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My first day of work many many years ago I did the usual (for me at least) and stopped by each office (before open floorplans were widespread) to introduce myse

My first day of work many many years ago I did the usual (for me at least) and stopped by each office (before open floorplans were widespread) to introduce myself. The very first office the door was cracked so I knocked and slowly opened it a bit more to give a friendly "hello" and the guy immediately grabbed his desktop inkjet printer (one of those old half dome Epsons) and hurled it at me, crashing at my feet due to cables holding it back... That was one hell of a start. A wild next couple months followed. This post/comment gave me a nice flashback to it! Ty :D

SonOfKyuss 5y ago
> the guy immediately grabbed his desktop inkjet printer (one of those old half dome Epsons) and hurled it at me, crashing at my feet Seems odd… what’s the rest of the story?
- imperialdrive 5y ago
  I shared it below in reply to another comment :)
amatecha 5y ago
dude.. what? that's freakin messed up! wow!
xwdv 5y ago
This reminds me of the “chair incident” story I read a long time ago. Maybe someone will know what I’m talking about. It was something in the game industry and I don’t remember the details but I know a chair was broken such that one of the legs was broken off to form a “shit your pants” style point and one person held it while two other guys held the uncooperative victim by the arms and leaned him right over it so that if they let go he’d fall and get stabbed.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  Ah, good old Ballmer, I miss that guy... Steve Ballmer, when CEO of Microsoft, was said to have thrown his chair at an employee announcing they would leave the company to work for Google back in the mid-2000s. It is a bit of an urban legend. Ballmer himself denies that has ever happened (https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-i-didnt-throw-the-chair-at-th-google-engineer-2017-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-i-didnt-throw-...) - but he was eccentric enough (just google "developer dance") that people considered it plausible.
  - Jefff8 5y ago
    Well, he threw something else at somebody I know, so there's that.
mjrbrennan 5y ago
I guess inkjet printers are good for something after all! Was there any reason...why he did that?
- imperialdrive 5y ago
  Continued: (Was on-site earlier and didn't have time to type the rest as, crazy enough, this was just the beginning of what turned into years of encounters) Before I could react to the printer landing at feet (I was frozen) he yelled almost exactly "Don't you ever fucking walk into my office like that again, G T F O" so I slowly stepped out and shut the door. As I said, it (door) was cracked open, and the entire front of the office was a large single pane of uncovered clear glass, so it's not like he was on the phone or I walked in on something. For certain half the floor heard it, but not a sign of life in the hallway of about 12 other offices. I immediately walked straight to manager/CFO's area and rather calmly (in shock) explained what happened. It was short and sweet as was the experience. He apologized and said to please not worry about it or take it personally, that the person was simply/unfortunately "like that" and best to leave him alone and forget it ever happened, and that he would talk to the CEO about it to have him put in a word. I'm professional, I had worked Hollywood for long enough to know of his type (first time experiencing anything like that though) so I remained calm and treated this like a test and said "no problem, never happened." The story made its way around the office and people simultaneously joked about it while saying they were sorry about the experience too, and echoed my manager's advice to leave him alone. Fast forward about a year and one day he was gone. No one talked about it. I'm guessing the company finally got enough on him to terminate without worry of blowback. He was a partner and probably had a decent contract in place. Now, something like 5 years after that (I had moved on to greener pastures) I was out front of a community volunteer bike shop chatting with the team. They were sticking around after-hours to let a metal salvage person take away some old/rusted inventory. A beat up old van with metal junk piled on the roof parks nearby and who walks out and over to us?? It's the guy, I recognize him instantly and as his eyes meet mine I say with a big smile "firstname-Fuckin-lastname, how the hell are ya!" and this time he is frozen, turns right on a dime, and starts power walking back to the van. I follow saying something like hey hey, come back, no hard feelings, but he must be so embarrassed he runs the rest of the way and jumps in the van and peels off. I heard he never came back to that shop again. He went from partner at a well funded firm to east LA metal salvage work. It was such an amazing feeling. I do feel for him though. As someone pointed out in comments he very likely had a mental or drug related issue. What a wild world. Signing off.
procombo 5y ago
I once had a colleague throw his wireless mouse at me because of a windows automatic update during crunch time. Apparently did not expect me to throw it back. We're still friends. ------ Also reminds me of the day I picked up an xbox one for my team. We were traveling and it was cause for a little change of pace. We were going to play a zombie shoot em up game. They plugged it in, and first thing the damn thing did was run an update that took 30 minutes. We weren't on a great connection, even by 2014 standards. They ran the game and it forced another update that wanted to download like 20gigs, even when I made a point to grab the disc. Couldn't cancel. I ripped the thing out so quick and launched it as hard as I could. The xbox smashed against the concrete floor and was in pieces. It caught everybody off guard, but it lead to pretty fun night, nonetheless. They had never seen me like that before, or since. I got a nice plaque from the team a week or two later with the xbox decal and the message "I just want to shoot some fcking zombies!" :)
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Yeah I think your anger with the game was justifiable "Yes please let me download the whole game again because the developer is too cheap to use any kind of incremental upgrade and if you're buying an XBox you have the fastest internet connection available right? RIGHT?"
treeman79 5y ago
Started a new medication some time back, Plaqunial. Turns out a very rare side effect is it makes you psychotic. The kind where sweet old grandma would come at you with a kitchen knife and dance on your grave in glee. Was extremely angry for months on it, but didn’t realize it was the medication. Then since it was working so well on my condition, completely life changing. The doctor doubled it. Was not a good week. Out of a job a few days later. So not an excuse for tossing a printer, but on that med it was a constant battle to not explode.
- toyg 5y ago
  Is this satire? Plaqunial is the infamous hydroxychloroquine...
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    Anger and mood swings seem to be a reported side effect, based on a cursory search. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Plaqunial+anger&t=iphone&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Plaqunial+anger&t=iphone&ia=web
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    Can anyone downvoting explain? Toyg appear to be correct on the drug naming and a known side effects include psychosis, hallucinations and paranoia and according to the wiki. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine
  - treeman79 5y ago
    It is not. I started taking it before pandemic. It’s an amazing drug. I was in bed 16 hours a day unable to get up. A fews months on it and I was kayaking multiple times per week. Unfortunately side effects grew worse over time.
pbourke 5y ago
Earlier in my career: Some dude got up, smashed his keyboard on the side of his desktop causing a spray of key caps across the open plan office. Picked up his stuff and left. He was back the next day like nothing had happened.
- dijksterhuis 5y ago
  This dude is my hero.
  - mbrodersen 5y ago
    The guy has no self control and he is your hero? What are the chances that he will loose control and lash out when arguing with his girlfriend/wife? I would think pretty high. Self control requires a strong mind. He is clearly weak and the opposite of a hero.
    - dijksterhuis 5y ago
      Cool, have fun with that. I'm going to be over here eating bacon and not beating myself up for not being perfect.

