Today I saw a copywriter take the ultimate revenge against a designer. These two teammates of mine always get along well, but the designer tends to be a bit of a smart-ass, which made him a great target.
Rob, the Senior Designer on the team, came in to work on a Friday morning and started having trouble with his large monitor. (Designers have a smaller laptop with monitor but also a large monitor to view details more easily.) Every so often his large monitor would go out for no apparent reason. It would just go blank. But then it would eventually come back up again.
After several rounds of this frustration, he talked to his creative team and showed them what was happening and they all agreed that it was a problem. Sometimes he would be walking through a design with a co-worker and his screen would suddenly go blank, and he used many, many curse-words to share his feelings on the matter. He eventually called Support which takes two days to respond anyway.
After a while I noticed that my teammates were acting strangely. The Senior Copywriter seemed to be giggling to himself and banging his coffee mug on desks more than normal. An Art Director seemed to be jumping around and more animated than normal. Everyone seemed to use clapping as part of their communications more than normal.
I finally caught on when I saw hidden laughter among the cube-mates. Will, the Senior Copywriter on the team, bought 'The Clapper' along with an adapter to hook it up to Rob's large monitor's on/off switch. Every time someone made two somewhat-loud noises near Rob's desk, his monitor would turn on or off in a 2-second delay, depending on prior state.
This was so incredibly entertaining all day because Rob is so easily frustrated. He would get so mad at his monitor and shout sudden profanities at his computer. Sometime around mid-day Rob even noticed that the Art Director was acting weird and she just pranced off and said she's just a big circus monkey and no one even thought twice about it because that's just how Nicole is. I couldn't believe how the other creative folks kept such straight faces through his tantrums all day. Once I had to leave a quick creative review at his desk because I was going to lose it.
Anyway, I've come to realize that my creative team members are masters of deception. This clapper extravaganza absolutely made my Friday. Unfortunately Rob has to go to a funeral on Monday and Tuesday, and although we all felt a little bad, we still plan to unplug the clapper and re-install in a few weeks to really make him lose his mind once he feels better.
