Free Jerky!

The rise and fall 'Free Jerky', a tale from the .com days

Once upon a time there was a senior engineer named Jim. Jim loved to make beef jerky, and when he made too much he would bring the extra to share at work. On these occasions he would send an email to his team - "Free jerky at my desk". It was delicious jerky, so people would head over as soon as they noticed the message, as the free jerky never lasted long.

One day we had a new policy from IT: all employees must lock their computers when not in use. A logged-in-but-unattended computer is a security risk and will not be tolerated. But old habits die hard, and most people - including Jim - ignored it.

Some weeks later, while Jim was getting coffee, an unknown party crept over to his unguarded workstation and sent an email to the team from Jim's client: "Free jerky at my desk." Of course, there was no jerky. For the rest of the morning, Jim was beset by people seeking jerky. Jim was not amused.

Nor was he the last. Soon, "free jerky!" emails started emanating from other people. The practice of sending jerky emails from unattended computers caught on like wildfire. Anyone who stepped away to the bathroom or a smoke break was in danger; at the height of the fad, you could be "jerkied" even for walking a few feet to the office printer.

Things came to a head when some impish soul decided to cc: the CEO on one. He was confused, and then once someone explained the prank, livid. He had Questions and he demanded Answers. He descended on Jim (who, since jerky emails were pranks, had almost certainly not sent the offending email) and ranted: "What if I had been in a meeting with one of our customers, and that email popped up? What would they have thought? That we're not professional, that we don't take our work seriously, that we goof around!"

Jim, who had what is nowadays sometimes called "a touch of the 'tism" did not understand he was being scolded, and answered factually: "No they wouldn't. They wouldn't know about the prank emails, they would think I had actually brought in beef jerky to share with my coworkers."

The CEO didn't have an answer to that, but the practice died out soon afterward.

Only in retrospect was it realized that the Free Jerky! craze had done with the IT department had not been able to do: convince people to lock their workstations.