....It USED To Be A Fun Place To Work...

In twenty years at one place I've seen a lot of changes, I've seen a lot of people come and go, and I've watched it slip from a place I cared about to a place I'm ambivalent about, at best.

When I first started there, the boss was probably the biggest asshole I have ever worked for. Not only did he run the place with an iron hand, he was the biggest perfectionist/nitpicker I have ever known. No matter how well you did something, he always managed to find fault with it. If he couldn't find fault, he just said nothing. No "good job/nice work", not even a "thanks". Worst came to worst, he could always tell you you did it too slowly.

He was a very prickly person and a bit of a loose cannon. He thought nothing of telling the company president that something was stupid, even if it was the CEO's pet project. He also was known for being merciless on someone he perceived as "weak". (He "rode" one of the guys to the point where one of the other guys went home and told his wife "Y'know, if John kills Andy, I'm going to have to testify in his defense...") I know at least three guys who quit because of him and another who actually picked him up by the throat....

BUT, he wasn't one of those people who couldn't walk the walk - he's probably THE best toolmaker I've ever worked with. If he said he could do something better/faster, chances are he probably could. You've got to at least respect that. He also pushed me to do the best work I've ever done.

Then, they screwed him over on a couple of raises, and he began realize that being such a taskmaster wasn't getting him anywhere and he started to mellow. We also learned how to "handle" him. I made a pretty profound discovery one day when he was chewing my ass for screwing something up: he said: "...WHY DID YOU DO THIS????"(Like I did it on purpose). In exasperation, I said: "TO PISS YOU OFF!" He stopped, said, "...yeah, you probably did..." and walked away. I stopped him in mid-bitch! After that, I realized if you just let him rant and acted like you didn't give a shit, he backed off and left you alone. Apparently if he couldn't make you cower or fight back, it was no fun.

We had a really good crew of six in the shop. Everyone worked well together and we had FUN. It was the biggest crew of ballbusters I have ever worked with, but it was all in fun. (Recently, my son's girlfriend's brother worked in a department just outside mine and he asked one of the other guys in his department "What do they do in there?" The response was "Oh, don't go in there - they'll make you cry!")

I have never seen pranks taken to the level of finesse they were with this crew:

One of the guys was known to eat sardines. My buddy George waited until he (Stanley) threw his sardine can in the trash and then went and got it and stashed it in the boss's office. Guess who got blamed? He did that once or twice, and then, realizing it would be obvious someone was trying to get Stanley blamed if he did it again, took the can out of the trash and set it on the floor in front of the garbage and said "Watch this...." Sure enough, the boss came in, saw the can on the floor and started yelling at Stanley "Can't you even put this thing in the trash????"

Stanley took an air cylinder, submerged it underwater and pulled the piston back (like a hypodermic), then hooked it to the supply cabinet door. His only miscalculation came because he's taller than me - when I opened the door, the water shot harmlessly over my shoulder.

There were multi-part, reciprocal pranks too: Stanley had a plastic gallon jug of pennies on his bench. George had a box under his bench for his empty soda cans. Stanley used to put his cans in there, too, but he'd leave a little soda in the cans, to make a sticky mess in the box. George caught on and took to waiting until Stanley wasn't around, then going and dumping the little bit of soda in Stanley's pennies. (I also "donated" some leftover epoxy to the penny jug). I almost pissed myself the day I walked in and saw Stanley pounding a basketball-sized chunk of pennies on the floor, trying to break them up....

The maddest I ever saw the boss was the day they took the pins out of the hinges on the supply cabinet door. He went to open the door, it fell off and hit him in the head. He took the door, threw it in the corner, put his coat on and went home.

I came close - one time the boss had an ad for a machinery auction on his desk, that he'd torn out of the newspaper. I "replaced" it with a section torn out of the gay personal ads in the Syracuse New Times. I'm glad I wasn't in the room when he found it - I wouldn't have been able to keep a straight face. They said he came storming out of his office, threw the ad, stomped back in the office, came storming out, picked it up and threw it again and stomped back in his office.

I also had him pretty worked up when he had a cassette player in his office - he had some sort of financial seminar on tape he was listening to and I switched it with some Ronald McDonald cassette my kid got in a Happy Meal.

Sticking stuff on people's coats was the rage for a while. Take a chunk of the cotton wadding our cores come packed in, a bent paper clip to make an "s" hook and some tape and you have a very nice little bunny tail to hang on someone's belt loop. I also know "somehow" that if you do a little judicious Xacto knife surgery on the lettering on the side of a box of Butter Lover's microwave popcorn, you can make a big, bright, yellow sign that says "Butt Lover". I also "heard" that ideal time to place this on someone's coat is lunchtime on Thursday - that way everyone waiting at the time clock to punch out AND THE PEOPLE AT THE BANK, get to appreciate your handiwork.

"Buttercup" made the mistake of leaving his umbrella in the shop unattended. Stanley tied tampons all around the perimeter and tucked them in.  Didn't get to see it, but it must have looked like one of those Mexican hats, when he opened it....

One of the guys was never without a toothpick in his mouth, so "someone" took several of them from his box, ran them through a jalapeno a few times and put them back in the box.....

Greasing machine handles got passe so I elaborated a bit: grease one handle, and then remove all the rags in the vincinity except one.... and grease the hell out of the rag.

Got a bag (lunch, whatever) you're taking home? Don't leave it out, or someone will "add" something to it, preferably something you'll need and have to lug BACK in....

And so on.... 

This kind of stuff was constant, but never mean, never destructive. Always fun.

So what happened?.....

A few whiners, and a whole lot of Kool - Aid drinkers.  That's all it took. 

Used to be, if you got pranked, you didn't whine about it, you just got revenge. If you weren't sure who did it, you just took the shotgun approach and got them all.  All it took was one person, who whined to HR when he took some guff, whined to the company president that he was being picked on.  Now the games took on a nastier edge.

All it took was a few people to drink the corporate Kool Aid, to believe the Corporate Bullshit being handed out in quarterly meetings, which were more and more straight out of Dilbert every time. 

Game over.