At Gateway, we actively pursue a work style of “work hard, play hard.” It’s rare that a week goes by without some type of celebration or recognition – bacon day, anyone? From our ongoing Book-of-the-Month Club, to chess challenges, to company ski trips, to our annual, highly-anticipated Kentucky Derby party, we take having fun as seriously as we do delivering solutions to our clients.

Pranks are another hallmark of Gateway office culture. As frequently as they may occur, one recent office prank has set the bar – for now – of how far office fun can go.

When hundreds of small, cute rubber ducks began to appear randomly throughout the office, no one really thought much of it. When larger rubber ducks began to appear, it seemed like a natural progression. But when huge inflatable duck showed up, whoa, what is going on, and who is behind this? Turns out, it was one of Gateway’s landscape designers that started it, and then she was joined by Gateway’s CEO in the fun – but neither knew who the other was. What no one knew was the original prankster had also posted her antics to TikTok. That’s when things really, um, took flight.

With over 16-million views on just one of the TikTok posts, Gateway went viral. The CEO’s LinkedIn inbox was flooded with employment requests, the TikTok views continued to pile up and then the local CBS affiliate, KDKA, called. Turns out, they had been watching Duck Wars unfold, too, and wanted to tell that story. “Pittsburgh Today Live” created a great feature on Duck Wars that you can watch by clicking here.

I was going to continue writing about the amount of fun we have at work but I was just reminded that today is National Cookie Day and those thousands of cookies in our office kitchen aren’t going to eat themselves.