I Hate April Fools Day
I do communications for a large organization. Yesterday the main boss tried to April fool me by sending out (on building letter head) a message stating that due to an inventory mistake, there will be no toilet paper in any of the building restrooms, and that I would need to bring my own to work today. It didn’t work.
Today he tried to send an email gravely stating that he needed to have a “private chat” with me, and that I needed to come by his office. He timed this right before I took my lunch, so I would have an hour to stew over it. When I went to his office after lunch, he swore with a poker face that he sent me no such message. Did he just make a mistake, or was he f****** with me? Ok, that kind of worked.
An hour ago, I was sent a message saying “Must speak with you ASAP!” Forwarded in the message was an email from the President of our organization, stating that my office had sent confidential information about a famous french doctor (named Francois), to hundreds of people across Europe. This French doctor is apparently not only famous, but a tyrant capable of doing great harm to my organization. The President was apparently outraged, had promised an institutional apology of considerable proportion, and was openly criticizing the leadership of my boss. The email lacked specifics and was to be the subject of a conference call at 3pm, so for the next twenty minutes I ran from department to department, trying to figure out who made this mistake, how it happened, and convening people in order to figure out what to do about the situation. I was also given the responsibility of dealing with the problem, being that the offended party was French. This one worked.
As I sit here at my desk, I can hear sporadic laughter throughout the office. I’ve been hearing it for the last 10 minutes. They got me. They got me good.
If anyone out there can top this one, now would be a good time to let me know I’m not the biggest sucker in DC since Monica Lewinsky.
3 comments:
I'm sure you're not, Ben, but that was pretty funny.
I think that pranks are generally not appropriate for the workplace. I had a boss who, while on a trip somewhere, found a gag pack of post-it notes that had things written on them that, if you found it stuck on your monitor at work, you'd be pretty frightened. These included:
Your bank manager called. He's confirmed that all your money has been transferred and your account is now closed.
Meet me at the water cooler in 5 minutes. I will tell you what everyone is saying about you after last night. A friend.
You look good today let's work late and see what happens? XXX
I got one that said: All of the bathroom cubicles in this building have cameras in them. Watch out!
I was mortified for hours, until I found about the gag. The best part is that, later that week when meeting with HER supervisor in her office, one of the sticky notes fell out of her desk drawer. Her boss picked it up and read it out loud: GREAT NEWS ABOUT THE JOB! TAKE IT!
Mine was simply a satire on DC à la Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/01/AR2008040101060.html
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