The Practical Joke Thread

[benbaaa]

What was the best practical joke you ever played on someone, or had played on you?

Bob worked on the floor below me. He was a really bright guy, funny, smart as a whip, but a real underachiever because he was also the laziest man I’d ever known. One day, he came up to our floor to boast that he’d got an interview for a really good job at one of the best places in town. We all congratulated him, and wished him luck, although we all knew he had no chance, because his technical knowledge was way too low.

A week later, after he’d bought a new suit and been to the interview, he came up to see us again. This time he was full of himself, chest puffed out, swaggering. He told us he’d got on really well at the interview – he had muffed the technical questions a bit – but no worries, the boss and him were on the same wavelength, it was only a matter of time before he was offered the job. He proceeded to call us all losers as he left, and that was the catalyst. I got our secretary to call him and invite him for a second interview, Friday 1pm. He was up again moments later, saying, ‘What did I tell you, guys? They want to see me again, probably to talk about the size of the huge package they want to offer me’. I said they probably just wanted to find out if he had a second suit or not. He shot me a glance, called us all losers again and left. It wasn’t mentioned again until the Friday morning, when he turned up in a second new suit and announced he was off to his second interview.

To our shame, we let him go. So at 1pm on the Friday, Bob turned up and announced he was there for his second interview. The secretary told him they didn’t do second interviews, and anyway the boss had just gone to the pub. Bob then lost his temper, had a good old rant about waste and inefficiency, and demanded that she go and fetch the boss from the pub. She did, and the boss explained that (a) they didn’t do second interviews (b) they’d selected another candidate, and (c) maybe someone was pulling his leg.

Bob arrived back at our office fuming and saying he was going to take the company to court for wasting his time. I finally put him out of his misery and told him it was all a wind-up. ‘You’re all cnuts,’ he said with a big smile. He took his second new suit back to Marks & Spencer and got a refund.