"Do you consider yourself humorous?"

My office is moving to a new location in the spring. Meanwhile, we are trying to sell the current building. This means we all have to do a little cleanup work, since most of our organizational systems at the moment are not especially appealing.

The boss has also seized this purging opportunity to get rid of a few things she dislikes.

I had been noticing that most of the helpful notes I put up around the office came down after a few days or weeks. No one ever mentioned a problem, though, so I naturally assumed that the cleaning crew was amassing a valuable collection of original Clara artwork.

To prove authenticity and drive up the Antiques Roadshow price quote for future generations, I started signing my masterpieces.

In retrospect, that may have been a bad idea. Rather than illustration enthusiasts, my gifts to the art world were falling to the CEO, who apparently really hates it when I do stuff like this:

That one stayed up for about three hours, so I toned down the alert level, aiming for more “Get off my lawn!” and less “THEY WILL NEVER FIND YOUR BODY!”

The new version lasted another three days, due to some key staff taking vacation leave. I didn’t learn the awful truth, though, until another round of guerrilla seat-peeing inspired this:

With the scotch tape still fresh on its corners, another manager finally told me that the Big Boss found such missives distinctly less than entertaining, and I lost my last thin excuse to draw pictures at work.

Now I’m limited to being this obnoxious at home. My roommate is a really good sport, but it’s a little too passive-aggressive to communicate via notes with the only other member of your household. That restraint reduces me to posting warnings for myself in my own bathroom, which is considerably less satisfying.

I guess the other option is to learn a lesson about maturity and appropriate forms of workplace communication. I’d really prefer it if everyone else had to adapt and grow instead of me, though, so please just quit peeing on stuff and find me amusing.