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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/okayKnighty on 2025-05-24 15:23:55+00:00.
early to mid 2000s, my first 'real job' was inside sales for a large corporation. It was a very outdated cubicle environment. My fellow sales people were awesome, I'm still friends with some of them today. But, oh man, the middle management team there was a characiture of incompetence. One week, they had this idea that they'd string up 3 yellow balloons on everyone's desk. Each sale you made, they'd pop one of your balloons. This way, near the middle/end of the week, everyone could see who was struggling to meet the goal. Some people who didn't close any deals were really embarrassed and upset. It was like a scarlet letter, but yellow balloons instead. So, the following monday when the balloons were back up for everyone, i took out packages of yellows balloons i had purchased and started blowing the up, and filling up my cubicle with them. I had them taped all along the walls etc, my whole space was yellow. One of the idiot managers came by and asked what I was doing, I explained that I just really loved the yellow balloons and decided to bring my own to decorate my space even more. I saw the managers huddle up, glancing over at me, and could make out that they were discussing my 'personal balloons.' I shared balloons with people around me, who also decorated their cubes. Managers were upset that I was spoiling their plan to humiliate people, and one of them came by and popped a few of my personal balloons. I promptly contacted HR bc that was destruction of my personal property. And since it was such a corporatey place, they took my complaint about balloons seriously lol. After that week, they abandoned the balloon idea completely.