Down memory lane, I used to work in an animation company. Such a funny place and wild experience I had. This event recount was the sort that happened every other day, but in little different fashions.
The minute the boss is spotted walking through the glass sliding doors, everyone else is seen silently scampering about, whispering under their desks.
‘Who left some shoes on my UPS?’
‘Why isn’t the graphic frames ready yet?’
‘No please, you did not send me the mail… Perhaps I didn’t get it… No it’s not a part of my spam!‘
Nobody is listening to anyone at this moment. You wouldn’t even believe work resumed 90mins ago and these same people have been sat put for more time than that.
There was only one person not bothered. He wasn’t speaking to anyone just as he wasn’t being hurriedly whispered to. But when Patrick uttered that ‘…a part of my spam…‘ statement, he had to giggle. Mental pervasion is the one vice Harrison connects to the world with.
So while tumblr apps and youtube pages on the computer screens were swiftly being replaced with eComic pages with zoomed headlines…
While suddenly coffee mugs are being laid on desks with the pretense of morning beverage…
While the slight turbulence around the office continues with little signs of early draw back, Harrison sits quietly thinking up puns that could travel well with Patrick’s trivially rendered uproar of a sentence.
Minutes later, he sits back with his face pushed slightly away from his computer, his index finger tapping his chin as he smiles and swirls semi-circularly on his swivel chair. He thinks sharing the joke he’s been able to come up with, with Mavin, who’s sat a few meters to his left.
But when he looks towards him, Mavin had his stylus right over his intous, but it was too evident he was only sketching dots. He’s the best illustrator the company has got, but at the moment, it seems as though he was having troubles coming to terms with the entrance of the boss. Or maybe his brain freezes at this time of the day. It’s hard to tell with Mavin whether a good joke distraction would sink well.
Related: The meal pun told at work by the perverted boss
Trying now to see his other options with the mood variations around, Harrison looks at his other side for Eliza, whose character sometimes fascinates him. What he sees pulls him aside. And once again, fascinated he is.
Eliza is completely oblivious to the discomposure of her colleagues around her. Right on the top of her desk, almost falling off the edge, is a sandwich toaster, with the toe-part of a stocking sticking out. When his questioning eyes meet with hers, she simply gives him a shrug, pauses for a second, then starts to explain, “I got cold feet. Can’t think straight.”
And as though she heard herself and realized what could have been implied by her response, she added quickly, awkwardly defending her assumed fallen status, “I mean, literally. My feet.. they are cold. It wasn’t a metaphor..I’m not scared or anything; the weather…”
At that point he wasn’t even listening any longer. She is gesticulating in a loud fashion while fixating on her sandwich activity and isn’t looking at him, which is ok because he has started to look for another candidate to share the pun with. There had to be about 19 people in the room. It is an open office structure, with each person entitled to a desk moderate enough to fit a computer and intous (the space size is kind of like laying 3 laptops side by side), a table calendar, a mug and a transformer dinosaur/truck. If you liked such, like Kenny, who always also has gothic displays on his deviant art portfolio.
Harrison looks around more and tries to visualize the work place as a huge portrait, so he could easily pretend to erase the colleagues with looks he thinks are too grouchy and unappealing for his pun. Slowly, he mentally wipes out everyone’s faces, leaving only two he feels looks like they’d receive the pun with the same humor he intends to relate.
One of the two faces belonged to Simi. His crush for 2years and counting. And in that time she’s been his girlfriend for 2months and that ended badly. The other face belongs to his boss. Suddenly the pun didn’t feel that funny anymore. It’s good the noise around the office has gotten to a minimum, and now it’s time to give work a try.
Harrison would later tell the pun to Patrick who’d get confused and relay it to Mavin for clarification. It would recover Mavin from his dot-sketching-trance and he would spend the next 2hrs with a wide grin flashed across his cheeks while sketching a representation of the pun. This he’d share with Eliza who would immediately push it to the boss for laughs. After intermittent laughs in hiccups, the boss would endorse the sketch for a game production online. By the end of the month, the game would have hundreds of participants across the world.
