The Missing Door

People who sign on to creative enterprises really are unlike the rest of us. I mean, what kind of brain builds a box with a button on top that has exactly one function:  When you press the button, the lid opens, a hand curls out, and it presses the button, turning itself off?

An acquaintance worked at a think tank.  Not the kind you usually expect, where a crew is hired to study political problems and offer solutions and subterfuges, but a real think tank. This company took on technical computer related asks.  Tricky problems like how do you thread a nut around a bolt that is inside a container with no access?  This fellow explained it to me.  It looked like it could work.  I just don’t know if his company actually had that problem, or if he was pulling my leg.  Because he and his coworkers routinely pulled practical jokes on each other.

One fellow quit answering his office phone because each time he lifted the receiver, a Souza march blared in the hall.

One of their members was called to D.C. to report to a committee on a space related project.  It took him away from Pasadena for about a week.  While he was gone, a painting crew repainted the plant’s halls.

Soooooooooooo, his “buddies” arranged for his office door to be papered over, and the painters to paint that, too.  When he returned from DC, his co workers had no idea where his office had been moved to.

Another fellow, driving toward home from the office, found that his horn tooted through every left turn.

And, when my acquaintance retired, he refused to go anywhere near the plant.  Anyone who wanted to see him had to go to his home.

The mechanical hand? When the inventor figured out how much it cost him to make it, almost everyone in the plant bought one.