I Thought So Little, They Rewarded Me...

There is a person who inhabits the office adjacent to mine who has a deep love of playing his hip hop radio station loud enough so that the music (and the accompanying bass thudding) constantly bleeds through into my inner sanctum. I suspected for months that he did it deliberately to annoy me, but that turned out to be basic paranoia, nothing more.

As it turns out, he just likes being an asshole. I asked him professionally and very politely several times to turn his radio down, but he really didn't seem to get the message. In fact, I could almost swear the radio would get slightly louder after each request I'd make.

So, my polite requests spurned several times later, I enacted revenge.

Several years ago, I acquired a copy of the HMS Pinafore by Gilbert & Sullivan. Oh, yes, I was going to enjoy this...

...and I had help.

Buddy of mine is on the IT staff at the workplace, so he arranged so that all of the guy's system sounds were swapped with snippets of Pinafore.

New e-mail received?
"And I copied all the letters in a big round hand."

Logging into the computer?
"I am the Captain of the Pinafore (and a right ol' Captain too!)

Throw something away in the recycling bin?
"Faaareweelll, my lovvve, I gooo to mmyyyy dunnngeeeoonn ceeelllll..."

Next, we put a CD in his radio and set the "wake to CD" alarm function on it to seranade him with the track 'Can I survive this Overbearing,' a keen section that includes the line, "Shall we submit, are we but slaves?"

We then recorded a voicemail excerpt of "I'm called Little Buttercup, dear little Buttercup" for him to enjoy amongst his regular work-related voicemails.

And for the coup d' grace, we ran a speaker up into the rafters above the ceiling tiles. This speaker was connected to another computer that had Pinafore on iTunes, which we set up on repeat.

I think he got the message. It's been quiet as hell next door for a week now... ;)