The Great Collaboration

I got in late today and everyone in the group was working at a feverish pace.  Engineers were yelling at designers trying to contact secretaries.  The cries were almost pleading:

“The colors won’t work.  We’ll never get the purpose across.”
“It needs to be bigger, it’s never going to hold all we need it to.”
“There’s no way in hell that’ll get through the design team.  We need to redo the shape.”
“We don’t have time for a redesign, if this isn’t done by 5 PM we’re toast, this is too important to mess up.”

It took me  a while to figure out what had everyone working together to ram through a last minute project of great importance and secrecy: A custom-made going away present for a departing employee.