Office Crazies

There are lots of crazy characters working in the Government. And while there are surely crazy people in any office setting, the nut jobs in the Federal Government are 10x crazier because they can't get fired! There's nothing to reel them in - nothing to keep them rooted to reality. The old-timers tend to be especially askew - years of mindless work can destroy one's brain.

For example: there's this one guy in our office who is absurdly territorial. If he's working on a project, he doesn't want anyone to help him or give him feedback out of fear that they might, um, steal his glory I guess. He always wants to know what you're working on - just to be sure that you're not infringing upon his projects. He even gets steaming mad if he's not CC'd on emails are barely pertinent to him. This territoriality spills over into other aspects of office life as well.

He strangely feels that he has the right to leave his dirty dishes in the office kitchen sink for days, and even SCREAMED at my coworker who had the nerve to ask him to wash them (it's HIS sink I guess...). Another time, he yelled at our secretary for printing a very important memo on "HIS" color printer. Our office has 3 color printers in various locations, but in this guy's mind you are only allowed to print to the printer that's nearest to you. Anything else is an infringement of space and property.

The printer incident set me off. We all work for the same boss - I should be able to print to whatever printer I want. And if the color printer near me is broken (which is has been for the last several months), I'm going to have to print elsewhere.

So to get him back, I started printing on "HIS" printer as frequently as possible. Oh, and I would only print pictures of puppies...

I would find the cutest puppy I could on the internet, blow it up in MS Word, and then send a couple of copies to his printer and just leave them there. I did this 3-4 times a week for about a month.

My coworker John was in on the prank towards the end. He sits right near the disputed printer, and every time he would find a puppy picture sitting in the printer bin he'd loudly proclaim "Who keeps printing these damn puppy pictures on our printer?? They're wasting all our toner!" This would inevitably set crazy printer guy off. He would even tack the pictures to the wall right by the printer to serve as a mocking reminder.

Did it teach him a lesson? Probably not. But it taught me a lesson. A lesson I have since forgotten.