As part of the ongoing lemon juice dripping into an eye with a scratched cornea torture that is Customer Service Week here at work, the “motivated Customer Support staff” is running around the office recognizing each department for their contributions to our general all-around fabulousness. I happened to witness our Product and Documentation departments being recognized together yesterday.

Picture a peaceful, quiet office. People are working silently in their cubes and the only sound heard is the clicking of keyboards and distant conversations from around the corner. Then They arrive: the “motivated Customer Support staff.”

With one person holding a large sign reading Product! & Documentation! over his head, a group of eight people round the corner and descend on the aisle linking the Product and Developement cube farms. The Customer Support Supervisor starts ringing the schoolmarm-type brass bell she’s carrying: Clang-Clang! Clang-Clang! Clang-Clang! The “motivated Customer Support staff” begin a cheer: “Yay, Product and Documentation! Woo, go Product and Documentation! Product and Documentation! Yeah!” And they begin clapping and whistling.

It takes about 30 seconds for everyone in the vicinity to recover from the shock of being so noisily invaded, and then someone speaks up to state the obvious:

“Um… Product and Documentation aren’t here. They’re all in a meeting.”

And so they were. Our “motivated Customer Support staff,” not being the sharpest knives in the drawer, have just motivated a group of empty cubicles.

Today is the last day of this. I only have to make it through six more hours. The longest six hours of my life. I hope I can find the motivation to do it.