Mystery Gift: Without Assembly Instructions, It Was No Present

One of our clients mailed us a gift that arrived today.

It was incredibly thoughtful and a definite positive during this busy season to see that they really do value the work we do here at KDXU. One of the sales and marketing team members delivered the gift to me from the mail room (OK, we don't have a mail room, but it makes us sound big and cool when I say that we do, LOL).

Anyway, he was curious and decided to stay and see what was in the box.

But soon after delivery, the real mystery began. See, we opened up the box and had no clue what to do with the contents. There were no instructions, no diagrams, no additional information with the exception of a cryptic card from the company that sent it that simply read "Merry Christmas, from XXX).

So this salesman (I'll call him Mike) and I began to experiment. It was a carboard cutout with some detached lights and a pull-string.

At first glance, I thought it was maybe an ornament or maybe a tree decoration, but the darn thing would not unfold all the way. Mike and I stretched and toyed with it, but we could feel it starting to tear every time we tried to stretch it out.

And there was also this set of mini lights to go with it. What were they for?

As we tinkered with it, Mike decided to stretch it as far as he could and have me pull the string. Now we were onto something. It started to bend a little bit weird, but the shape of a star was starting to come through.

Somehow, the thing stretched enough that I was able to tighten the drawstring and the shape of the star was complete.

Now, what about those lights? Mike decided to stuff them through an opening in the star and I agreed that this was not a bad idea. But with no instructions, we were just winging it.

Amazingly, we got all the lights inside the start and actually looked good.

To complete the project, we shut the blinds in the KDXU studio and turned off the lights and -- as it turns out -- a star was born. And it was beautiful.

I know this should have been pretty easy for a couple of guys with college degrees, but it wasn't.

I think back to all those years of assembling toys and the like on Christmas Eve and remember how I felt the instructions were mostly useless.

I was wrong.