a million little pieces...of a puzzle

I was really burned out after I returned to the states after working overseas. I was put on this horrible project. I hated going to work every day, so I decided to leave the gov and go work for a commercial company.


I went to work for a company that made ERP software. I was responsible for coordinating our software with Oracle, the database the ERP software was based on. Idiotically, unbeknown to my company, Oracle was creating a duplicate of our software with the intention to compete head on with us when they got it done.


Anyway, the company, we'll just call it ERP, was really cool. Every day at 3 PM they would bring a snack cart around to our offices and we would get free snacks. They also had parties all of the time.


I had been working there for almost 6 months when the biggest party happened. It was to celebrate our year end (in June). The president of the company was going to be there and everything. People were excited because at the party they always gave out great schwag. The year before everyone had gotten clocks from Tiffany's. I love Tiffany's.


The day before the party mysterious white boxes, the size of a smaller Tiffany clock, were placed on everyone's desks. We were told not to open the boxes until the party the next day because it was going to be a great surprise. I did not get a box, as I had just been moved to the headquarters building and mine was apparently lost in the mail.

I was bitter. The morning of the party, I arrived at 630 am to get some work done, and decided I was going to open my manager's box. I was sure it was going to be a great present from Tiffany's. Instead, it was three stupid puzzle pieces. I was like, what the hell is this? I closed the box and went back to my office, where I spied a large container of now stale animal crackers. Hm, I thought.

I went back to my manager's office, took the puzzle pieces out of the box, and filled it with animal crackers. Then, in what would prove to be a poor decision, I decided to replace all the puzzle pieces of every box on my floor with animal crackers.

Fast forward to the party. Everyone is sitting in a conference room. There were 600 people local, and then another 1,400 people on video monitors from Australia and Europe. The president walked in and said "We've had a hard year this year. We need to work as a team. Everyone open your boxes." The Van Halen song "Right Now" was cranked up over the speakers. People opened their boxes. I snickered in anticipation.

"So, to emphasize how we need to work as a team, everyone has been given three puzzle pieces. We'll use that to build a puzzle (it was the company logo). When your name is called, please bring your pieces up here." Uh oh, I thought to myself.

The first few people were called and had puzzle pieces. Then an engineer from my floor was called and showed up with his animal crackers. The president of the company glared at the VP of Marketing and said "What are these cookies doing in this box?"

Pandemonium ensued. The president asked "who got cookies in their boxes?" One of the engineers from my floor stood up and said "I got cookies AND they're stale". The VP of Marketing was in tears and saying over and over "I don't know HOW this could have happened". I was trying not to laugh, when suddenly my manager looked over at me. Busted.

The team building exercise came to an abrupt halt. I admitted I had the puzzle pieces in my desk, but I didn't know what pieces came from what box. The VP of Marketing said there was no way they could put the puzzle together and that I had ruined the party. Apparently they spent about $500K putting together the whole puzzle thing. She told me I was going to be fired.

But, I wasn't. The president, in the end, thought what I did was funny, especially after I explained that I hadn't gotten a box. The VP of engineering was a woman who really liked me, so she spoke on my behalf. Though I was called into her office and yelled at for over an hour, and only at the end did she start laughing.

From that point forward, the marketing and sales people HATED me. They would go out of their way to avoid me. To the engineers, though, I was a hero. Someone took the puzzle pieces I had stolen and glued them as a border around my door frame. Software engineers would randomly stop by my office to congratulate me.

In the end, the company went bankrupt because Oracle released their software the same time we released ours. Oracle fired the entire product development team at ERP except for me; I was supposed to go work for them. Instead, my old gov manager called me and asked if I could be ready to leave for Greece in two weeks to take a 3 year assignment. I took it.