NTKOG #140: The kind of cunning schemer who has what it takes to pull off — WITH PANACHE! — the perfect April Fools’ bazinga.
I am: proud to share that I’ve crossed this goal off my 25 Before 25 list!
I am not: super at keeping anything hush hush. Five times an hour, I basically download and dump the full contents of my brain into one of seventy various social media outlets — how could I possibly keep a lid on a secret as juicy as April Fools’ prankin’?!
The Scene: The office. In particular, my co-worker’s cubicle — a clinical little museum of Modern Corporate America, in which each office supply is meticulously stacked, organized, catalogued and — to an extent I find frankly unfathomable — labeled.
Seriously, this girl has the same relationship with her label-maker that the SATC ladies have with their rabbits. The label-mania goes beyond files to desk drawers and even the little sub-dividers in the drawer organizers — just in case early-onset dementia early-onsets next Tuesday, I guess?
But when I demanded she leave the office a bit early on Wednesday, I noticed she’d neglected to label a few key items. So helpful TKOG jumped to the rescue:
After Co-Worker came into the office and sat at her cubicle, I sat squirming with glee, waiting for her to have some kind of reaction. After twenty minutes, my squirming muscles were tired, but still no exclamation. It took Co-Worker half an hour to even NOTICE the influx of extra labels!
You guys, her cubicle was already so Virgo-ized that you couldn’t even notice my goofy little flags. But finally Co-Worker called out, “There are — labels. On my stuff!” And that was it. Very understated reaction.
About an hour later, I heard her clacking up a storm in her cube, before she popped her head out. “My boyfriend’s impressed with the prank. He’s making me send him pictures!” Sweet. Nailed it.
The Verdict: So, turns out that in my years of fruitless schemes and fantasies, I had already been living the best part of a prankmaster’s existence. Coming up with a harmless, whimsical little tribute to gently razz a friend for an oft-mocked, secretly admired characteristic? Oodles of fun. Actually pulling it off? Eh, there are better ways to spend your time.
You guys ever pulled any brilliant office pranks in your day? Or have an idea for a nice one I could use later this month to provoke a bigger reaction?
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Haha- good one! I’m a Virgo, so I love your use of the word “Virgoize.”
me too!
Though, thankfully, my tendencies aren’t that extreme (despite, um, colour-coding my Excel to-do list when I have more than like 3 things to do)!
(again with the “your comment is too short” error… odd.)
Mystery device is a Seagate HD. Or something more exciting cleverly concealed in a Seagate case.
Not in an office (but I think I’ve seen pictures of other people having done it in one): one year in college some girls in my dorm lined every inch of the hall bathroom with aluminum foil. Time-consuming, but the result is kind of cool.
Also, an aside: I read that sentence about SATC and was like…I’m pretty sure I’ve seen most of that show, and I don’t remember any bunnies…durrrr. (But I figured it out.)
I am really enjoying your blog. My link above is to the best joke I’ve ever been involved with: The “Aroma Card”.
omfg, that joke is BRILLIANT! I’m in love! I wish I worked in a big enough office to try to steal it!
I could not stop laughing at this one – the pictures are hilarious!
I once convinced a male co-worker he was being stalked online. It was pretty funny!
hahaha, that’s a great prank one of those that you can pay a quiet appreciation to.
I work for a home builder and I used to be in the land department with 6 other guys (the only department which was all guys). When our office was expanding they decided to move us up to the second floor of the office building (since 7 guys cracking guy jokes had apparently worn out its welcome).
When we took over our offices on the second floor there was a pair of shiny green pants hung up in the space (either left by a leprechaun of a disco fiend). We would take turns hiding the pants in each other’s offices…sometimes it would take weeks or months to find them.
The worst part is nobody ever let you know that they found them, they just quietly hid them in somebody else’s office – so you never really got to gloat over what a great job you did of hiding them.
That’s awesome! Man, that makes me really want to be a guy so I can enjoy awesome dudely, pants-hiding bonding!
