28 August 2006
Tales of the Office Fridge
Inspired by this Slashdot article I'm reminded of a tale from my heady dot-com days when working 60 hours a week with a 2 hour commute somehow seemed like a good idea.
I was working at AltaVista in mid-1999, and while there are many tales of woe regarding that whole saga I'll stick to this one for now. Like many offices, ours had a little problem with people eating food and drinking drinks that didn't necessarily belong to them. At the time I was coming off of my growing years but maintaining the diet of a 15-year-old. After a bit of "personal growth" in the horizontal sense I decided to try to be healthier in my dietary habits and started buying skim milk from the Trader Joe's across the street to drink during the day. As an aside, I'm aware that milk has a lot of calories but to me I just assumed it was "healthy" and it's still probably ten times better than Mountain Dew.
The refrigerator in the break room was the same one that we kept the half and half for the coffee in and this being Northern California skim milk next to half and half is like, well, sushi next to a Fillet O' Fish. So people started using my milk. At first a quart would last me three days, then two, then finally it would be gone in under 24 hours. I wrote my name on the carton in increasingly elaborate and obvious fashion. I tried out various scripts, colors and placement of "James' Milk: DO NOT DRINK" but nothing seemed to work. In a fit of inspired desperation I tried to use psychological warfare. I made a sign that said the following:
In my mind I had won. I had created a message that would probably gross out the squeamish and perhaps the humor would win the rest over. All was well for the next 2 days or so and a couple people had actually commented on how funny the sign was. I was not to have the last laugh though because once as I came back from a meeting I saw the following written hastily in ball-point pen beneath my stern warning:
I was working at AltaVista in mid-1999, and while there are many tales of woe regarding that whole saga I'll stick to this one for now. Like many offices, ours had a little problem with people eating food and drinking drinks that didn't necessarily belong to them. At the time I was coming off of my growing years but maintaining the diet of a 15-year-old. After a bit of "personal growth" in the horizontal sense I decided to try to be healthier in my dietary habits and started buying skim milk from the Trader Joe's across the street to drink during the day. As an aside, I'm aware that milk has a lot of calories but to me I just assumed it was "healthy" and it's still probably ten times better than Mountain Dew.
The refrigerator in the break room was the same one that we kept the half and half for the coffee in and this being Northern California skim milk next to half and half is like, well, sushi next to a Fillet O' Fish. So people started using my milk. At first a quart would last me three days, then two, then finally it would be gone in under 24 hours. I wrote my name on the carton in increasingly elaborate and obvious fashion. I tried out various scripts, colors and placement of "James' Milk: DO NOT DRINK" but nothing seemed to work. In a fit of inspired desperation I tried to use psychological warfare. I made a sign that said the following:
"To the person or persons who have decided to drink my milk:
Please be aware that I drink straight from the carton!
-James"
In my mind I had won. I had created a message that would probably gross out the squeamish and perhaps the humor would win the rest over. All was well for the next 2 days or so and a couple people had actually commented on how funny the sign was. I was not to have the last laugh though because once as I came back from a meeting I saw the following written hastily in ball-point pen beneath my stern warning:
"So do I"
