Implausible, Unexpected Event Occurred, Will have Terrible Business Impact On You (April Fools)
Before someone tricks you into thinking your computer needs to be reformatted or your printer is now voice-operated, allow me to warn you that today is April Fools' Day.
Personally, I love April Fools' Day, and I will gleefully prank anyone whom I think that I can plausibly get away with tricking. For example, about 3 months ago I moved my writing team to a new building. It was, like all office moves, long and painful. This morning, the top agenda item will be a new move plan -- I'll be reporting that we have to go back to the very building we just moved out of. I expect at least three agonizing groans before everyone remembers what day it is.
Looking for some ways to freak out the people in your own office? Here are some things to try:
- Using clear nail polish, paint the tips of all of the pens and pencils in someone's desk.
- Change someone's Windows desktop background to a picture of the Blue Screen of Death. Or a screenshot of an upside-down desktop.
- Carefully pop out the Shift key and hide it in their desk drawer. Or rearrange they keys on their keyboard so they are no longer arranged in the usual QWERTY fashion.
- Add some clearly misspelled words to their AutoCorrect dictionary in Word. Or, even better, make AutoCorrect common words to something completely off the wall -- like change the company name to "zebra."
