Underlying conditions: Prior to 2022, Briardale College had implemented a series of cost-cutting moves, including hiring freezes, benefit reductions elimination of cost-of-living and merit increases, and a complete overhaul of the campus purchasing system that forced employees to undertake a months-long quest to be able to order a roll of tape.

After observing a period of historically high level of resignations and low morale, the college president read some tripe on LinkedIn about how workers really just wanted to be thanked, and decided that all campus departments should implement a “culture of gratitude.”

In the library, this took the form of a series of mandatory after-hours webinars on caring for your fellow employees, a banner over the entrance to the technical services department declaring “We Are a FAMILY,” and a white board where employees could anonymously compliment each other in the room that used to be the staff lounge but was now used to store samples deemed too mutagenic to store in the biology department 

On April 4, Floyd Parker ended one of his emails with “Thanks,” instead of the requisite “With gratitude.” An email chain intended to determine an appropriate level of discipline made its way up the ranks to Dean Swenson, but when Floyd was inadvertently copied on one of the messages, he shared it to the library’s all-staff email address, and staff quickly took sides.

Notable actions:

Enhanced Training: Ostensibly as a “team-building” exercise, Miriam recruited loyalists to form a book cart drill team, which she claimed would perform choreographed routines at public events as a form of outreach. In reality, they just read 1984 and practiced their Two Minutes’ Hate against those who resented the forced gratitude.

Fortification Construction: After receiving gratitude journals in lieu of raises, the Technical Services department added them to the library collection, cataloging them under PZ4 (fantasy fiction), GB5014 (natural disasters), and HV6322 (genocide). In retaliation, Dean Swenson took every book from these sections and piled them in front of the public computers. These constructions had no impact on any skirmishes, but the overtime for student shelvers to put everything back did come out of the Technical Services budget, where it could have defrayed nearly one fifth of the annual subscription cost of a mid-tier journal.

Public Protest: An unknown individual identified only as “Modern-Day Luther”—but everyone knows it was Jane—posted a treatise entitled “Acts of Unfaireness and In-gratitude, Ennummerated and Summarised Hearwith,” in the southwest elevator. That lift is more than 80 years old, however, and the added weight of a vellum broadsheet unbalanced the load enough to put the elevator out of commission for more than three months until a part that is no longer made could be stolen from a decommissioned grain elevator in West Virginia.

The Propaganda Effort: When Carl claimed he wanted to follow the gratitude policies but just wasn’t clear on what they were, the library’s communications manager was forced into eight hours of meetings to ensure he would properly articulate them in the staff newsletter, even though he was already spending all his free time looking for a new job and didn’t have the energy for this shit.

Industrial Sabotage: Staff checking out books began to extend transactions by delivering increasingly elaborate thank-yous, eventually including multiple people, music, and choreography like they were a Cold Stone Creamery. The resulting slowdown in productivity was reversed when Sally tweaked her back doing a trust fall dip with Roger, who swore they planned another pirouette. (Roger actually planned to drop Sally all along, as he was secretly an agent of the counter-insurgency operations.)

Supply Line Disruptions: In retaliation for a pointed comment June made about whether the library’s prescribed gratitude language was truly compatible with the principles of free speech, Dean Swenson removed the good vending machine from the break room, leaving just the one whose dispenser is covered in chips too toxic for ants to eat from a bag that exploded in the machine in 2013.

The Battle of the IT Department: After a three-week delay in printer repairs caused by not using an adequate number of synonyms for “please” in the request, the reference department conducted a full assault on IT. While heavy underdogs, reference triumphed by fashioning their book carts into highly effective cavalry units, inflicting tremendous damage on the servers and giving Janet a significant boo-boo on her leg.

Conclusion: After a few months, everyone was too tired of all this to care anymore, so they stopped fighting actively but continued to seethe about it until they retired or died, whichever came later.

Sample test question:

Which of the following were lasting impacts of the Gratitude War. A) A marked increase in morale, and corresponding improvement in productivity. B) The implementation of a committee with the authority to implement changes that would improve working conditions. C) The creation of staff positions on the library’s leadership committee. D) Not a damn thing.