Thursday, October 04, 2007

Looks like someone won't be celebrating Boss' Day

We've all heard of road-rage. After all, in America, it's almost impossible to get through an entire week of work without hearing a story about someone getting angry while behind the wheel. There are even a few other categories of "rage" that we're familiar with. For example, "local-sports-team-rage", where people hurl beer cans at the television because of how the hometown team has fared. There's also "how-many-times-do-I-have-to-tell-you-rage", which is fairly self-explanatory. And, of course, everyone is familiar with "DMV-rage", which happens while waiting three hours at the DMV for a simple piece of paper.

Meanwhile, a Japanese worker recently experienced a form of rage that's a bit outside of our national perspective. His rage? "Gift-rage".

That's right. The worker, following a Japanese tradition where gifts are given to important business contacts, gave his employer a box of sweets, in thanks for having landed the job. The employer, partially due to the long, busy schedules of many in Japan, did not take the time to open the gift. The worker, who later claimed that "(He wished) the company president had cared a little more," proceeded to smash 22 computers in the office.

While we've all been in similar situations, where a gift that we've given to someone has gone either unopened or unappreciated, we here at the CSM would like to think that it's not a common thing to decide to destroy property over the perceived slight. By the same token, if the worker had purchased a particularly expensive box of sweets, and was perhaps hoping to maybe be regifted a piece to help stave off a low blood sugar situation, then perhaps he would have a reverse-Twinkie-defense on his hands.

As for the charge of obstructing business with force, we simply can't shake the image of the employee stopping transactions by pushing people down.

In the meantime, we're going to be extra careful about opening every gift we ever receive. We'd hate for someone to take a truncheon anywhere near our stuff. That's $47.95 we'll never be able to replace.

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