In a fit of insanity, you decide to get a tech job. After some searching you find a company desperate enough to hire someone with no experience.
"I'm thinking we'll start you out taking care of the zebra," the manager said. "That'll be a good way for you to get up to speed and learn how we do things."
"The zebra?" you ask.
"Yeah, the zebra. I'll show you," the manager turns and starts leading you down a hallway.
"What's that?" you ask again.
"What? The zebra. You know, a zebra."
"Of course! A zebra," you answer, understanding this must be a technical term everyone is expected to know already.
The manager leads you past the accounting desks, the customer service desks, a prestigious cubicle for a director, the IT desks, and finally into the datacenter. There's rows of tall black cabinets full of equipment, but the manager continues past them, leading you to a room near the back.
He opens the door and you follow, finding yourself facing a zebra, black and white stripes and all. Straw covers the floor, feed and water troughs are visible along one wall, and another features a double door open to a yard.
"Meet Zarzoni, our zebra," the manager introduces you, before launching into an explanation of feeding schedules.
The next day
You start settling in. Zarzoni seems to be a friendly zebra (he lets you pet him at least), you get a desk not far from the zebra pen, and none of your friends can say their company has a zebra. However, you begin to have questions...
Later that week
"But what, exactly, does Zarzoni do?" you ask. "The zebra pen and yard look like they cost a fair amount, so obviously the company must have some important use for him."
"He's a big part of our maintenance processes, you'll see at the end of the week," the manager explained. "I'll have the maintenance team give you a walk-through."
Next Monday
"But why do we need Zarzoni for the weekly maintenance?"
"Didn't they show you cleaning out the yard, stocking the feed, all that stuff?" The manager seems puzzled.
"Yeah, but if we didn't have a zebra we wouldn't need to do any of that."
"There's a ton of things that wouldn't work without Zarzoni! For one, our cleaning procedure is to remove zebra dung from the pen each day, and do you have any idea how hard zebra dung is to buy?" The manager shakes his head, as if reliving a terrible meeting with purchasing. "Way easier to produce it in-house."
"But if we didn't have a zebra-"
"Look, you're new here. You'll see how it all fits together once you learn the ropes."
A month later
"I'm just saying there's a lot of zoos. Maybe Zarzoni could make zebra friends - he might be happier there," you argue. Zarzoni hasn't invited you to a single meeting, so you're firmly on his side.
"You don't realize how much we've put into setting all this up - we had to find the right diet, the right schedules, learn how to work with zebras. I spent most of last year meeting with contractors to get the right habitat set up! Facilities nearly drove me mad over getting the exterior door to the yard put in. No," the manager said, "we need Zarzoni here."
10 years later
"And that will bring our capacity to 8 zebras, completing phase 2 of the expansion plan," you bring up the final slide as you finish your presentation. "Any questions?"
"Uh, I have a question," the new guy asked. "What, exactly, do the zebras do?"
"Look, you're new here," you answer. "I'll have the maintenance team give you a walk-through when they do weekly maintenance. It'll make sense once you get used to our process."
