Thursday 15 March 2007

Seeing Eye Dogs - workplace pranks

In a bid to undermine the OBs* that think they run this office, I have taken it on myself to gently provoke (for my own amusement, mind) wherever possible. Naturally when slightly more mischievous opportunities arise I maximise the moment (such as the keys to the locked cupboard in the kitchen that have mysteriously disappeared, leaving the cupboard unlocked) but now is not the time.
A number of staff thought that sponsoring a Seeing Eye Dog would be just the ticket to contribute towards something worthwhile in the community. Our noticeboard has since been adorned with a cutey-wootey widdle puppy dog, snuffling up to the camera (stock standard SEDA photo #53) and a sponsor's letter. I can imagine a 9 year old girl just loving to receive this. Here it is (click on the image to enlarge) :


In a bid to mock the entire process (naturally) I have since posted, anonymously of course, the following variation on the puppy theme :


I intend to add another one next week : a beer swilling, gambling addicted greyhound. I hope the owners of said puppy are outraged and rip my contribution down. If I fail to provoke then I will be forced to remove the puppy's picture and post it back to the head OB. I will let you know how I get along. Reader's suggestions for future Dog gags welcome.

*OB refers to certain female personages about whom I will not refer to on-line in any more detail. Off-line however is a different issue !

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The letters in "Seeing Eye Dog" can be re-arranged thusly:

"SO NEED EYE GIG"

Anonymous said...

This has got,what we work place enliveners call "mileage".

Your greyhound character is excellent, and I would suggest reference to the snooker playing dogs.

Other dog characters could be:
* Al Sation, the humourless german "terminator" type.
* Natasha, the sylish poodle, with beauty, gossip and fashion tips
* Blue, the fair dinkum cattle dog and what HE can do for a blind person
* Spot the dog - this gives excuse to a whole letter written in "John and Betty" style. (See Spot eat snail bait. See the white light in the vet surgery, etc.)
*

Anonymous said...

I suggest you write a letter as a frustrated guide-dog, whinging about how much you hate your blind owner, and how all you want to do is to run free in the park with all of your other mates but you're constantly attached to this slow-moving idiot.

Love the idea. Brilliant.

Anonymous said...

Hi ANZ,

Zadena here again. I've moved on from the SEDA Camp (thank God) with all of their fun motivational talks like "you'll be giving people a new lease on life!" and "you can help your new master find the toilet!". This all sounded pretty great for the first couple of weeks, but life as a SEDA volunteer can get pretty damn trying at times. I didn't realise at the time, but I wasn't just volunteering to help out some old blind person in my spare time. I was being made a slave to SEDA! These guys aren't trying to help blind people, all they want to do is enslave the dog kingdom! They've moved on from the Africans and onto the next best thing, dogs.

For the past 4 weeks I've been chained to my new master, Ray I'm-dumber-than-Ben-Affleck Chesterton. Now Ray's an ok dude. I've got nothing against him. He's not nasty, he's got a sense of humour, he takes me to the park and he can go to the toilet on his own. He's just a bit stupid. The amount of times I've seen him trying to make himself a cup of coffee, and then overfilling his cup, and then burning his hand is just getting silly.

Most blind people (blind means "vision impaired" for you PC idiots) learn pretty quickly how not to burn themselves on boiling water. But not Ben. He just keeps on pouring, maybe assuming that his mug can hold 2 litres or something. And then all of a sudden "Whoops! Damn it!" and you've got one burnt hand. One thing that they drummed into us at SEDA was that if you bark at everything, your threat warning indicator will be lessoned. Sort of like crying wolf all the time. So I've given up barking before he's about to burn himself on the kettle. In fact it's something that I've been doing lately to keep myself amused. Those morning coffee breaks, normally at about 9:45am are something that I look forward to. Watching him jerk his hand back in the sudden realisation that the water isn't just hot, it's really really hot, is something that I've grown to enjoy.

But anyway, life as a slave to Ray is not all that I hoped it would be. I imagined that I'd be taking him to footy games, keeping him from being hit by the buse, saving him from burning buildings, you know, that kind of thing. Sort of like Lassy, but without the poofy coat and that stupid kid. But the daily grind has now settled into routine, and tedium has just set in. I swear, if I have to take him to the council office one more time I'll make sure his next cup of coffee really sucks.

So anyway, thanks for your support, but don't get too excited. I mean, it's not like you're saving someone's life or anything with your money. You're just paying for a dog to keep a blind man company instead of a person. And let's face it, he'd probably enjoy a person a whole lot more. Especially if that person was a bright and bubbly 22 year old female nursing student with nice legs. Who wouldn't?