Getting Thrashed

One of the things that I admire so much about Calvin, the comics character, is his wonderful ability to get in trouble in some insanely creative ways. His character has taught me a great lesson: If you are going to get in trouble... do it right! And by all means.. at least have fun doing it!

As most people who know me know.. I love being a prankster. The office "practical joke" guy.. the guy who when he walks by you and grins, people get uneasy. Got to keep people on their toes! Now, I don't go out and seek out practical jokes. I am more the kind of guy who simply takes advantage of situations presented to him and then runs amok with them.

Today was a perfect example! Today was the last day for one of our long time employees, so most of the department went out to lunch with her to wish her off in her new endeavor. While at lunch, one of the guys who works for me accidently left his keys behind at the table. It took me all of .25 seconds to get out of my chair and snatch them.. After all.. I wouldn't want them to fall into the wrong hands.. :)

That key leaving then started the conversation with the few of us remaining.. "If we have his keys.. we have his van... what could we do with his van? Where could we put it?" Quickly our sinister little plan was launched. It was perfect... simple to execute, no risk to the vehicle or property, and wouldn't take any time away from our workday. In our building, the front half of the building is offices, the back half is an RV production area, with the big garage doors. In between the areas are the building's bathrooms. This week the plant is closed and so the production area sits empty and unused. The plan: When Brian got up and walked back to use the bathroom in the afternoon, there he would find his van parked.. inside the building, next to the bathroom. That's about the time he would realize he had no keys, and then come hunting me down wondering how the heck his van got in the building. That was the PLAN. Now it was time to execute.

My accomplice in this was my friend, Zak. I was to simply get in the van using our acquired keys, drive it around back to the other side of the security fence, and to one of the large bay doors. Zak would meet me there, open the door from the inside, we'd pull in the van, smile and return to our desks for the afternoon.

What we were not expecting was Thrash.. the security guard. With production shut down this week, he must have had very little to do, and suddenly we became his big project. Thrash takes his job... very seriously, a good trait for chief of security for a billion dollar manufacturing company. But sometimes.. he can take things a little too seriously.

The plan worked as planned, I carefully drove the van through the security gate, no questions asked, then around to the side of the building where Zak was waiting. He opened the door, I drove in... almost done... that's when we heard the tire screech of the the security van pulling in behind us, and out came a very red faced, yelling Thrash.

"What do you think you are doing?! You can't bring company vehicles back here, let alone park them in buildings!, He barked. Seeing the intensity that he had in coming after us, for our seemingly simple joke, set Zak into "High School student smarmy attitude" mode.

"No problem, then" he replied "It's not a company vehicle."

Our catching him getting mixed up about his own security policies.. eh... didn't go over well and really set him off into a tirade. We understood this as a simple fix. Ok, so we couldn't park the van there, no problem, it was obviously going to cause a problem, and so we tried to comply and move the van back out to the parking lot. Simple misunderstanding.. no problem.. abort mission. And obviously Thrash had no concept of a little prank.

So we quickly moved the van and continued on with our day. End of story? Not even... This is Thrash we are talking about here... the "Uber Security Guard". Before we could blink, Larry had written up the incident, greatly exaggerating the facts, and had started e-mailing this out to various company management, including the head of our department. In his report, I came rocketing through the gate "at a high rate of speed" (not true), we broke into part of a building we had no permission to be in (also not true), we laughed at him, cocked an attitude, and refused to comply with his instructions. He was demanding apologies, or administrative action against us.

Now, the good thing in all of this is... well, people know Thrash.. They know he can be a bit over zealous in his efforts. This is the security guard who will attempt to pull over company employees on the freeway for speeding.. So when this was questioned, Zak and I told the simple plan of what we were doing. Our boss laughed at our plan, thought it was quite creative and then shook his head. But it still took an afternoon of trying to apologize to Thrash, and explaining a seemingly simple joke to any and everyone who had received the e-mails. Bottom line, is was a simple misunderstanding with someone wanting to turn it into a huge issue.

So.. let's evaluate.. would it have been a great joke? Sure... very entertaining. Did I get into REAL trouble? No, not even close. Instead I made a lot of managers smile and laugh upon hearing the tale. And did I have fun getting into this "trouble" with the red faced Thrash? Heck yeah! Watching this all unfold over the course of an afternoon was very entertaining!

In the end, things still worked. Watching Brian realize he did not have his keys.. rewarding... Watching him walk confused around the parking lot, trying to remember where he parked... priceless! (We ultimately parked the van in a different lot). So all in all, a very successful, entertaining day, living the life of Calvin!

But just a warning to all of you driving I-5 near Coburg.. If you see a round, gruff guy screaming down the freeway in his little golf cart, light on top spinning away in an attempt to pull over some speeding employee... watch out.. THRASH could be coming! You could be next!