SonOfKyuss 5y ago

> the guy immediately grabbed his desktop inkjet printer (one of those old half dome Epsons) and hurled it at me, crashing at my feet Seems odd… what’s the rest of the story?

imperialdrive 5y ago
I shared it below in reply to another comment :)

amatecha 5y ago

dude.. what? that's freakin messed up! wow!

xwdv 5y ago

This reminds me of the “chair incident” story I read a long time ago. Maybe someone will know what I’m talking about. It was something in the game industry and I don’t remember the details but I know a chair was broken such that one of the legs was broken off to form a “shit your pants” style point and one person held it while two other guys held the uncooperative victim by the arms and leaned him right over it so that if they let go he’d fall and get stabbed.

DocTomoe 5y ago
Ah, good old Ballmer, I miss that guy... Steve Ballmer, when CEO of Microsoft, was said to have thrown his chair at an employee announcing they would leave the company to work for Google back in the mid-2000s. It is a bit of an urban legend. Ballmer himself denies that has ever happened (https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-i-didnt-throw-the-chair-at-th-google-engineer-2017-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-i-didnt-throw-...) - but he was eccentric enough (just google "developer dance") that people considered it plausible.
- Jefff8 5y ago
  Well, he threw something else at somebody I know, so there's that.

mjrbrennan 5y ago

I guess inkjet printers are good for something after all! Was there any reason...why he did that?

