A friend, who prefers to remain anonymous, wrote this story, and gave me permission to publish it on Steem. Please enjoy!
For some reason I am compelled to bother unhappy people until they smile. I like that at work unhappy people are trapped with my company(meaning me), if they are near me then they have to put up with me.
I worked with one guy who was always saying, "Fuck this place." in his rough old man voice. "The company is always trying to fuck the workers", and so on. He was always unhappy and his comments always negative.
I asked another long time worker there, "why is that guy always unhappy?" He told me, "Him? He don't like nothing and he don't like nobody."
I had to start talking to this guy then.
Me: "Hey, how are you doing?" /happy face
Him: "It's shit! I'm here aren't I?"
Me: "Hey, did you hear that we have to work overtime on Friday?" /pumping my arm back and forth all happy with a stupid smile on my face
Him: /dumbfounded look
Him: "Are you fucking with me?"
Me: "Of course. We don't actually have overtime on Friday."
Him: "You fucker." /but he smiledI had many conversation like this where I wound him up over the company then would relieve him over letting him know that I was just fucking with him. I got him to smile more often. Sometimes he would smile just seeing me, which was pretty cool.
I wanted to take fucking with him to a new level though, I wanted to try to break this wide open.
At work, back when I worked on the production line, whenever you saw someone walking down the production line with tools in their hands you knew that they were going to fix something that they did wrong that someone else noticed down the line. It was called "the walk of shame", that is what it was widely known as or called anyway.
So, one day I see him walking down the line carrying tools doing "the walk of shame". Fucking gold!!! I instantly jumped up and yelled/laughed in the most obnoxious way, "Ahhhhh, ha ha ha ha ha!!!", all the while pointing at him for all to see. My coworker(he gets me) next to me joined in with the laughing and pointing.
He was so fucking pissed off that he marched right over to me and again in his old man rough voice, "Hey big guy, have you ever fucked up?!?!"
I responded smiling, "of course I have. We all fuck up one time or another, and if we can't laugh at ourselves for fuck ups like these what kind of people are we?" For every person who came to me with concern that I did such a thing as laughing at the old man like that I would tell them, "If we can't laugh at ourselves for fuck ups like these what kind of people are we?"
The next day when someone else had to take "the walk of shame" I laughed at him, too, and so did the people that I explained my reasoning to. More people asked why I was doing that and I told them the same thing, "If we can't laugh at ourselves for fuck ups like these what kind of people are we?" I ended up explaining this to a lot people.
This caught on pretty good, even mildly unhappy people were doing it when people had to take "the walk of shame." At its height if someone was taking the "walk of shame" 20 people would stand as high as they could, even stepping up on things to do so, and just laugh as loud as they could while pointing at whoever was carrying tools.
Finally it was so bad a supervisor (little Hitler) came to me and asked me, "Why are you doing this?" I told him that it was a new psychology thing called "negative reinforcement"(I made that up, of course). I asked him, "Do you think anyone wants to fuck up after taking the walk of shame like that?" He raised his eyebrows, turned around and walked away shaking his head. Although what I said may be true, my motives were something else.
Then came the day that I was told that I fucked up and had to go fix it. I had to take "the walk of shame". I picked up my tools and told my friend that I had to go fix a fuck up. As I walked away he bust out with the loudest laughter ever while pointing at me. Everyone jumped up and laughed as loud as they could while pointing at me, near the overboard level since everyone knew that I had started this all. I took it well.
I didn't care about all of the people laughing at me, I only cared about one thing, it was that the old guy who was so negative and didn't like anyone or anything, the guy that hated everything, was over there laughing as loud as he could, jumping up and down while pointing at me just laughing his ass off.
I cracked that nut wide open right there. I will never forget that old man being so happy, it was really great! Goal accomplished.