Favorites Post #52

Originally posted on May 30, 2015

I wonder if Kent Norris felt proud when his boss Wayne Beasley told him that he was being assigned to manage the eight Power Plant Men that were coming to Corporate Headquarters for the next 10 weeks to help prepare for the transition to SAP.  I’m sure he had no idea what he was signing up to do.  For the next 12 weeks, Kent bravely endured one torture after the other.

Kent Norris was a young Corporate Executive working for the Electric Company in Central Oklahoma when the Power Plant Men showed up at his doorstep August 6, 1996.  I wish I had a picture of Kent (Kent… I know you read this blog… if you send me your picture, I’ll add it to this post), because then you could see right away that he would be the perfect person for playing jokes.  Just like Gene Day back at the Coal-fired Power Plant where I worked.

Gene Day is the one standing on the right with the Orange shirt.

See, you can tell by Gene Day’s expression that this guy was just right for Power Plant Jokes.  Kent Norris was much like Gene in this respect, and the best part was that he was young and wasn’t from a plant, so he had never experienced the Power Plant Lifestyle of perpetual joke playing (see the post “Power Plant Humor and Joking with Gene Day“).

At the plant, Power Plant jokes are such a way of life that they include a section on the timecard to enter the number of Power Plant Jokes performed during the day, along with how many were successfully implemented.  This was used to create a PPJ (for Power Plant Joke) Quotient that would go on your performance appraisal each year.  That way you could set your stretch goals for the following year.

I explained last week why the eight of us were at Corporate Headquarters in the post:  “Do Power Plant Men and Corporate Headquarters Mix?” so I won’t go into that much here other than to say that we were working for 10 weeks preparing the Inventory module in SAP so that our company would be prepared to go live with SAP on January 1, 1997.  SAP is an ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning System.

SAP Logo

Once all 9 of us were sitting in one cube, (eight Power Plant Men, and one young Corporate Executive, Kent Norris), that was when the opportunity for Power Plant Jokes began to take shape.  Kent sat at the table in the middle of the cube next to the telephone.

Most of the Power Plant Men had their backs to each other as they all faced the edge of the cube.  This way, a person walking into the cube could easily see the computer monitors.  I sat on the end of a table at the end of the elongated cube where I could watch everyone and no one could see my monitor (and incidentally, I had a great view of the outside world).

At first we began our harassm….uh… I mean… jokes…. on Kent by easing him into it with very simple things… When he would step out of his cube, we would do little things like put water in his pen cap so that when he went to write something down and removed the cap, water would spill on him.

Pen Cap used by Corporate Executives

Other minor pranks were things like, unplugging the keyboard and mouse from the computer so that Kent would think that his computer had locked up.  He tried rebooting his computer and for five minutes couldn’t figure out how to fix his computer until he found that the mouse and keyboard were unplugged, at which point, several muffled chuckles could be heard emanating from the far corners of the cube… Not from me, because I had learned the fine art of keeping a straight face in the midst of a hilarious power plant joke — after years of training.

Kent was so good at having jokes played on him that I think he enjoyed them as much as we did.  He would respond with phrases like “You guys!!!  Geez!”  The Power Plant Men were so fast at implementing jokes on the fly that all Kent had to do was turn around to talk to someone that had come to ask a question and all the wheels on his chair would be removed and hidden in various locations throughout the cube.

Ken Scott was the Supervisor of Maintenance at the Seminole Plant, who I had worked with at our plant since I first showed up as a new summer help in 1979.  He knew I was a trouble causer from day one.  I wondered how he was going to take our constant jokes with Kent, but he helped out with the rest of us, and when Kent would run off to tell his friend Rita Wing (I think that was her name) about a new joke we had just played on him, Ken Scott would break out of his straight “uninterested” expression into a big smile and laugh out loud.

Mike Gibbs and I would evaluate the day’s jokes on the way home each day.  We were carpooling from Stillwater.

