Overboard
When I was but a lowly intern many moons ago, I shared an apartment with three other guys for the summer - two of which worked at the same place I did. At the end of the year, on our last day, we decided it was fitting and proper to perform some kind of prank/antic that would be “funny”.
A few weeks prior, the bossman had gotten a ticket for parking in the handicapped spot outside of our facility. This was back when our company worked out of a small strip-mall like place where the parking lot was shared amongst 4-5 other businesses. This particular weekend, one of the businesses (a gymnastics place) had a meet and most of the parking was full. So full, in fact, that the handicapped spot was the only one available, and he took it. Apparently the police officer didn’t agree with the plight of hot having a place to park.
I found the story insanely funny at the time, and thus my thought was to come in early to work on the last day and print off some “Handicapped Parking Only” signs and put them up on every spot near the building. This was a good combination of zinger and humor.
But my officemates thought we should go further. They wanted to flip over desks and books and stuff all throughout the building. They wanted to take all of the chairs out of the office and put them upstairs. They wanted to unplug everyone’s computers and reset all of the clocks. I didn’t want to do any of that.
Not that it wasn’t funny. But it was our last day. It wasn’t “past our last day”. It was our last day. Which meant after everyone had a good chuckle, we would be the ones that would have to put it all back together. I wasn’t about to be a part of it.
And thus it went, and all of this stuff was done (self excluded). And the day came, and everyone laughed. And then for just as many hours as it spent messing everything up, we were expected to put it all right again. I didn’t participate in the cleanup, because I refused to participate in the messing up of stuff.
I think this didn’t make my cohorts too happy. They saw me as a part of the “intern group” and as such I should be one of the ones cleaning up as well. Well, screw that.
“I’m a rebel, Dottie. A loner”
What’s the moral of the story? There isn’t one, birches.