ItÂ’s been a long time since IÂ’ve shared one of these stories with all of you, so I thought now is a good time to do so. Plus itÂ’s a nice light story to help make Friday go by faster. ItÂ’s been over a year, but now for an installment of Pranks pulled on Minions.

My company is big into the healthy lifestyle movement. They try to get everyone to eat healthier, quit smoking, and just make “healthier” choices in general. Part of that is walking a mile a day. For the record, I do not participate in these activities. I do have a couple of employees that do. The big thing is the walking. When the weather is bad they walk inside the building making so many laps that would equal a mile. If it is nice outside, they walk around the parameter of the property through the parking lot.

Yesterday as I left the building to go to lunch I see two of my minions power walking through the lot… right toward my truck. They looked like they were concentrating really hard on making sure their arms were swinging properly and their pace was fast enough. With keys in my hand, my mischievous side took over. It pushed the sensitivity class reprogrammed part of my brain out of the way. Right as they got next to my truck, I “accidentally” hit the panic alarm. Anyone that has heard the horn on my truck knows this is not your typical little “meep meep” sound. It’s a “HOOOOOoooOOOOONK HOOOOOoooOOOOONK!” that can rattle the teeth.

Or in this case make the power walking minions jump a good foot into the air with their arms flailing like the ground had just opened up underneath them. I quickly turned it off. When I go to them they where breathing harder then the power walking would have made them and they looked a little pale. I apologized for hitting the alarm, “I meant to hit unlock.” They weren’t mad; in fact they found it humorous. They just wanted to let me know they needed to take a longer lunch so they could go home and change clothes.

I hadnÂ’t done anything like that in over a year. Boy do I miss it.

Posted by: Contagion at 05:00 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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You would think I would have learned my lesson by now. There is an issue at work that all of my peers and myself agree needs changing. Unfortunately we canÂ’t make that change with out approval from upper management. On Tuesday we sat down and talked it over amongst ourselves to make sure we were all on the same page. At that time I told them this will not work unless we all support it AND openly support it. If anyone backs down, then we wonÂ’t get anything changed. Everyone agreed and wanted to make the change, it was decided that weÂ’d discuss this with upper management today in one of our bi-weekly meetings.

We are in the meeting, and one of my peers turns to me and quietly says just to me, “Contagion, bring up that thing we spoke about.” I should have realized what was going to happen then, but of course I didn’t. I laid out my proposal, and as soon as upper management started questioning it or showed hesitation, they all started backing down. Some said, “We can’t do that.” or “It won’t work”.

The sad thing is that this change is not something that will have that big of an impact on me. They all want it more then I do, they are just too damn cowardly to say so. So instead they hang me out as the fall guy (Literally). But you know what, IÂ’ve learned my lesson. I know where the battle lines are drawn and that from this point on; itÂ’s me versus them.

Posted by: Contagion at 05:50 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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