Practical Jokes

During my days with the electric company, I had a supervisor who was a master at pulling off practical jokes. Mark might make it very simple -- say, pouring all of those little paper pieces from the paper punch machine onto a map, then folding the map back up, then waiting for someone to open the map, only to have thousands of little circular pieces of paper fall all over the place. Or he could be more elaborate and evil -- like the time he had one of our student interns convinced that the intern would have to reimburse the company for all his pay and benefits for the past 10 months because he didn't meet the definition of "student," as described in the fake document that Mark produced as part of the practical joke. Poor guy, I thought he was going to cry...and I still have the videotape of that one.

One day he left for a week-long vacation, and we decided it was time to get him back. We had already pulled a few small pranks on him, such as the time we filled out a job application at the Catawba Island McDonald's in his name. His wife asked him one day if everything was OK at work, and Mark said, yes, why? She said he received a call that day from McDonald's and they wanted him to come in for an interview. It took him days to convince her that he had not filled out the application in the first place.

But now is was time for the mother of all practical jokes.

We worked at a nuclear power plant, and Mark was a bit paranoid about one particular employee. He simply did not trust her, and he thought it possible that she was undercover, working for some anti-nuclear group. Fortunately, that was not the case, but we took advantage of his paranoia to set up the prank.

We prepared fake news releases and TV news scripts which made it clear that someone had infiltrated the nuke plant and was making accusations about safety violations and other bad stuff. When Mark returned from vacation, I got the ball rolling by mentioning that I had overheard the employee talking on the phone, and that she whispered a lot and tried to cover the mouthpiece so no one could hear what she was saying. Throughout that first day, several other conspirators would make mention of something suspicious that they had seen or heard, and by the end of the day, Mark was convinced that we had a spy in our midst.

The next morning, Mark's boss had his weekly staff meeting. Looking very somber, he leafed through the fake news releases and TV scripts, and read parts of the reports. Mark's eyes grew to the size of dinner plates, and he looked over at me as I took note of how red his face was getting. Here was the proof, the irrefutable evidence that one of our employees was selling us down the river. And Mark was livid.

We went together into his boss' office after the staff meeting. Mark suggested that security be brought in to escort the spy off the premises. He wanted to call the Sheriff to see if there were anything that could be done. He wanted to call the county prosecutor. But mostly, he wanted her dead.

We convinced Mark that we needed more evidence before we could bring any law enforcement or internal security people into it. We let this joke go on for a few hours, but things began to go out of control, and it was just a matter of time before Mark would get outsiders involved -- and that was the last thing we needed. So I was elected to tell him that it was a joke, but I was going to get one more jab in first. I went into his office with another fake news release, in which the spy accused Mark of playing golf instead of going to the county courthouse as he was supposed to do once a week. Mark jumped out of his seat, slammed the top of his desk with his fist, and screamed, "Golf? I only played golf twice last month!"

I could not contain my laughter. I said, "Mark, you've just been hosed," which was my way of saying that this had all been a joke. He said, "Yeah, we're all hosed! This stuff's in the papers and on TV!" Through my laughter, I was finally able to persuade him that this was all a joke.

Once convinced, he immediately came up with a way of turning the tables. He walked over to the offices of some of the people who perpetrated the prank. grabbed his chest and fell to the floor. He started moaning and begging for someone to call 911. One of my coworkers looked at me and asked if he was serious, but I couldn't keep a straight face long enough to fake an answer. So Mark got up, dusted himself off, and went back to work.