Mike Gibbs

The jokes became more elaborate over time, and I was reaching out to others beyond our cube to help out.  At the time, we were using Windows 3.2 which had small program called “Windows Popup” (I believe the file name was popup.exe).  It was sort of an old version of IMing someone before chatting was really common.  I taught our team how to use it, so that we could pop up messages on each other’s computers to coordinate our jokes while we were doing our work without having to even look at each other.

Popup means so many things now that we all use Internet Browsers.  “Windows Popup” allowed you to locate someone logged into the network, and pop a message right up in the middle of their screen.  It would include the logon name of the person popping it up.  My logon name on the computer system was BREAZIKJ.  The popup message would say Message from BREAZIKJ in the title bar, and it would display the message.  Here is an example I found on Google Images:

Windows Popup in Windows 3.2

I had noticed that Kent often talked to the admin for Dennis Dunkelgod, a manager over the Telecommunications team.  His office was next to our bullpen cube.

Dennis Dunkelgod

I had worked with Dennis a couple of times running telephone cable at the coal-fired power plant in North Central Oklahoma when we needed to install the computer network, though I don’t think he knew me by sight. I sent a Popup message to his admin asking her if she would help us play a joke on Kent.  The message was something like this…. “We are going to play a joke on Kent Norris and were wondering if you would like to help us out.”

The young lady admin didn’t know what to think when this message popped up in the middle of her computer screen, though she knew where it came from because our cube was just across the aisle from her.  She took a print screen of the message and gave it to Dennis.

Dennis, not knowing the ways of Power Plant Men didn’t know what I meant by “joke” and thought we might be planning something inappropriate.  So he came to our cube and asked who was this person BREAZIKJ.  I told him I was Kevin.  He asked me if I had sent that message.  I told him that I had sent it. (In trouble again… as usual).  As Dennis was replying Kent Norris walked into the cube and saw Dennis dressing me down.  He was saying that things like this did not belong in the workplace and he didn’t want to hear about this again!  I replied, “all right.”

Dennis left the cube, and Kent asked what was going on, so I said, “We were planning on playing a joke on you, and so I asked the admin sitting over there if she would like to help us out and it upset Dennis.”  Kent knew that Dennis was just looking out for him, so he explained that to us that Dennis misunderstood our intention.

One joke I played on Kent was this… Since he always answered the phone in our cube, I found a way to connect to a modem on the mainframe and dial out of the company (thanks Craig Henry for the tip), and then dial back in again and ring a phone….  So, I would wait until Kent hung up from the phone, which was just one second after he would say “Toodles” (which was Kent’s way of saying goodbye), then I would ring the phone and hang it back up.

Kent would answer the phone with his regular cheerful telephone answering phrase that I don’t quite remember, but it was something like, “Kent Norris, how may I help you?” only more interesting than that.  When he answered the phone the first time, he was surprised to find that no one was on the phone.  He hung it up and said, “That’s odd.”  Then throughout the week, at various times, just as Kent hung up the phone from a conversation, I would ring his phone again.

Kent began troubleshooting it… he noticed that the ring indicated that it was an outside number calling because of the double ring, but it seemed like the phone was malfunctioning, so he created a trouble ticket to have someone look into it.  Of course, the phone was working fine.

One day, Toby O’Brien came to my cube to ask me if I could tell him how I would do a root cause analysis on a particular accident.  Toby was working for the safety department at the time.

Power Plant Engineer and Good Friend – Toby O’Brien

I was showing him on the computer how I would make a hierarchy of causes and how each cause could be caused by something else, making something that looks like an organizational chart of causes (when you took this to an extreme, you would find that all causes lead back to God).  While I was talking to him, Toby was looking over my shoulder at the computer screen.  Kent was talking on the phone… As I was talking to Toby, I was also listening to Kent’s conversation and I could tell he was wrapping it up, and I wanted to ring the phone.  I figured that since I was in the middle of a conversation with Toby, this would be great cover for me.

