I Pity The April Fool

Everyone loves an April Fools' Day prank ... except for those who fall victim to one of mine.

This year, I decided to go easy on my workmates (seeing as they were spared the horror of it all last year and as such had not yet experienced me at my pranking best). So although what follows was very fun, it wasn't as severe as it could have been.

I got to work an hour early this morning so I could be the first one there, then I travelled down the lift and stopped at each floor (there are only four floors – two office levels and two basement car parks), and stuck a sign over the call button that said "ELEVATOR OUT OF ORDER".

Then I returned to the office and popped all the keys off the keyboards for six selected workmates (five people I knew would take it in their stride ... and my new manager as the sixth - what can I say? I like to live on the edge!).

After popping all the keys off their keyboards, I put all the letters back on in alphabetical order. I considered combining the keys from each of their keyboards so they each had six copies of the same four or five letters filling their entire keyboard, but decided to make life easier for them by simply rearranging the letters into alphabetical order.

People then started entering the office, after parking their cars underneath, seeing the sign, then walking out the driveway and around the building to enter through the front door and walk up the stairs. I even managed to prank everyone in the other two companies who work in the building with us!

The names on the bottom of the signs were the Administration Manager's personal assistant (giving it complete credibility) and the fictitious 'April Phwelles’. The first name is the person who normally leaves signs like that on the lifts when they’re not working (I used her name for two reasons – the first was to add realism, and the second was to stop that woman herself from arriving at work and calling the maintenance guys to fix the lift; if she saw her own name there, she’d know it wasn’t real) ... whereas April Phwelles is a fake name (say it aloud if you haven’t already worked it out).

After a few hours (at about 10am), I emailed all staff to let them know that if they'd taken the stairs this morning, they should have read the ‘out of order’ sign more carefully.

Ergo, I pity the April Fool!




.