shed-jewel

This story dates back to roughly 2004. I was active-duty in the US Air Force, working in a field (AFSC) that today would label me a 'nonner'—I flew a desk.

I'd been volunteering with the chaplaincy to setup some "cyber cafés" in the dorms for airmen who didn't have computers of their own. One evening, an LCD monitor fell from the counter, breaking off a chunk of the video card with the VGA port attached. I pocketed the bit of circuitboard because it was neat, and the chaplains ordered a new card—no big deal.

Sometime later, my office gained a new first-level supervisor; let's call him Staff Sergeant Aaron. Due to humanitarian processes, SSgt Aaron was a fighter-plane mechanic being transferred to our base that lacked those jets; he was assigned to our AFSC without being trained, but he did have supervisory experience. Aaron was decidedly not computer-savvy, but he learned quickly, was good with customers, and was a good boss as well. However, one thing that SSgt Aaron brought with him from the flightline—that we, all first-termers, were unexposed to—were the pranks.

Sadly, at this point in the story, I must confess that I don't remember most of Aaron's shenanigans. He once stole the wheels from all our chairs, but that was one of his first, and relatively minor pranks. Something, though, finally tipped us over the edge to risk retaliating.

One morning when Aaron was PTing before coming to work, I ducked into his office and got under his desk. I unscrewed and unplugged his government monitor from the PC, and instead into my fistful of broken video card. After gently laying it behind his desk, I beat feet back to my cube from where I could watch the fruits of my labor.

The view wasn't perfect, and I was still helping customers when the time came, but he was appropriately confused when pushing buttons and wiggling things didn't produce results. Now, I didn't see it, but I know when he tugged on his monitor's cable, because we all heard him yelp from his office. After my next customer, he frantically waved me into his office.

[obviously not verbatim, but the gist is right]

Aaron: "The computer wouldn't come on, I tried everything, and when I pulled on the monitor cable, this happened!" [holding the end of the cable with broken card on it]

Me: "Oh, man. That's the video card. Jeez, how'd you do that? Those things can be pretty expensive [generally-speaking, not a lie]. I, uh, wow man."

Aaron: [panicking just a little] "Can you fix it‽ How much would it cost to fix it? What should I do?"

Me: [after spouting some bullshit]: "Lemme get under there and see what happened."

I crawled under his desk again, and took my sweet time—while making very worried and concerned noises—to unplug the monitor cable from the broken bit, and finally plug it back into his government-issued Dell.

Aaron: "Oh my god, you fixed it! What'd you do‽"

Me: [geting out from under the desk, holding the broken piece] "Oh, I just unplugged this broken bit of card here and plugged in back into your actual computer." [holding up the card] "This is actually from the cyber-cafe stuff I've been doing."

Aaron: [hugely impressed]

By no means did this stop him from pranking us, his subordinates, but we all learned that this was a two-way street and wouldn't get us keel-hauled for our trouble. In fact, because we hadn't been turning the tables on him, he had been getting worried that he was the one out of line, and so he was also relieved that we were taking in good fun.