Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in the living room at my house, working on style sheet changes for one of my clients’ websites. I had turned off the radio a little while earler in order to better concentrate. The sliding glass door out to the backyard was open and a slight breeze was blowing through the screen.
Suddenly, my concentration was disturbed by the words “You’re Fired!”
The first time it happened, I didn’t realize what it was. I thought it might be a sound coming from my laptop because occasionally someone embeds a sound in a web page that plays automatically. I was concentrating, so I didn’t really hear the words either. I went back to what I was doing.
A couple of minutes later, it happened again: “You’re Fired!”
This time, I knew what the voice said. I quickly went through the list of Mozilla window titles on my Gnome Panel. I didn’t see anything related to The Apprentice. I took a quick look around the room.
I saw the “dust jacket” of The Apprentice – The Complete First Season lying on the floor in front of the TV. Apparently, the cover of it had been disturbed by the breeze.
Anyone who’s seen this DVD package knows that the dust jacket contains an audio chip like those found in greeting cards. Opening the cover triggers a recording of Donald Trump’s voice. The recording says “You’re Fired!”
Some customer reviews posted on Amazon.com and other on-line shopping websites have said that this gimmick gets annoying quickly. I hadn’t noticed that because you can avoid opening the cover by removing the dust jacket and setting it aside. That’s what I did. I’m pretty sure that the package designers didn’t anticipate the “problem” I experienced as a result.
I reassembled the DVD package and put it on a shelf, so it won’t spontaneously talk to me again.