# Suggestions for Clown Removal **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 13, 2004, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888 "2004-05-13T00:47:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![lightingtool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/57b2e6/32.png) [@lightingtool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lightingtool)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/21 "2004-05-13T17:39:46Z")
It’s very simple, really. Erase the clown, then pass out a memo apologizing for the loss, and state, “due to the economic pressures the company is under, some ‘clown-sizing’ is inevitable.” I’m so sorry… ---
**Author:** ![LordVor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/90ced4/32.png) [@LordVor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LordVor)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/22 "2004-05-13T17:51:40Z")
Can’t you just add to the drawing, to make it look like the clown is sucking on an enormous phallus? -lv ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/23 "2004-05-13T18:00:14Z")
I can’t believe no one has posted the obvious solution: steal the markers, _then_ erase the evil clown. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Tower\_Dweller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@Tower\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tower_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/24 "2004-05-13T18:05:44Z")
> [@LordVor](#): > > Can’t you just add to the drawing, to make it look like the clown is sucking on an enormous phallus? Could you use a Sharpie to draw said phallus? If they erase the clown, then you’ll just have a phallus. So she’ll have to get rid of the whiteboard altogether. Not that I condone vandalism, of course. Just speaking hypothetically. Of course. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/25 "2004-05-13T18:31:10Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Curl up into a ball and start chanting “Can’t work. Clown will eat it.” I thought it was funnier this way. I would draw a big, hairy spider next to the clown, and underneath write “Spiders” in big, friendly letters. Encourage your cow-orkers to draw similar things. ---
**Author:** ![Shirt\_Ninja\_13](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@Shirt\_Ninja\_13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirt_Ninja_13)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/26 "2004-05-13T18:37:48Z")
> [@](#): > > Anyone got any ideas on how I could get rid of the clown drawing? I do not have supervisory authority over this secretary, or it would have been eraser dust long ago. I once “mutilated” it with an eraser streak when nobody was around, but the damn kid came back and fixed it. I could just erase it, but he can just draw it again. What I really need is to eliminate the whiteboard itself - it’s not used for anything except the clown. I’d burn the whiteboard, bury it, salt the earth around it, and find someone appropriately holy to consecrate the area, lest it rise from the grave to wreak havoc on a nearby town. And as far as those jokes about you being in the “Department of Clowns”? Yeah. Someone should probably get punched for that. I’m sorry. Like you said, most people don’t like clowns. I, for one, rather hate them. I didn’t, really, until some friends of mine got me drunk and forced me to watch the only clown-themed porn i’ve ever even heard of. The only clown I know of that’s cool is Reed Martin (sp?) of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, but he’s not so much a clown as an ex-clown, so I guess that works. That said, I don’t know any clowns, personally. Maybe that has something to do with the bias. That, and the movie _IT_ _shiver_ _bamf_ ---
**Author:** ![Shirt\_Ninja\_13](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@Shirt\_Ninja\_13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirt_Ninja_13)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/27 "2004-05-13T18:41:24Z")
> [@lightingtool](#): > > It’s very simple, really. Erase the clown, then pass out a memo apologizing for the loss, and state, “due to the economic pressures the company is under, some ‘clown-sizing’ is inevitable.” > I’m so sorry… wow. That has got to be the most diabolically inspired pun i’ve heard in a while. kudos. _bamf_ ---
**Author:** ![Shirt\_Ninja\_13](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e19b73/32.png) [@Shirt\_Ninja\_13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirt_Ninja_13)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/28 "2004-05-13T18:47:29Z")
> [@The King of Soup](#): > > You must get out now. Resign your position without notice. Leave behind your personal mementoes and ornaments. If homelessness awaits you, embrace it, for it is your escape. It may already be too late. I know this is true, because your story was once mine. > > I was once like you, a happy man in an office in a department of a company. This company processed substances, and was a leader in its field according to all the substance-processing trade journals. Its employees were content and productive, and were given needed office supplies without excessive paperwork. Suddenly my department received a white message board, and colored markers with which to make colored marks on the board. We were puzzled. We had no need of such a thing. It had no purpose. It was not relevant to our role in the processing of substances. Therefore we ignored it and continued to work productively and contentedly. > > One day there was a picture on the board, a picture of a clown. It was drawn in color, and we surmised that it had been done with the markers that had come with the message board. But the clown seemed also to have no relevance to the efficient processing of substances, and we paid it no more attention. Time passed. No one today remembers when the first of the clown dolls appeared in the department’s display case. By the time we noticed it, the display case was so full of clowns that they obscured our view of samples of the substances we had so proudly helped to process. But they did not interfere with our daily work, and were soon forgotten, as were the circus posters that appeared on our walls at about the same time. The air, barely perceptibly, began to smell different, but we assumed that the company was merely processing some new substance and soon we were unconscious of that as well. > > I remember a fellow employee, whom I shall call Bob Elliott because I do not want to bother with thinking up a fake name for him, saying to me “I am feeling a trifle