True story...

In my career, I have been many things to many people.  My 13 years inside a "free trade association" meant that I filled any job that was thrown my way.  One of those jobs was as a human resource consultant. 

It wasn't a good fit. I don't enjoy being place in no win situations.

So after eight or ten years, my employor got the message and I was transferred to another position.  Then they hired a "Human Resources Professional" who seemed like a nice person.  She was personable.  She was verty qualified.  But she had a hobby that created a problem.

"People don't like coming to me and talking about the issues.  Most of the clients insist that I come to them.  I have this fabulous office.  I don't know what to do.  I looked around her office and told her, that I too, was a bit creeped out.

Her hobby was collecting clown statues.  And they were everywhere in her office.

Really, I said looking over the office, which was very nice, if you could ignore the forced smiles of clowns whose physical features seldom were in sync with their face painted designs.

I suggested that she declown it.  But she loved them so.  Having little else to say, and with one the voices that plays nonstop in my mind singing "Laugh Clown Laugh," I left.  You can lead a consultant to water, but you can't force them to redecorate. 

Shortly thereafter, she quit without notice.  So I helped the chief admin pack up her office, and I jokingly said "Oh, goody - we get to keep these!"  Big mistake.  My coworker was sweet, but she was also somewhat of an idiot savant who's supernatural gifted powers manifested itself not in music or art, but in typing 125 words a minute.  This left her unable to understand abstract concepts like sarcasm, and she proceeded to lecture me on the evils of the clown statues.   "Many people don't finds clowns to be a happy memory," she said in her monotone twangy southern Illinois drawl.  As if I didn't know about that.  This co-worker may have been able to type the entire Magna Carta in under five minutes flat, but she wasn't the brightest light bulb in the chandelier of life.

We boxed them up and shipped them to the former employee.  I wondered how they would be received in her next place of employment, which I found out through my sources was a Juvenile Prison.