Giving colleagues subtitles

In 1995, I was working full time for the Corporation. I was alone in an office with no window. Near the door of our offices, we had an office tag displaying our names and the number of the office.

One morning, I realized when I arrive to work, that my office tag has been modified: my name and the office number were still there, but just below my name, there was a funny subtitle: Adameister.

Modifying an office tag was easy, as it was printed on transparent support with a standard laser printer.

I guessed immediately who had done that: an American senior engineer named Alan. I confronted him, but he denied it, smiling. So, I told him that if he knows who did it, he should tell him or her that the font was not correct. The next day, my office tag was updated with the correct font.

Then Alan and myself, we started to give subtitles to other engineers. We never put anything pejorative, and most people kept their modified office tags.


I tried to always put something related to the person or their name and something related to their job. Here is an example. In an office, there were two engineers that were working on data modelling: Billy Hui and Vicky Fan. I named them respectively: "The Modelling Kid" and "The Data Ventilator".


Having a subtitle became very popular. I even asked the boss if it was OK to give him a subtitle, and he agreed. He was the head of what was called the Software Factory" and his first name was Arthur. So, I named him "The King of the Factory".