Here’s Your Sign

  When Agent 54 was in high school my best buddy was Bob.  Bob was smarter than me, funnier than me, more devious and a better street Hockey player.  He could make me laugh so hard that I’d go home feeling like I had been beaten up because my ribs were so sore.

  After high school he went to work at Keystone Lighting (yes the same place where Snyderman worked) in the shipping warehouse as a fork truck operator.   I had another job but, things didn’t work out there, so I joined Keystone Lighting about a year and a half after Bob.

  The warehouse had many official policy signs that were white ovals with red letters and a red stripe around the edge of the oval.  They said things like:  No Smoking Please mgmt. and Use Handbrakes Please mgmt. or Safety Glasses Required Please mgmt..  These signs were always posted on the steel beams that went from the floor to the ceiling and always at eye level.

 I was sent to work temporarily in the warehouse one day with 3 other guys that I was kinda leading.  As we walked through the huge warehouse we took notice of the signs.  Upon first seeing the fourth or fifth sign, I knew immediately what had happened.  The sign read:  No Hard-ons Please mgmt..  Yeah, Bob had made a perfect copy of the company policy signs with his own policy  on it.  When I saw it, I said nothing but, I saw one of the other guys frown when he first read that sign.  I had to wonder if that guy had just decided that this wasn’t the place for him?

  I didn’t see Bob at work that day but after work when we got together for a few beers, the first thing I said was:  No Hard-ons Please.  We both cracked up laughing so hard it hurt.  Bob told me that he had made the sign his first week there and hung it and never said anything to anyone about it.  He told me that nobody ever said anything to him about it until I did.  That was that.  It was our secret at work that used to crack us up anywhere else.

  A little while later I joined the Marine Corps for 4 years.  When I came back I went back to work at Keystone Lighting (yes, in Snyderman’s department).   Bob had been fired at least 3 different times by then and had given up on the place.  I had to walk through the warehouse one day for whatever reason and to my surprise, there it was:  No Hard-ons Please mgmt..  Yup, right where Bob first put it.  This was 7 or 8 years after he first installed it.

  I had to wonder how many people had seen that sign over the years and thought “No Hard-ons Please” was official policy of Keystone Lighting?  I wondered if maybe it had become official policy of Keystone Lighting because some middle management idiot saw it and wrote it into policy?  I wondered if there was someone who was in charge of enforcing the “No Hard-ons Please” policy?  Were there written instructions as to exactly how to enforce that policy?

  I had to wonder how many new employees saw that sign and it became a straw, maybe the last straw, that broke the camel’s back and caused them to quit?  People quit Keystone Lightning constantly.  “No Hard-ons Please” could have been just enough to push some guys over the edge.

  Finally I had to wonder how many vendors and customers saw that sign and thought “gee, if “No Hard-ons Please” is official policy at Keystone Lighting, maybe it should be official policy where I work?  Did this bogus policy spread? 

  To this day whenever I’m in a warehouse anywhere I always find myself looking for that devious little sign:  No Hard-ons Please mgmt..  I hope I never find it but, you never know.