Re: Do you remember Beer Friday?
From: Hannah G <hannah.g@rainforest.alumni>
To: rf-alumni-chaos@lists.io
Date:
Hey all ,
Saw the thread bump about “last real Beer Friday” and couldn’t leave it on read. If you were there you already know which roof I mean. If you weren’t, fair warning: this is the long version, with receipts.
I remember the last real Beer Friday, before Legal got its teeth into the culture and everyone started pretending LaCroix was fun.
I’m not an illustrator. I still burned a Saturday collating a six-panel strip so whoever writes the internal wiki doesn’t paste some sterilized fairy tale over what actually happened. Treat it like a folded Xerox taped above the espresso machine, fake halftone, real teeth. Not deck-ready. Not HR-approved. That is almost the point.
Building B roof, loose railing, “Customer Obsession” peeling like a warning label.
Strip note Three kegs, a folding table sagging under Costco vodka, and the humid, feral energy you only get from engineers who’ve been told their stock might be worth something someday.
Literally the second human being to ever collect a paycheck from Rainforest.
Strip note At the center: Employee Number Two, grandfathered into the org chart like an ancient pagan god in the foundation. He acquired a three-person water balloon launcher, interns white-knuckled on the bands, fluorescent balloons and Solo cups flying.
Arcs of water and probable OSHA violations over an active street.
Strip note Meanwhile some VP down below talked about operational excellence.
They asked for IDs.
Strip note Security finally arrived, two guards in navy jackets with the expression of men who had been told, in writing, that this was their jurisdiction.
Past the doodles, the dialogue below is the part I refuse to let anyone paraphrase softer:
Employee Number Two did not stop. He did not put down the launcher. He did not stop drinking. He looked at them, calmly, like a man evaluating a bug report that would never make it into the sprint, and said:
“I’m Employee Number Two. You can go.”
And then he turned back to the launcher and let the next balloon fly, a perfect shot, a rainbow arc of cold water and indemnity sailing into the sky. The guards hesitated, did the math on their salaries and his, and then did exactly what he told them: they left.
No reprimand. No write-up. No email. Just another Friday on the roof with the minor deity who helped build the money printer.
The stare that made Risk run the numbers before Policy opened its mouth.
Strip note No dialogue on the page. Just posture, tenure, and math nobody wants to show their manager.
Years later, I got a fundraising brochure in the mail.
Strip note He now runs a network of private schools. Founded by the CEO. Pictures of children in blazers, learning leadership and ethics under the benevolent gaze of a man who once shelled downtown airspace with booze-filled balloons and waved off Security like a pair of confused mall cops.
I’m not saying this explains anything about the world we live in.
I’m just saying: somewhere out there, a generation of children is being educated by the same man who told gravity and Corporate Risk Management to go to hell and reload.
Same confidence. Nicer font.
, Hannah