, Papyrus?” says Ironica, with the hint of a smile. “We all are, are we not? We have our easy days and we have our bad hair days. And we don’t know which one Danny is going through at any time.”

“Well, he seems to have bad hair days all the time. Besides, he is difficult to take to, if you know what I mean.”

“Can we be more specific, Papyrus. What is it that you don’t like about DeVito?”

“His round, beady eyes, for one thing.”

“What if we changed them into slanted eyes? Or triangular eyes?”

“That would be terrifying. Actually, it’s not just his eyes. I’m talking about this entire Danny DeVito movie legacy system he comes packaged with. It’s like having Holly-wood slammed into my face.”

“How is that?”

“DeVito the original plays nasty characters, but they are made to look cute in a way that women find adorably nasty.”

“But we can’t make a humanoid all goody-goody and saintly, Papyrus. We all have a nasty streak in us, don’t we? So he needs a little nasty streak—to make him … well, adorable to women, if you say so—which, according to our research, also makes him more human. It’s our failings which make us interesting and real. None of us, especially in business suits, can sound and perform convincingly if we’re always virtuous and straight and honest.”

“Well, you could make him less sinister and creepy, you know.”

“So now he’s nasty, sinister and creepy?”

“And a remorseless bully.”

“You seem determined to find no redeeming quality in DeVito, Papyrus. Do you think the problem is with him, or is it with you?”

“With me? Me? Are you serious? I am a human being, and I’m now coming off as having a problem compared to an artificial contraption?” you say. This is not going the way the way you thought you should have it going. The programming is getting knotty.

“Well, Gulabi Manpowa, your HR chief, finds him adorable, Brando Bhatt, your marketing head, finds him fascinating. Why, even Fin Fina, that touchy CFO you have at Baffle, finds him acceptable.”

“They don’t have to work closely with him, but I have to be around him all day. What do they know?”

“They are all hard nuts to crack when dealing with personalities as compelling as DeVito, Papyrus.”

“So am I.”

“So you’re the odd one out. It’s not too often that the corporate mafia unbends to accept a new member into the family. That makes Danny DeVito a really good candidate as a Baffle employee.”

“Ah, so now I am the guy who needs to fit in? A humanoid with a program gets a better rating than me?” you huff, now well and truly riled by the conversation.

“Oh, Papyrus, don’t be too hard on yourself. Just unbend a little. We’re giving you the world’s first synthetic CTO with all those traits that make him fit well into a corporate jungle, and here you are whining about being rated as less worthy?”

“Hello? Does anybody listen to me?” you wail. “I’m the CIO at Baffle, if you please. I’d rather have a plain, obedient CTO who can be switched on or off like an old-fashioned PC. DeVito has the personality of a gangster, and I do not like gangsters. Nobody in his right mind would like to work in tandem with a gangster. Except Don Corleone’s sons, maybe. And even they resented the old man.”

“He’s a show-off, Papyrus, hardly a gangster,” says Ironica, in a mollifying tone of voice. “And even if he has the personality of a gangster, that’s good for a corporate haven like Baffle. He’s a cute, business-savvy guy who can be like a crusty bully sometimes, but he’s also a remarkably smart CTO.”

“A cute, irrational gangster,” you say emphatically. “And quite often, I catch what seems to be an evil gleam in his quick, darting camera lens eyes.”

“Oh, so you’re now imagining that he’s got an evil robotic streak, too?”

“Imagining?” you wail, “Why is it, that of all the god-forsaken CIOs in the world, I am the only one who has to contend with a CTO, who is, in summary, a cute, irrational gangster?”

“It’s not all that bad, Papyrus,” says Ironica. “He is capable of doing much more than the average plain vanilla CTO you might find from the human gene pool,” says Ironica, laughing.

“Really? What exactly is he capable of doing?”

“Let’s leave that to circumstances, shall we? You could discover things as you go along. He’s built to abstract learning from his experiences, just like you. And surprises are part of the package when you let your experiences be your guide.”

“Short, balding, cocky men with beady eyes who speak rudely, swear loudly, walk with a swagger and smoke cigars are considered to be very macho. They exude power and purpose and poise. And of course, they are irresistibly attractive to the opposite sex.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“And of all the stereotypes we thought of, DeVito turned out to be the best fit. He was even rated as being charismatic and impressive. That’s what our research shows, Papyrus. So we programmed DeVito here with precisely these qualities that girls find irresistible. We’re scientists. We go with the weight of data. And Danny is the distilled essence of the most attractive qualities in a man—in the opinion of women.”

“Who are these women? Disillusioned social butterflies?”

“Oh, men too. They seem to enjoy the company of short, rude guys who don’t look intimidating like the over-muscled apes in a bodybuilding show.”

“I don’t believe this either, Ironica.”

“You can double-check the data we have compiled. Hundreds of interviews can’t be wrong.”