When I finally got off the call with MCI and entered the room the servers were propped on the trash can atop the Board Room conference table. Someone had hung our sign for VidiTel upside down and backwards behind them to use as a white backdrop. There was still far too much glare on the front of the servers and our logo badges were just not looking good. Problem was that the printer had run out of ink. So printing new badges on non-glossy paper just wasn't happening. Or at least that's what we thought.
Tauna did all kinds of gymnastics using a ladder and her fine rock-climbing skills to try and shoot the servers in a light that would make the badges have less glare. She was having lots of trouble with the camera since she's technically not a photographer. She's a graphic designer. Someone else takes the pictures. She just makes them beautiful in Photoshop. Budget constraints meant we were using the fanciest digital camera we had in-house to aquire photos that we could use on our data sheets. Data sheets that the sales guys were literally screaming for. Deals were not being closed because we didn't have these data sheets. Who knew that customers would want to actually KNOW the specs about what they were purchasing. Ah the growing pains of a start-up.
I think we managed to get two decent pictures. Two. But two is better than none. And then I remembered that it was Friday. Which means it was Naked Friday since all Fridays are meant to be naked at one point or another. Global peace is at stake. Get naked for the cause.
I muttered this out loud. Tauna and Dave said, "We'll get naked." I laughed. We were at the office. In the Board Room. I was more than fully clothed. So was everyone else. Global peace was at stake, however. We had a fancy digital camera. We had a cause.
We went down the hall to the massage room figuring it would be as good as place as any to strip. But a quick look at the door handle revealed that it was not a door with a lock and while we're all very brave souls, we didn't want the wrong person to happen upon us while we were in the buff due to those pesky laws about sexual harassment. Although how seeing your co-worked nude is truly sexual harassment I'll never know, but Dave and I honestly didn't want to go there. Not now. Not ever. Working together in the same office presents enough challenges. Being caught naked by your co-workers would catapult those challenges right off the map.
So the massage room was out of the question. However, the door to the supply room had a lock. Emboldened by the power of three, we marched in to the supply room, locked the door and stripped. If only someone had had a video camera. Imagine three naked people standing in a supply room amid copier paper, sodas and snacks trying to figure out how to make the timer work on the fancy digital camera. As none of us had ever used this camera before we were all quite clueless. Buttons were pushed. Knobs were turned. Displays were read. Nothing made any sense at all.
Dave finally decided he would just reach his arm out as far as it would go, point the camera in our general direction and push the button. Which he did. And the resulting picture. Too dark and out of focus. Ugh. Another try produced a similar result. For some reason there was this heightened sense of panic. Maybe it was because we were all three butt-naked in the supply room. A few more buttons were pushed. A few more knobs were turned. Still no good.
Dave decided to take a picture of just Tauna and me. The flash finally worked but now there was this strange dark spot appearing on the side of the picture. Weird. What was that? Why was it there? Dave took another picture. Still the dark spot appeared. Totally weird. But the picture would have to do. We had a Naked Friday picture. Back on with the clothes. Amusement was shared all around that we had been naked in the supply closet with a contractor. Tauna and Dave shared another story about the last time they had been naked together. Something about plane tickets at 3:00 a.m. and a trip to Novell in Utah. We all exited the supply closet together no one the wiser.
Now to get the pictures off the camera and onto the computer. This fancy digital camera had some fancy card that needed to be plugged into a laptop. Problem was none of us had a laptop at the office on Friday. So Dave agreed to go home to use my laptop to do it. A small panic ensued when the CEO offered to upload the pictures for me. He came by my desk in the early afternoon to retrieve the fancy digital camera and I told him I hadn't uploaded the pictures yet because I needed to use a laptop to do so. He volunteered to do so for me. I told him it wasn't necessary that Dave had gone to do it home. I gave the CEO the camera and told him I'd give him the card on Monday. All was well.
Or so I thought.
Dave uploaded the pictures but for some reason with all the pushing of buttons and turning of knobs that we did in the supply room the format of the Naked Friday pictures that we took was unreadable. You needed the camera to be attached to the computer in order to format them. Dave could "see" the thumbnails of the pictures. He just couldn't actually upload them.
Dave follows the good husband rules, though, and does whatever necessary to make sure his wife is happy. He did the only thing he could do in such a situation. He grabbed a screenshot of the thumbnails and saved those. At least I'd have a picture even if it was miniscule. Global Peace was at stake. Naked Friday must be observed. A picture would be shared. All truly was well.
That was a very long way of explaining why there are only thumbnails of just a naked Tauna and me in the supply closet at our offices. Happy Naked Friday. Go get naked for the cause.