A couple of years ago I had a boss whose desk had to be exactly JUST so. He had a number of little knick knacks on his desk perfectly placed at key points of his desk. There were a couple of matchbox cars (of his favorite NASCAR driver), a little toy byplane, a clock, etc.
He was a nice guy but one of the most boring, verbose, monotone people in the history of the universe so I always enjoyed tweaking him a little, just to see the chaos it created. Maybe once every 2 weeks, I would sneak into his cube when he was away and slightly move his “toys”. They were subtle differences, his plane moved to a different angle from the wall, the cars flipped to the opposite direction, that sort of thing. Invariably he would notice within a few minutes of his return. Muttered “Hmmmm, that’s interesting” or “I don’t remember moving that” type comments followed by him standing up with a quizzical expression, walking around in confusion for a few moments and then sitting down.
Never failed to amuse our team. I did that to him for almost a year. Good times.
Aw, but you gave it a shot– God bless your little un-Virgoized heart.
I’m not into tomfoolery or chicanery, though people would probably like to believe otherwise. In college, the chair of our theatre department drove a Mercury Villager mini-van and a few of us concocted this plot to hire a crane for the day and have his van hoisted on top of the theatre building, but, like everything creative and interesting planned by four college kids, it never happened.
And that’s probably really okay.
haha! the paper clips and the tissue made me laugh! good one.
A few years back, my coworkers covered every single possible individual item in another coworker’s office with tin foil. Even down to the door stop. It took him about 3 hours to un-tin-foil everything!
Heh Heh!
Hot Hands and I once conspired to get even with the loud and obnoxious freshman girls next door to us my junior year. I superglued the lock on their door, and totally bitched them out when they woke us up by pounding on our door at 3am. No worries, I’m leaving a lot out of the story – but these girls definitely had it coming.
Oh, man. I work for an elected official, and a lawyer friend of ours e-mailed the office with a note that said something like the father of a client of his was having trouble with his retirement benefits, and could we call him and help him sort it all out, etc, etc. The “father’s” name was Harry Lyon, and the number he’d given us was for the local Zoo.
Also, the guy in the office who called the number didn’t get the joke, so he e-mailed lawyer friend back to ask what was up with the “wrong number”. He sent a note back saying the guy was in the field today and gave him his “cell phone” contact – the phone number for the next town over’s Zoo.
Haha. Normally, I hate practical jokes, but this was a silly, harmless one that made me laugh.
YES! Cross that thang of your List! (can you feeeel my high five?)
Someday, I want to be as excellent a label-maker-put-er-on-er as you! (And the Virgo-ref was not lost on me..wink)
OMG when I saw the paper clip labels I died laughing. Awesome prank girl! I wish I was better at pranks. My husband is in dire need of a good one.
Oh and thanks for your sweet comment today. You pretty much just made my day!
Hey, you stole that idea from me! I did that to a colleague at work last year. Love your style, though. “Paper clip” and “another paper clip”. Wonderful. And cute little labels, too.
Did you stick a label on her label machine saying “label machine”?
I thought the self-referential “label maker” label was a tad cheesy, so instead I labeled the label maker: “Happy April Fools’ Day!”
Hmm – you could have labelled her existing labels “label”…
My god, that would have been BRILLIANT! I’m so consulting with you before I pull next year’s prank!
ps, uh, big bang theory reference? wonderful :)
My old roommate and I used to take turns hiding an old (white boy ‘fro/boy band attire) laminated Justin Timberlake poster (NOT OURS! We stole it from a sister’s house) for each other to find at inopportune times. It started innocently enough – we’d find Justin taped to our bathroom mirror with notes saying “I want to cuddle”. Then he started getting a little risqué by hiding out in our showers/pillowcases. I could always tell when the roommate discovered him by the hysterical laughter emitting from her side of the apartment…her boyfriend was usually less amused by it. The prank came to a head when the roommate went home from Christmas break and I crammed the poster into her suitcase right before she left. Once she got home, she found the stowaway…along with a note from TSA informing her that her luggage had been searched. We stopped the prank after that because we both knew we could never beat that.
Dude. DUDE. That is amazing!