April Fool's Day

A few years ago, AJ the Wonderdog pranked me on April Fool's Day.  This was back when I was doing the morning shift.  I came in at 4:30am to find everything on my desk tied to my chair with fishing line. But of course fishing line is almost invisible, so I didn't see it until after I pulled out my chair and everything on my desk came crashing down.  Frustrating.  After cutting all the lines and putting everything back in order, I began to do my work.  Except that when tried to type up my newscast, what I was typing was not showing up on the screen.  Different words were instead.  AJ had set up a couple of macros that changed certain words.  So every time I typed 'Tim Maassarany', the macro automatically changed it to 'fart'.  Funny, but annoying.  Then when I tried to write stuff out instead, I found that the ink in all my pens had been replaced with garlic powder...and my office stunk for about a week after that.  And finally, there was an alarm that kept going off every 15 minutes all morning...an old cell phone that he hid in the ceiling tiles.

This year, my revenge.

I started out in his office.  That's BBQ sauce on his ear piece.  You'll also notice that there is tape on the tab that pops up to give you the dial tone, meaning the phone will keep ringing until the tape is removed.

Then onto the mouse.  It's funny how much frustration one little piece of tape can cause (perhaps you have had this done to you?).  It's simple - the mouse won't work and you can't figure out why...until you turn it upside-down.  Post-it notes work well for this too.

For good measure, I also removed all writing utensils from his office - pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, everything.

Step three, the cell phone.  I hijacked this for a couple of minutes and did as much damage as I could in a short period of time (this is why you lock your phone by the way).  First was to change the home screen.  Now AJ will always remember me, or parts of me.

Then I changed all the sounds for everything - his ringer, texts, facebook and twitter notifications, calender reminders, etc...  I wanted to change the language, create fake calendar reminders, and upload an embarrassing ring tone, but I didn't have time.  There was still more to do before AJ got off the air at 9am.

The gem is the car.  I ended off by snatching his car keys and moving his car to the opposite end of the parking lot...an area that also happens to be hidden.  Since I had access to his car, I also lifted his steering wheel as high as possible, moved his seat as close to the steering wheel as it would go, and cranked the radio to max for a fun surprise the next time he listens to LIFE.  But my favourite - besides moving the car - is using AJ's own maple syrup, which I grabbed from the staff fridge.  His shift stick now smells great.

There were about four other ideas I had that were really good, but I ran out of time.  I'm pleased with my efforts though.

..............

Now that all the pranks have been discovered, my favourite two parts of the day were when AJ came into my office at 9:30am and yelled, "You're driving me crazy!"  And that was just all the office stuff, he hadn't gotten to the car yet...which leads to my other favourite part of the day, when he went out at lunch and his car wasn't there...  Yup, it's been a fun day.