Bands of Valentine minstrels roaming campus

Raymond Chen

One of the minor Valentine’s Day traditions at Microsoft is the charity fundraiser based on identifying targets and embarrassing them in front of all their colleagues. In exchange for a charitable donation to the American Heart Association (get it?) an a cappella group will travel to an office or conference room of your designation (conference room is much better, of course) and sing a sappy song to your Valentine. (Singing Valentines are also common on college campuses.)

This can get tricky when the victim’s spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever you want to call it doesn’t work at Microsoft, because said potential prankster (1) needs to know about this tradition in the first place, and (2) needs to know some other Microsoft employee who can arrange the prank on their behalf.

Raymond Chen

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