imperialdrive 5y ago
Continued: (Was on-site earlier and didn't have time to type the rest as, crazy enough, this was just the beginning of what turned into years of encounters) Before I could react to the printer landing at feet (I was frozen) he yelled almost exactly "Don't you ever fucking walk into my office like that again, G T F O" so I slowly stepped out and shut the door. As I said, it (door) was cracked open, and the entire front of the office was a large single pane of uncovered clear glass, so it's not like he was on the phone or I walked in on something. For certain half the floor heard it, but not a sign of life in the hallway of about 12 other offices. I immediately walked straight to manager/CFO's area and rather calmly (in shock) explained what happened. It was short and sweet as was the experience. He apologized and said to please not worry about it or take it personally, that the person was simply/unfortunately "like that" and best to leave him alone and forget it ever happened, and that he would talk to the CEO about it to have him put in a word. I'm professional, I had worked Hollywood for long enough to know of his type (first time experiencing anything like that though) so I remained calm and treated this like a test and said "no problem, never happened." The story made its way around the office and people simultaneously joked about it while saying they were sorry about the experience too, and echoed my manager's advice to leave him alone. Fast forward about a year and one day he was gone. No one talked about it. I'm guessing the company finally got enough on him to terminate without worry of blowback. He was a partner and probably had a decent contract in place. Now, something like 5 years after that (I had moved on to greener pastures) I was out front of a community volunteer bike shop chatting with the team. They were sticking around after-hours to let a metal salvage person take away some old/rusted inventory. A beat up old van with metal junk piled on the roof parks nearby and who walks out and over to us?? It's the guy, I recognize him instantly and as his eyes meet mine I say with a big smile "firstname-Fuckin-lastname, how the hell are ya!" and this time he is frozen, turns right on a dime, and starts power walking back to the van. I follow saying something like hey hey, come back, no hard feelings, but he must be so embarrassed he runs the rest of the way and jumps in the van and peels off. I heard he never came back to that shop again. He went from partner at a well funded firm to east LA metal salvage work. It was such an amazing feeling. I do feel for him though. As someone pointed out in comments he very likely had a mental or drug related issue. What a wild world. Signing off.

procombo 5y ago

I once had a colleague throw his wireless mouse at me because of a windows automatic update during crunch time. Apparently did not expect me to throw it back. We're still friends. ------ Also reminds me of the day I picked up an xbox one for my team. We were traveling and it was cause for a little change of pace. We were going to play a zombie shoot em up game. They plugged it in, and first thing the damn thing did was run an update that took 30 minutes. We weren't on a great connection, even by 2014 standards. They ran the game and it forced another update that wanted to download like 20gigs, even when I made a point to grab the disc. Couldn't cancel. I ripped the thing out so quick and launched it as hard as I could. The xbox smashed against the concrete floor and was in pieces. It caught everybody off guard, but it lead to pretty fun night, nonetheless. They had never seen me like that before, or since. I got a nice plaque from the team a week or two later with the xbox decal and the message "I just want to shoot some fcking zombies!" :)

raverbashing 5y ago
Yeah I think your anger with the game was justifiable "Yes please let me download the whole game again because the developer is too cheap to use any kind of incremental upgrade and if you're buying an XBox you have the fastest internet connection available right? RIGHT?"

treeman79 5y ago

Started a new medication some time back, Plaqunial. Turns out a very rare side effect is it makes you psychotic. The kind where sweet old grandma would come at you with a kitchen knife and dance on your grave in glee. Was extremely angry for months on it, but didn’t realize it was the medication. Then since it was working so well on my condition, completely life changing. The doctor doubled it. Was not a good week. Out of a job a few days later. So not an excuse for tossing a printer, but on that med it was a constant battle to not explode.

toyg 5y ago
Is this satire? Plaqunial is the infamous hydroxychloroquine...
- 1123581321 5y ago
  Anger and mood swings seem to be a reported side effect, based on a cursory search. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Plaqunial+anger&t=iphone&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Plaqunial+anger&t=iphone&ia=web
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Can anyone downvoting explain? Toyg appear to be correct on the drug naming and a known side effects include psychosis, hallucinations and paranoia and according to the wiki. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine
- treeman79 5y ago
  It is not. I started taking it before pandemic. It’s an amazing drug. I was in bed 16 hours a day unable to get up. A fews months on it and I was kayaking multiple times per week. Unfortunately side effects grew worse over time.

pbourke 5y ago

Earlier in my career: Some dude got up, smashed his keyboard on the side of his desktop causing a spray of key caps across the open plan office. Picked up his stuff and left. He was back the next day like nothing had happened.

dijksterhuis 5y ago
This dude is my hero.
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  The guy has no self control and he is your hero? What are the chances that he will loose control and lash out when arguing with his girlfriend/wife? I would think pretty high. Self control requires a strong mind. He is clearly weak and the opposite of a hero.
  - dijksterhuis 5y ago
    Cool, have fun with that. I'm going to be over here eating bacon and not beating myself up for not being perfect.