sick of clowns. That clown on the message board, for example, is downright creepy. It is not even well-drawn, it looks as if it were done by a child. Tonight, after work, I intend to erase it, and if my courage does not fail me, I shall write on the message board a statement to the effect that a clown _motif_ is not pertinent to this department’s mission in the processing of substances.” I was surprised at his vehemance, having long since stopped noticing clowns myself, but I agreed to keep his words secret. > > The next day, the poorly-drawn clown on the message board was still there. Bob Elliott was not. His disappearance created a stir in the department, and the remaining employees, though still productive, were measurably less content. The company reacted to this by announcing that it would provide ambient noise generators which had been scientifically proven to elevate mood and decrease stress. They were installed that afternoon. Someone remarked that no matter which setting the machines were on – waterfall, rain forest, surf – the same sound was produced, like static or the roar of a large crowd of people. But as the sound played at a low volume and was not offensive, the employees shrugged and went back to work. > > And then, when all of us had blinded ourselves to the clowns, numbed ourselves against the smell of the greasepaint and deafened ourselves to the roar of the crowd, it happened. We were defenseless when they came for us, bearing rubber noses and strong adhesive. The company’s “process” was finally complete. > We are all clowns now. None but me knows that we have ever been anything else, and I know I shall soon forget. Please do not forget me. And the first thing this brings to mind is H.P. Lovecraft. Wasn’t there some sort of disease you could catch, according to the Cthulhu mythos, that slowly turned you into a Deep One? It seems like there’s something similar going on with the clowns, here. Possible title for this: Pickman’s Whiteboard? _bamf_ ---
**Author:** ![Binarydrone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3da27b/32.png) [@Binarydrone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Binarydrone)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/29 "2004-05-13T19:05:45Z")
Simple: Send a memo to HR stating that you were molested by a clown as a child and that the presence of any clown images constitutes a “hostile work environment”. That will take care of the whiteboard as well as the display case damn fast. ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/30 "2004-05-13T19:40:49Z")
> [@swampbear](#): > > I just gotta know. **Why** is there a big display case full of clown dolls? Does your office manufacture those hideous spawns of satan? If not, and said display case is the secretary’s personal display, and if it’s in a main area where customers and vendors would be coming and going, why would it be allowed? My friend, you have tapped into the root of the problem. The bay is not, in fact, the secretary’s own area (she has a desk in an alcove, which should be enough considering that we staff are crammed two to an office), yet she treats it as such by using it as a personal shrine to her sick fetish for clowns. Our workplace has many unwritten rules, one of which seems to involve the secretaries being allowed to do whatever they want. Believe you me, I would like nothing more than to take a sledgehammer to the display case. But you’ve gotta walk before you can run. Removal of the whiteboard clown is a more realistic goal. I think I’m gonna come in on Saturday and erase the sonofabitch. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/31 "2004-05-13T19:57:44Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#): > > I think I’m gonna come in on Saturday and erase the sonofabitch. Good-bye, Bob Elliot. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2004, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/32 "2004-05-13T21:16:32Z")
> [@Shirt Ninja 13](#): > > the only clown-themed porn i’ve ever even heard of _New Wave Hookers 5_? Re the OP, isn’t “clown removal” on the telephone service menu between “gardener” and “maid”? ---
**Author:** ![IUchem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@IUchem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IUchem)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/33 "2004-05-14T02:49:54Z")
> [@The King of Soup](#): > > You must get out now. Resign your position without notice. Leave behind your personal mementoes and ornaments. If homelessness awaits you, embrace it, for it is your escape. It may already be too late. I know this is true, because your story was once mine. > > I was once like you, a happy man in an office in a department of a company. This company processed substances, and was a leader in its field according to all the substance-processing trade journals. Its employees were content and productive, and were given needed office supplies without excessive paperwork. Suddenly my department received a white message board, and colored markers with which to make colored marks on the board. We were puzzled. We had no need of such a thing. It had no purpose. It was not relevant to our role in the processing of substances. Therefore we ignored it and continued to work productively and contentedly. > > One day there was a picture on the board, a picture of a clown. It was drawn in color, and we surmised that it had been done with the markers that had come with the message board. But the clown seemed also to have no relevance to the efficient processing of substances, and we paid it no more attention. Time passed. No one today remembers when the first of the clown dolls appeared in the department’s display case. By the time we noticed it, the display case was so full of clowns that they obscured our view of samples of the substances we had so proudly helped to process. But they did not interfere with our daily work, and were soon forgotten, as were the circus posters that appeared on our walls at about the same time. The air, barely perceptibly, began to smell different, but we assumed that the company was merely processing some new substance and soon we were unconscious of that as well. > > I remember a fellow employee, whom I shall call Bob Elliott because I do not want to bother with thinking up a fake name for him, saying to me “I am feeling a trifle sick of clowns. That clown on the message board, for example, is downright creepy. It is not even well-drawn, it looks as if it were done by a child. Tonight, after work, I intend to erase it, and if my courage does not fail me, I shall write on