Come Here, Let Me Strangle You ...

The strangest thing happened to me today. In all my 18 years of working in the advertising industry, I've never experienced what I did this afternoon. I thought I'd see and heard it all and that nothing could surprise me, well I was absolutely wrong on that count.

One of my clients, a financial institution called me this morning to see them for a project that I've been working on for them. It was a simple newsletter, one which I've done for them on three occasions before. I wasn't expecting any problems with it. And I've worked with them on various other projects and have gotten used to the way they work.

So, there I went for my meeting with them. Normally when we do stuff for them, we'll also come up with the concept and layouts for whatever work we do but this time, they decided to try doing the newsletter layouts by themselves. I had no issues with that since I was still charging them conceptualization fees anyway. Makes life easier for my designers.

Anyways, there I was at the meeting with them. There were three other people in total, not including me. Two I've worked with on numerous occasions and one, a completely new fellow. All three were handling this newsletter project. Don't ask me why they need three people to handle one simple newsletter cos I don't know. This is one of those things you can't explain :D

Halfway through the meeting the two guys I worked with before (I'll call them Larry and Curly, the new guy we'll just call Moe) started arguing about the layouts of the newsletter. I didn't pay much heed to their arguments cos they've done this before. It started when I told them I couldn't use the images in their layout and needed the original pictures cos the ones they had were pretty low resolution. Then both Larry and Curly started blaming each other for trying to be smart and design the newsletter themselves and not let us handle it.

Me and Moe just kept quiet and watched them argue. They would probably stop the blaming game soon and then we could start to figure out how to get things done right, I thought. How wrong I was to assume that. Curly slammed the table (almost giving me a heart attack in the process) and screamed at Larry calling him a mother F#@ker! Whoa, I looked at Moe and Moe look at me and were were both dumbfounded.

Not to be out done, Larry in return called Curly something even more vulgar which I shall refrain from mentioning (use your imagination la ... LOL!). Both of them got so heated and so vocal that the rest of the people in the office stopped what they were doing and gawked at them.

And then what happened next shocked me beyond belief! Curly jumped up across the table and went for Larry's throat ... yes, really! I was paralyzed in shock that I couldn't move a muscle. You should have seen the look in Moe's face. He was on the verge of panicking.

When I could finally move, all I did was grab my laptop (hey, some things are more important than stopping a fight, you know ... LOL!) and move aside towards safety from the two grown buffaloes trying to bludgeon each other to death. It's a good thing there were no home theater furniture nearby or they would have used it to whack each other silly!

By this time, some of their colleagues rush to stop the fight and pull the two of them apart. Moe is still glued to his chair in fear and I was still clutching my laptop like it meant the world to me ... LOL! I'm too stunned to do anything but stare at the two still screaming pair as they're led away from each other to cool down.

I really thought I've seen it all, but boy that takes the cake, man. I've seen people fight and argue during meetings but not try to kill each other. I've had numerous fight during meetings with my colleagues but I've never for once wanted to whack anyone silly ... well, there was this creative director that I would have loved to smash his head in though.

After they're led away, I sit back down and look at Moe and he's still hyperventilating in his chair. The meeting resumes with the manager of Larry and Curly taking over and apologizing to me for the ruckus. No worries I told her, I kinda enjoyed it ... LOL! I wonder what happened to the two of them. I must call them on Monday and see if they're both still alive :D God, what a Friday it's been. I've always loved Friday's but today was extra thrilling.

I guess the two of them must have been keeping some pent up anger towards each other, they always couldn't see eye to eye anyway, and it must have reached its boiling point today. But professionally, I think it was absolutely the worse thing to do. Fight like crazed morons in front of everybody. They could have always waited till after work and take it down to the basement and beat each others brains out ... hahaha ... Oh well, that's my excitement for the day and I just wanted to share it with everyone.

Have a great weekend folks. I know I will :D
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