Sunday, September 20, 2009

Management Has No Sense of Humor

One of our afternoon front desk guys, Kevin, is a creative and incorrigible prankster. Example: A couple of months ago he got online and found some official forms from the Department of Human Services, printed them off, and arranged to have Bossman presented with papers explaining that his check was to be garnished to support the two-year-old daughter he didn't know he had. Brilliant!
One time, AFOM wrote a note on the big dry-erase board in the office complaining that he'd had to remove nine used glasses that had been left in the office. (This is a recurring problem, along with plates and silverware and other lunch remnants.) Kevin added, "Nine glasses of pop in the office, Nine glasses of pop, Take one down, Pass it around..."
But he almost got fired over one prank that went too far (in Management's opinion.) One of our HR managers had written a list of the top ten rules that employees must obey, and had hung up copies all over the employee areas. Kevin, having noticed that a chair from the restaurant was downstairs needing to be repaired, used her list as a basis for what was ostensibly an employee rewards perk.
When I got to work, there was a new flyer taped to the locker room door. (Actually, they were all over the place.) I read it, thinking at first that it was one of those lame-yet-kinda-cool things they do for employee morale. But the more I read, the more ridiculous it got. Click on the picture, and you'll see what I mean.
Upstairs, it was pretty obvious that Kevin was proud of his work, but the next morning, our head of security went around and took all the flyers down, muttering about looking through the security tapes to find the culprit. I found out later that upper management wanted Kevin fired, but the FOM refused, so he was given a three day suspension instead. Most of the rest of us thought this was an unnecessary overreaction, and some spoke of rallying to Kevin's defense with a prank of their own, but within a few days the whole thing had blown over, and now it's just one of those stories everyone laughs about. Except for management, of course.

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