So, as I continued talking along with Toby, I opened up the program I had configured to ring the phone and had it all ready to click the button when Kent said “Toodles”.  I could tell that Toby was a little confused by my talking to him while I was opening another program and acting oblivious to it. Still explaining to Toby as if nothing was happening I hit the call button just as Kent hung up the phone, and it immediately rang.  As Kent picked it up, I hung up and closed the program.  Kent said, “Hello this is Kent Norris….. Damn!  Kevin!” as he slammed the receiver back down on the phone.  For some reason Kent thought I was doing something, though, he couldn’t figure out what.  I just gave him a confused look.

At this point I heard a chuckle from Toby, he had a grin much like his picture above. I couldn’t hold it in much longer as my stomach was beginning to quiver and my body was shaking.  So I slunk down in my chair so Kent couldn’t see the smile on my face and put my hand over my eyes to try and concentrate on making a straight face again.  I squeaked out “…and that’s how I would do the root cause analysis on that accident.”

A Power Plant Touch Tone Phone

The climax of the Telephone joke was when one day, I set the program up for redial and left to go to the bathroom leaving my screen locked.  The phone kept calling Kent once every minute.  When I returned to the cube, Kent said, “Kevin!  Stop ringing my phone!”  I said, “I just went to the bathroom!  How could I be ringing your phone?”  At that point the phone rang and Kent said, “Pick it up!”  I picked it up and listened, and said, “There’s nobody there.  But you can’t blame me for that.”  Then I returned to my computer and turned off the program and didn’t call him anymore after that.

The most elaborate joke played on Kent began when one day Kent made the statement that he had never been to a Power Plant and had no desire in the world to ever visit a Power Plant!  I think someone had asked him if he had seen the control room at one of the plants and that was his response.  So, when an opening for an operator came up at our plant, we told Kent that we had sent in his application for the Operator job at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma.

Who wouldn’t want to see this?

Kent didn’t believe us of course, he thought this was just another little joke we were playing.  We told him that we put all the right things in the application so that he was sure to get the job.  Even though he would tell us that he didn’t believe us, we could see the small hint of doubt on his face, which made it a successful small joke… but this was only the beginning.

A couple of weeks later, Kent received word that since all the engineers were up at our plant in North Central Oklahoma they were going to hold their monthly safety meeting there and Kent and Rita were going to have to drive up to the plant to attend.  Which meant, Kent didn’t have a choice, he was going to have to visit the plant after all.  What Kent didn’t know was that his boss Wayne Beasley had been updated by Ken Scott about what we had told Kent about applying him for the operations job at the plant.

We told Kent that the real reason Wayne was having the meeting at the plant was so that Kent would be able to have his interview for the operations job, because they had accepted his application.  Of course… again… he thought we were just kidding him since he said he had no desire to even visit a plant in his life.  It was quite the coincidence though that shortly after he told us he never wanted to visit a power plant, here he was going to one.

Using Windows Popup (since IM wasn’t around yet), I sent messages to Denise Anson, the receptionist at the plant telling her about our plan with Kent. When Kent and Rita drove up to the main gate at the plant and said that it was Kent Norris and Rita Wing from Corporate Headquarters, Denise replied with, “Oh yes.  Kent Norris.  You have an interview for the operator position.”  Kent said something like, “No, I’m just going to a safety meeting.”  At this point, he couldn’t believe that the joke had actually reached the plant.

Denise messaged me using Windows Popup that he had just entered the gate…. I sent a popup to Ron Madron, who was going to ride up in the elevator with him letting him know that Kent was on his way to the parking lot…. When Kent and Rita entered the building and stood at the elevator, Ron Madron entered from the Maintenance Shop and entered the elevator with Kent and Rita.  Ron asked who they were and when Kent told Ron who he was, Ron replied with “Oh!  You’re the new operator!  Good to meet you!”  Kent could not believe that we had involved yet another person in our joke…

Ken Scott told me that he had talked to Wayne Beasley, Kent’s manager who was holding the safety meeting.  Here is his LinkedIn picture:

Wayne Beasley

Wayne had told Ken that he was going to make an announcement during the Safety Meeting that Kent Norris was going to soon begin working at the plant as their new operator.  I messaged to Denise to ask her where Bill Green, the Plant Manager was because I wanted to fill him in on the plan.  Denise told me he was in Wayne Beasley’s Safety Meeting.

