I am retired now with my wife, Deborah, and miss that jovial
banter between co-workers in the office.
I have always seen the humor in most things and it has gotten me into
trouble at times. We are living in a
co-op RV resort in Southern California now.
I highly recommend retirement and our resort. You can check out our resort website at
www.jojobahills.com. Thanks goodness most of the folks in our resort have a
good sense of humor. I never know what I
will do next.
In the 90's I was working as a contract programmer at
Haverty Furniture Company in Atlanta, Georgia.
We were developing their sales and inventory system on the AS400
platform. I was one of the first
programmers contracted and, over time, helped to bring in several of my contracting
friends. It was a great place to
work. The people were friendly. We were right slab dab in the middle of
downtown Atlanta, right next to the Georgia Tech campus and a few blocks from
the Varsity. If you know Atlanta, you
know this is awesome. I worked here on
three occasions, each lasting about two years.
We produced a lot of really good work and that's probably why they kept
bring me back. Well that, and my winning
personality.
The incident I am recalling
at the moment occurred spontaneously, as usual.
I shared a cubical with two other
co-workers, Jack Travis and Billy Smith, both of whom I had worked with at
other companies. Billy, one of the
smartest analyst I knew, had a very dry sense of humor. Without saying a work he would give you the
most deadpan look that spoke volumes. He
was very quick witted and clever. Jack
and I both had kids and whenever one of us mentioned anything about the kids
being sick, Billy would slip on this air filter he kept by his terminal, the
paper kind that a medic might use, and give us that look. It was winter and because of the wind, cold
and wet of Atlanta, I was nursing chapped lips.
I was usually the first one in because I liked to get to the office
early to avoid as much traffic as possible.
This particular morning, I was coating my lips with Vaseline to help out
with the chapping when I spotted the air filter. It seemed like a good idea at the time so I
took a handful of Vaseline and coated the inside of his filter. When we were all there and working I began
talking to Jack about my kids having some illness. I kept a watchful eye toward Billy and, like
clockwork, he did the expected. He
plopped that filter right over his nose and mouth and gave us that deadpan
look. I laughed so hard because he had
no idea what he had done. When he pulled
it off, Vaseline was all over his face. Then
Jack realized the joke and was laughing as well. Billy was not!
In retaliation, Billy later pulled a prank on me where
stupid messages started appearing on my terminal and no matter what I tried, I
could not make them go away. After long
frustrating attempts on my part and eventual capitulation, I sought the help
from the system techs only to discover the problem was no longer there. I suspected the brightest guy in the room who
happened to have that famous deadpan look on his face at the time. Later, when he was gone, I surveyed his
terminal and, using a little used history facility he was unaware of, was able to isolate the origin of the
messages. He had run a background job
that pushed the messages to me every few seconds without identifying their source. The job was still there. I left the job there but changed the message
and recipients to be everyone around us except for the two of us. I sort of thought he might give it another go
at some point. He did. A couple of week later, the employee in the
office next to our cubical shouted something like, "What the hell is this,
Billy". We both ran to see what was
up and when he saw the message, "Billy, not so smart to try this on me
twice". He immediately rushed back
to his terminal, as others in the office started asking him what was going on,
and cancelled the prank job. I gave my
best gloating deadpan face look and did not get any more annoying
messages.
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