Corporate Voodoo

Yesterday a colleague made passing reference to our old office in Peachtree Center. That space had been home to a y2k dotcom who had gone belly up. The office sat vacant for about three years before we moved in. When we arrived, the old company's stuff was still there: office furniture, project files in cabinets, company logo in the elevator lobby, etc. Apparently they'd packed up and gotten out in a hurry.

While we were moving in and making the place our own, we made an interesting find. The previous tenants had gone for the loft effect, but they'd taken only half measures: they'd simply removed the ceiling tiles, so you had an exposed dark ceiling with the frames for the tiles still in place.

One day I poked my head up top to see how readily the frames could be removed when I made a discovery: a small color printout of the former company's owner with a dunce cap tacked on, stashed in the ceiling on top of an AC duct. It had been up there for years, out of sight unless you happened to climb half way into the ceiling. I don't know if the effigy was merely a prank, or some species of corporate voodoo; it was good for a laugh in any event.