I have always had a number of friends who work in the box office for our university’s theatre department. They like to do different things during work to keep themselves amused, because business can be really slow at times. Luckily for them they have internet, so I have known some to spend hours browsing HotOrNot.com, Facebooking, and Googling or Wikipedia...ing random things. Once I went in to visit a friend working there and found him pressing peoples’ faces against the cold glass of the copy/scan machine, scanning their faces onto one of the computers, and faxing them to friends and family of their choice through Microsoft fax, or to coworkers through the network fax. Other times, friends will spend their hours designing and printing gag tickets (my favorite was a ticket to the Gun Show).
The latest toy in the box office is a SIP phone. This is a quite functional office and networking type phone with a software-based PBX or PABX that allows you to set up different profiles, see your call history, transfer/hold calls easily, and so forth. Well, now that they have all got pretty comfortable with the basics of the phone system they have been playing with setting up different profiles – for fun. Fake profiles, like Ayhaddababy Itzaboy and Captain Jack. Of course, they are careful that these are things customers wouldn’t run across easily in the course of business, but they let friends know that if you call the box office and dial extension 7 (not ever listed in the recorded message), you will hear a recording of Raffi’s “Banana Phone” (oddly, one of my friend’s favorite songs) playing.
These office games are all well and good, but aren’t they worried about their boss catching them? Well, for a little while, they were. But like I said, they were pretty darn careful. And then the old boss left, and one of my friends got a promotion. So it has been basically nothing but fun and games since then. And of course, the occasional ticket sold.
