At one time in my past I was witness to the systematic torture and abuse of new employees in a manufacturing environment. The initiated would always initiate the new blood.

Speaking of blood, one of these rites involved having a hemophiliac girl sort broken silicon wafers (glass) and rusted razor blades that had been discarded during the manufacturing process. There was no sense to it—no reason behind it—it was something that was done to pass the time during our long journey into an otherwise boring twelve hour shift through the wee hours of the night. Sure, there were innocent things: filling up the drinking fountain by carrying huge buckets of water from a spigot conveniently located far, far away from the fountain so we would have time to laugh in between trips. Filling it up consisted of trucking this huge bucket to the fountain and pouring it down the drain. You’d think everyone would know that a drinking fountain has its own water supply; however, if you thought that, you would be wrong.

There were also huge water fights that would account for people staying completely soaked for eight hour stretches—drying just in time to walk past the management types that had no idea what kind of a zoo they were running in their absence.

There was once a quote attributed to the president of the company that was something to the effect of a monkey being able to do the jobs on the floor. A monkey probably would have shown some restraint.

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