Slinkys and Lanafactrix’s comment reminded me of someone my husband worked with when we first moved here, back when our children were quite little.

Call the co-worker Tim.

Tim put a quarter in a gumball machine on a whim in some random grocery store–do any of them still have such things on the premises?–wanting to buy a superball just like the ones he’d gotten as a kid those times when his mom had given in. A nostalgic impulse.

Turn the knob.

No dice.

Turn again. Nope.  Dang. The thing had ripped off his quarter.

Well, hey, that’s no good.  While trying to figure out the thing and if there were still some way to make it work, he noticed the very fine print at the bottom of the machine: if you have any problems please call 1-800-xxx-xxxx.

So he did. Turns out it was the number for ordering more superballs for refills. Hey! Cool! What’s the minimum order?

A gross gross.  144 balls to a bag, 144 bags.

Coooooooool….

So next thing you know, some co-worker is typing away, engrossed (sorry) in their work, and Tim leaps into their office and yells, “Bouncy bounce!”  ripping open one of those bags, arms held high. Superballs!  Then in the next guy’s office.

Their then-employer was trying to be Silicon Valley-er than thou, with a pool table for break times and a yoga instructor coming in: Ohmmmmm… Playtime was taken very seriously.  It feeds one’s creative juices around other electronically-creative types, good for the employees, good for business.

There was a three-story indoor atrium in that building.  Look out below…!  Superball!  Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

As long as they were careful, management pretended not to know about that last part.

Bouncy bounce!