the message board a statement to the effect that a clown _motif_ is not pertinent to this department’s mission in the processing of substances.” I was surprised at his vehemance, having long since stopped noticing clowns myself, but I agreed to keep his words secret. > > The next day, the poorly-drawn clown on the message board was still there. Bob Elliott was not. His disappearance created a stir in the department, and the remaining employees, though still productive, were measurably less content. The company reacted to this by announcing that it would provide ambient noise generators which had been scientifically proven to elevate mood and decrease stress. They were installed that afternoon. Someone remarked that no matter which setting the machines were on – waterfall, rain forest, surf – the same sound was produced, like static or the roar of a large crowd of people. But as the sound played at a low volume and was not offensive, the employees shrugged and went back to work. > > And then, when all of us had blinded ourselves to the clowns, numbed ourselves against the smell of the greasepaint and deafened ourselves to the roar of the crowd, it happened. We were defenseless when they came for us, bearing rubber noses and strong adhesive. The company’s “process” was finally complete. > We are all clowns now. None but me knows that we have ever been anything else, and I know I shall soon forget. Please do not forget me. I recommend you not watch “Killer Klowns from Outer Space.” We don’t want the truth to come out! Remember what happened to HP Lovecraft . . . and Abdul Alhazrad . . . ---
**Author:** ![IUchem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@IUchem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IUchem)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/34 "2004-05-14T02:53:01Z")
> [@Shirt Ninja 13](#): > > wow. That has got to be the most diabolically inspired pun i’ve heard in a while. > kudos. > > _bamf_ Too Kool . . . Klowns are Known to (K)evil!!! ---
**Author:** ![IUchem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@IUchem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IUchem)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/35 "2004-05-14T02:54:03Z")
> [@Mausmagill](#): > > Good-bye, Bob Elliot. …he was asking for it! ---
**Author:** ![Marvel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@Marvel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvel)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/36 "2004-05-14T18:52:33Z")
Two options: Next time you have an office meeting and you NEED to write something large for all to see, just grab that board, erase what’s on it and do what you must. Its **office** property after all, not hers. Or if you don’t want this pegged on you, stay after some Friday night, grab the Windex and clean it yourself. How old is the kid now, anyway? If they’re a teen, the odds of them coming in to redraw it a re pretty darn slim. Honestly, clown or no clown, this doesn’t sound like something that should be in easy view in a professional setting. All of my personal stuff is in my personal space in the back cubical. Patty ---
**Author:** ![Hal\_Briston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9a28c/32.png) [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/37 "2004-05-14T22:30:12Z")
[Just](http://www.clownscharacters.com/jpgs/pennywise2.jpg) [make](http://www.cocain.ch/images/gacy.jpg) [some](http://www.wma.com/insane_clown_posse/imgs/INSANE_CLOWN_POSSE_main.jpg) [subtle](http://psxmedia.ign.com/media/news/image/tm1in.jpg) [adjustments](http://www.devermore.net/surbrook/adaptionscomic/joker.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![IGJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/igjoe/32/5420_2.png) [@IGJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IGJoe)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/38 "2004-05-15T01:47:12Z")
> [@Hal Briston](#): > > [Just](http://www.clownscharacters.com/jpgs/pennywise2.jpg) [make](http://www.cocain.ch/images/gacy.jpg) [some](http://www.wma.com/insane_clown_posse/imgs/INSANE_CLOWN_POSSE_main.jpg) [subtle](http://psxmedia.ign.com/media/news/image/tm1in.jpg) [adjustments](http://www.devermore.net/surbrook/adaptionscomic/joker.jpg). I’m never closing my eyes again. ---
**Author:** ![dogbutler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dogbutler/32/428_2.png) [@dogbutler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dogbutler)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/39 "2004-05-15T16:47:33Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#): > > There’s another thread on clowns, which has reminded me to post something I’ve been meaning to ask for a while. > > Everyone hates clowns, except other clowns and my department secretary and her kid. In our “office bay”, i.e., the main room from which the individual offices branch out, there’s a whiteboard on which our secretary’s kid has drawn a very obnoxious looking clown, and just for emphasis, he wrote “CLOWNS” in big balloon letters underneath it. > > This thing has been on the whiteboard for over two years now, and it has absolutely got to go. I can imagine people from other departments making jokes about how we are actually the Department of Clowns. There’s also a big display case full of clown dolls. I don’t think I can do anything about that, but the clown drawing has been begging to be erased for a long time. > > Anyone got any ideas on how I could get rid of the clown drawing? I do not have supervisory authority over this secretary, or it would have been eraser dust long ago. I once “mutilated” it with an eraser streak when nobody was around, but the damn kid came back and fixed it. I could just erase it, but he can just draw it again. What I really need is to eliminate the whiteboard itself - it’s not used for anything except the clown. [Ripley] I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. [/Ripley] ---
**Author:** ![1010011010](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/ea666f/32.png) [@1010011010](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1010011010)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888/40 "2004-05-15T17:03:33Z")
Erase it and write something legitimately related to work in the area. Or just erase it. As for the display case… I’m assuming you have some sort of bulletin board where you can stick up notices of the company picnic, someone trying to see a used widget, etc. Start taping these notices to the front of the display case. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-clown-removal/244888.md?page=3)