Favourite Job Experiences - part 3

As you might know by now, I love jokes, practical and impractical. One dear friend and co-worker has been the brunt of my favourite jokes.

One fateful April fools day I set his computer to fail only on his favourite websites and search engines. This caused him a morning of frustration and as he asked other techs for ideas, who already being in the know, were really not very helpful.

The time before that the office changed keypad codes while he was off on vacation, and I arranged for all the staff to pretend that the codes were the same and not tell him. He spent a frustrated morning trying to discover if he was really loosing his mind.

I tend to give him a year off in between suffering. We worked together in close proximity and I didn't feel like the gentle caress of an office chair across back of my head. I like to let the pain of embarrassment fade over time, at least to the point where his creativity and motivation dip below his laziness and forgetfulness.

We had some rules: no messing with food (that can escalate to poison too quickly), no messing with sleep (we both had a hard enough time napping at work as it was). I also have the self imposed rule that whatever I did had to be barely noticeable, so as to carry on the pain over the maximum time before the victim decides to take action. I'm not sure if Dante had a level of hell for people like me, but I imagine it will include sulfur filled whoopee-cushions and 240v joy-buzzers.

SO, I wanted to get him good. Being a geek I knew his greatest pride, and hence his greatest target, was his computer. I learned a neat trick that would have his computer boot up in "safe-graphics" mode. This makes the picture really big and lacking in colour. It can be overridden, but this takes a few changes and would not remain after a reboot.

April Fools was on a Saturday, so I made the change on a Friday afternoon, knowing his next reboot would be on the weekend. I figured he would expect to be safe with April Fool's being on a Saturday.

He came in on Monday frustrated. He had spent the weekend trying to remove whatever virus had infected his machine to cause the graphics to fail on each reboot. I offered almost helpful suggestions, as did our other co-worker. Nothing seemed to work, and he didn't clue in to accuse me. He was almost ready to format his computer and start again, but I dissuaded him for a few minutes while we "researched".

I then arranged one of the temp data entry clerks to drop in, having told her how to fix it. She played the part perfectly, walking in, fixing the computer, and then saying that she had the same problem at home and a techie friend had fixed it for her. Then she left.

When I recovered my composure I broke the news that it was me. Amazingly he and I are still friends, although I'm sure that he is plotting something terrible for me some time in the future. I guess I deserve it, and I'm glad I can still sleep safely.