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Noticed that everyone’s wearing different hats than they were yesterday. Duck asked where my hat was. I said I didn’t have one yet. Got really quiet in the office all of a sudden. I added that I’d probably buy one this weekend. Could be wrong, but I swear I heard someone whisper “spy.”

Big team meeting today. I came prepared. I’ve been designing a visual ad-campaign for the upcoming cycling-event with an entirely new approach on slogans. I had to teach myself sloganing, modeling, design, printing and about twenty other skills, but I think the results speak for themselves. Everybody took a crack at reading it.

“This is pretty solid sloganing,” admitted Duck.

“I like how we haven’t found any hats on the cyclists yet,” said Sally Rocksafella. “It sets up the suspense better. I’m all, ‘When am I going to find a hat already?’” Everyone laughed.

“I hope it’s soon, I can’t wait much longer,” said Peter Campsten. “Look how stupid this cyclist’s bare head looks!” More big laughs.

“Actually, there aren’t any hats in this campaign,” I said, chuckling.

Deathly silence.

Then everybody got up at once and stopped reading. Edward Smack got really mad and threw his keyboard through a wall, then stormed out and went home. Duck asked to speak to me privately.

“I don’t think you’re applying yourself enough,” he said.

“But I created an entirely new campaign from scratch,” I said, feeling my face get hot.

“Yeah, that’s really, really…” he trailed off, so bored with the sentence he didn’t bother to finish it. “Look, maybe you should read this. You know–help you get into the ‘Lingster Drapper’ mindset.”

He slid over a well-worn Ad-Design manual. I leafed through it. It wasn’t an Ad-Design manual, it was a coffee table-sized book of women wearing hats.

Mistaking my confusion for interest, Duck excitedly pulled his chair over to me, and looked over my shoulder. “Would you look at that hat,” he whispered, pointing to a lady in a wide-brimmed hat. “Gorgeous.”

“Are you crying?” I asked, because that’s sure what it looked like he was doing.

“What? No. I just had something in my eye.”

“Okay,” I said. It was pretty easy to see what he had in his eye, though. Tears.

Duck suddenly jumped up and took everybody hat shopping. I tried working in the empty office for a while, then decided to just go home.