The other day, a couple of my favorite S-R colleagues had a brief exchange.

One, an editor, got a call from the reception desk on the first floor of the Review Tower. It seemed there was a woman down in the lobby who was having a hard time connecting with the paper's website on her laptop.

So the editor approached a staffer with lots of know-how about computer stuff and asked (very nicely) if she would go down to the lobby and try to help. Ms. Lots of Know-How said she would be happy to do so.

It's 2013. We're all about customer service.

I don't know how that turned out. But their conversation reminded me of something from another geologic era.

Fairly early in my career, I worked at a paper where one of the editors enjoyed occasionally pulling the leg of an unsuspecting reporter. He would affect a super-serious/urgent expression and approach a journalist he knew to be extra busy.

And he would say, "I need you to interview this old guy sitting out in the lobby. He's got a steamer trunk full of odds and ends and plenty to say about ..."

By that time, he would have gotten what he wanted  -- a horrified look on the face of the reporter.

Boy, that editor had a hell of a laugh.

Now that sounds like the sort of prank an editor might play on interns or new hires. But the editor in question knew that those people were such eager beavers they would have been halfway to the lobby before he could tell them he was just horsing around.

No, his targets tended to be veteran staffers or at least status-conscious reporters who had been around long to acquire a certain sense of self-importance.

"Hey, there's a white-haired gentleman out in the lobby with a ..."

Eventually that editor had to come up with some new material. People got wise to the "steamer trunk" gag.

Still, it was good while it lasted. Especially when you realized he was just kidding.

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