I asked her if she could go get him out of the meeting because I needed to talk to him right away.  So, she went and interrupted the safety meeting to tell Bill that I was on the phone and needed to talk to him.  When Bill answered, I told him about the elaborate joke we had been playing on Kent Norris and how Wayne Beasley was going to announce in the meeting that Kent Norris was going to become an operator at the plant.  Bill said thanks for letting him know because if he didn’t know it was a joke, he might have been upset if Wayne said that without him knowing it was coming…..

So, here is what happened in the safety meeting….. As the meeting was coming to a close, Bill Green, the Plant Manager, stood up and said, “We would all like to welcome Kent Norris to our plant and hope that he will enjoy coming to work for us as an operator.”  — The perfect execution of a power plant joke after weeks of preparation, it was executed flawlessly.

Later that afternoon when Kent came back to our cube at Corporate Headquarters, he said that was the greatest joke ever!  He couldn’t believe how we had everyone involved up to the plant manager.  We were all glad that it went off without a hitch.  We were also glad that Kent had enjoyed it so much.  He said that it wasn’t until he walked in the control room and they didn’t know who he was that he felt sure that he really wasn’t going to be an operator at the plant.

The joke where I laughed the hardest was during the last week working at Corporate Headquarters.  Wayne Beasley had come back from our plant to work where he normally worked, and he wanted to take our team out to lunch with Kent to congratulate us for doing such a good job. So, they picked a Mexican restaurant in Bricktown just east of downtown Oklahoma City.  This restaurant was chosen specifically because it offered a great opportunity for a joke to be played on Kent.

When we walked into the restaurant, Doyle Fullen, the Plant foreman and electrician from Muskogee told the waiter that it was Kent Norris’s birthday.  He told them that he was very shy and would deny that it was his birthday, but we were all bringing him out to lunch because we were celebrating it.  So, toward the end of the meal, out came the group of waiters singing Felice Navidad carrying a huge Sombrero.  Which they placed on Kent’s head!

Google Image of Large Sombrero

We all sang Felice Navidad at the top of our lungs and clapped and laughed.  I laughed so hard at Kent’s culmination of Power Plant Jokes!  Rarely in my life have I laughed so hard as Kent stood there under this huge sombrero looking humiliated and at the same time proud to be so well loved by the Power Plant Men!

The week ended on Friday afternoon around 3pm, as each of us started leaving one at a time to drive back home for the last time.  Doyle and Bob Christy left first because they had the farthest to drive.  the rest of us left some time later.  Each saying goodbye to Kent a couple at a time…. until Kent was left sitting in the bullpen cube all by himself.  Thinking…. “I’m finally rid of these bozos!”

Unknown to Kent, the majority of us didn’t exactly leave the building… instead  we each went into the bathroom where I was the last to enter…..  I carried a bag that was full of 12 cans of various colors of Silly String:

Power Plant Silly String

Once everyone was ready, we snuck up to the side of the cube where we could hear Kent typing on a computer and with all 12 cans the six of us sprayed silly string over the cube totally covering Kent in Silly String.  That was our last goodbye.  We couldn’t leave without one more Power Plant Man Joke!

A week or two after I returned to the plant, I received the following letter through Intra-Company mail:

Note I received from Kent after I returned home to our power plant

For years after, and up to today, I consider Kent Norris a dear friend.  One day when I was at the Stillwater Public Library during their yearly book sale, I found a book that I just had to buy for Kent.  It was perfect!  I sent it by intra-company mail.  Kent thanked me for it…. I figured it would remind him of the time he spent trying to Corral a passel of Power Plant Men!  Oh… here is a picture of the book:

Tootle the Power Plant Coal Train.  See the coal spilling out?