Sleepy Bitch Disease™

For instance, there was a place somewhere in the US Southwest that, it turns out, was basically running a Frankenstein factory. I'm not going to go into details, but there's a Reuters article about it and it's pretty much the most horrific thing you can think of.

They were using Home Depot power tools for tissue harvest and Rubbermaid containers for transport. That is all I will say. That, and about 10% of the FBI team that raided their site had to go on mental health leave immediately after because they had insane PTSD.

SO. Where do I come in?

Well, as I said, I was working at a different, entirely reputable WBD, but when there are only about 15 organizations in the country that provide the same service as a Frankenstein factory, naturally, someone in charge thinks it's probably a good idea to check in with the rest of them. Just in case.

Fast forward to October of 2018 and allow me to introduce Josh* into the narrative.

Josh was our IT guy. He was our on-site, tech guru, long-suffering, likely underpaid and overworked IT guy. He was the floor model IT guy. Tall, bearded, very quiet, very good at his job and had a tendency to wear the same thing to work pretty much all the time. Black jeans, black t-shirt, white tennis shoes, red flannel shirt and a black beanie.

Every day. Rain, shine, 90 degrees, 20 degrees, didn’t matter. This was Josh’s uniform.

So about a week before Halloween, we all get together to start talking about playing a little joke on Josh. We all decided we were going to dress up as Josh for Halloween. Everyone could assemble a little Josh costume, oh it’ll be so funny, we might even get him to laugh. Everyone was on board. EVERYONE from the receptionist to the CEO--everyone was doing this.

Halloween that year fell on a Wednesday. Unfortunately for us and our brilliant plan, Josh did not work on Wednesdays. So we decided it would actually be even funnier if we all dressed up on November 1st. So that Josh would come into work on a seemingly random Thursday and see everyone dressed up as him. 

And it worked! Everyone did it! Josh actually laughed and sent out a little email telling us all how funny he thought it was, grading people’s Joshumes. A wonderful day.

Until about 1pm when the FBI arrived to raid our office. 

They herded us into one of the lecture rooms and explained what they were doing there, made sure we didn't go back to our offices or make any phone calls, basically babysat us until the other members of their team could secure the files they needed and inspect the facilities.

We were all so freaked out that no one was thinking about what we all must have looked like. 75 employees. Sitting together in a room. All dressed exactly alike from our beanies down to our white sneakers.

I didn't realize how it looked either until one of the other FBI agents came in and straight up stopped in his tracks at the sight of all of us and under his breath went, "What in the actual Christ..."

Then they closed our office for 2 days while they investigated further, found no wrong-doing, and let us return to business as usual.

No one ever suggested we do a group costume again.