Day 5: Mass Social Experiment

Today we were supposed to put an "OUT OF ORDER" sign on some kind of public facility to create social hysteria and breakdown across the globe or something. (I would put the exact wording, but I had to cut out the sign from the page and I cut out the description too. Oops.) I cut the sign out, had it all ready to go in my purse with tape handy and everything, and I decided I would put it on a bathroom stall at church this morning. When I went into the bathroom, there was already a mother and daughter in there by the sinks, and apparently the girl had fallen outside and cut her ankle, so her mom was trying to fix it up for her, and after pointlessly washing my hands to buy time, I decided they would be in there longer than I would have time to unsuspiciously wait. So I vetoed that plan.

The next "public" place I went that day was work. I really wanted to stick it on the huge ice machine maker that we have because that way I would immediately see my coworker's reactions to it, but when I went in the dishwasher guy was already in there, and there was no way I could anonymously stick it on the ice machine. My next idea was to stick it on this emergency eye wash thing we have out in the hall next to the breakroom. (Don't ask me why we have that thing, it's not like working in a retirement home is a very dangerous place.) People always play around with it before we clock in for work, so I thought I might be able to see peoples' reactions to it. Well...I didn't have time to stick it on there before it was time to clock in, so my next best opportunity was when everyone was out in the dining room working, and I just snuck into the back hall and taped it on there. The only flaw in my plan is that there are cameras in that hall that got everything on tape, but there is a lot of speculation that they are totally fake because no one has ever been accused of anything that our boss "saw on camera." It's probably just to scare us. And plus, why would taping a fake "out of order" sign be such a terrible thing that someone would have to go back through hours of tape to find out who did it? I'm not too worried about that.

Unfortunately I never really got to see anyone's reactions to it. At the end of the night, I pointed it out and was like, "That's weird." But no one even said anything. So I would say I'm pretty far from creating social hysteria and breakdown, especially since I didn't create any kind of reaction at all. I work tomorrow, so I'm going to see if it's still there. I'm kind of disappointed because I really wanted to put this task to good use. Oh well. I'm excited about tomorrow's task.