Beat them within an inch of their lives and imprison them / it's the only way to make friends
A Professor Oak post.
Gary has sat next to you for six years. At the Christmas party he points at you and asks, "Sorry, are you sales or marketing?" You're his manager. First day in the new job. Your boss says it's a tough market out there, hands you a laptop with no password and a list of 150 clients to "go and meet", and waves you off from the window. Your dad has lived on the same street for thirty years and still calls you by the dog's name, then your brother's, then just "you". You've lived with him for most of those thirty years. The road to your mum's is closed by one traffic cone. No roadworks. No hole. A cone. You drive 14 miles round it, because nobody, in the history of the county, has ever moved the cone. **Why it caught on:** Professor Oak hands you your first Pokémon in Pokémon Red and Green (1996), then sends a ten-year-old into a world he calls dangerous, with one Pokémon and a blank Pokédex. Everyone who played noticed how odd it was, and everyone with a job has met him since.