Quarantine Neighborhood News...

[dutchman]

[rebbonk]

For some reason, that reminded me of a workplace prank pulled in the early 80s.

I was working at a well-known research establishment. The director of the said establishment had an odd way of communicating with the staff. He would simply post a memo on the board outside his office and expect it to be read and complied with. The establishment had a site-wide tannoy system for paging employees to the phone. Due to the nature of our work, a lot of time was spent discussing test procedures, test results, new ideas etc.

One day the director got it into his head that many of these discussions were unnecessary. He announced his displeasure at what he saw as 'lead swinging' via his usual method. His memo was defaced and several rather rude comments written on it, plus the odd sensible one explaining reality and why some ad-hoc meetings were not only necessary but very productive. He then issued a second memo, stating that there were to be no more ad-hoc meetings and that he would take action (including dismissal if necessary) against any miscreants. And meetings were to be taken only in the official conference rooms, and in order that he was aware of anything, the rooms and their topics for discussion/use were to be booked via his secretary. As you can imagine, this was not popular and a couple of us got together to teach him a lesson.

We tapped into the tannoy system and whenever the director had a visitor over the next few days we sent out a wailing siren, followed by the announcement (typically) " Attention, attention! Contrary to orders from Herr Director [name] a group has gathered in XYZ lab. This is contrary to diktat 101 issued by Herr Director [name] on [Date]. This group will disperse immediately or security will be informed and action taken as per diktat 101."

Of course, the whole workforce was in hysterics every time it happened. He was furious. He never found out who was responsible, but he stopped his silliness a few days after it first happened. Oddly enough, he moved on shortly afterwards!