Nothing says “great management” like trying to humiliate your team with party decorations.

What would you do if your company started marking underperformers with visible signs at their desks for everyone to see? Would you play along to stay out of trouble? Or would you bring your own balloons and join in the fun?

In today’s story, one salesperson finds himself in this exact scenario and decides to have some fun. Here’s what he did.

my balloons

In the early to mid-2000s, my first ‘real job’ was inside sales for a large corporation. It was a very outdated cubicle environment.

My fellow salespeople were awesome, and I’m still friends with some of them today.

But, oh man, the middle management team there was a charcuterie of incompetence.

One week, they had this idea that they’d string up 3 yellow balloons on everyone’s desk. Each sale you made, they’d pop one of your balloons. This way, near the middle/end of the week, everyone could see who was struggling to meet the goal.

Tired of seeing his coworkers feeling embarrassed, he brought his own balloons.

Some people who didn’t close any deals were really embarrassed and upset. It was like a scarlet letter, but yellow balloons instead.

So, the following Monday, when the balloons were back up for everyone, I took out packages of yellow balloons I had purchased and started blowing them up, and filling up my cubicle with them. I had them taped all along the walls, etc, my whole space was yellow.

One of the useless managers came by and asked what I was doing.

I explained that I just really loved the yellow balloons and decided to bring my own to decorate my space even more.

The managers were not happy.

I saw the managers huddle up, glancing over at me, and could make out that they were discussing my ‘personal balloons.’

I shared balloons with people around me, who also decorated their cubes.

Managers were upset that I was spoiling their plan to humiliate people, and one of them came by and popped a few of my personal balloons.

I promptly contacted HR bc that was destruction of my personal property. And since it was such a corporatey place, they took my complaint about balloons seriously lol.

After that week, they abandoned the balloon idea completely.

Wow! What a great way to support your coworkers!

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit think about it.

This person would’ve sued them.

This would’ve been great!

Management should’ve thought about this ahead of time.

That’s a good way to look at it.

What a terrible policy!

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.