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The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

oldvcr.blogspot.com

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Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#171

Post by eastbound »

romanhn wrote: post #112
oldgradstudent wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We used Lotus Notes for email My condolences.

To this day, 22 years after I have last used Lotus Notes, it remains the worst software product I have had to work with. It tried to be everything and ended up being bad at all of it.

F5 to close Lotus Notes. On every app including MS Outlook, F5 was to refresh / fetch the new email, except in Lotus Notes. In Lotus Notes it just means “lose your work”. Can’t believe it didn’t start as an April Fools, like Gavin Belson’s Signature box.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#172

Post by wat10000 »

freehorse wrote: post #159
wat10000 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point is to measure what really matters to the business, instead of measuring time.

Not every second of working time has the same level of productivity/value. Having a clock that measures time in dollars makes no sense because it assumes some linear relationship between them.

No, it assumes some linear relationship between pay and time. Which is a little iffy for salaried workers, but only a little.

My employer gets about 40 hours/week of "work" from me, whatever that might consist of. I cost them $X every two weeks in pay and benefits. It's pretty reasonable to say my attendance in a one-hour meeting has a $X/80 cost to my employer.

You don't need to overcomplicate this. The employment relationship is pretty simple at its foundation: the employer buys the time of its employees.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#173

Post by refulgentis »

afro88 wrote: post #168
subroutine wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It seems like hardly anyone got to experience the fun part of the prank - the number of people who actually saw INSERT 5 CENTS on their VFD panel was probably close to zero given "By 8:30am it was chaos". So for 99.9% of people the entirety of the prank was a dry email stating campus was going to start charging for printing, which was true.

For 99.9% of people, the funny of the prank would only hit later. Ie, upon finding out it was a prank, and hearing about the "insert 5 cents" part that they probably didn't see with their own eyes. Plus the retraction, and 2nd retraction. And reactions of other staff who fell for it (and caused chaos) before 8:30. And then extra value upon retelling all of the above to others.

Someone relating that sequences of events to me as funny, especially if they said it was only funny after the pileup, would significantly adjust my prior as to dark triad characteristics in their psychology.

"prank" = IT guy sent campus wide email saying some printers will now charge $0.05/page

"that they probably didn't see with their own eyes" = they did not check physically very every printer on campus to verify none of the printers had the characteristic, the only way to falsify what the IT guy said, that some printers had a characteristic.

"Plus the retraction, and 2nd retraction." = 3x the time wasted for everyone on campus

"And reactions of other staff who fell for it" = people who believed the dry email from IT

"(and caused chaos)" = chaos isn't funny

"And then extra value upon retelling all of the above to others." = It sounds like we're assuming the relayer would get value from relating this, but the extra value is to the listener, it'd only harm the relayer.

As a listener, now I know that I have to verify 100% of everything the relayer tells me. They think a good prank is when you leverage your professional role to lie and cause chaos, which is justified because those poor sheep were complaining about something they didn't even verify with their own eyes. i.e. thousands of people should have gone through an absurdly onerous verification rather than trust communications you make in your professional role.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#174

Post by norir »

glenstein wrote: post #36

I think the real value in this writeup up of a clever little prank is the way the author/prankster could map out the social reactions and how the spirit in which the prank was received cascades through a whole entire organization in ways that hinge on little cues, little things about who knows who and whether you're physically present before a particular impression crystallizes in people's minds. It's just such a gre…

The trickster is indeed an ancient archetype that can bring both wisdom and chaos. Historically, however, my understanding is that prior to Plato, essentially all knowledge, including philosophy, was understood to be received from divine sources. It was through the Socratic dialogues that the idea of knowledge as being something gained through human reason gained a foothold.

One could easily argue then that Plato was essentially a prankster and what we know as western civilization is a consequence of his trickery.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#175

Post by jsphweid »

I pranked someone (probably not on April Fools) at an office job I had in High School decades ago. I had a summer job digitizing documents.

I discovered that I could access the Startup folder on other employee's machines on the network via Windows Explorer. I put a script in one of my very rule-following co-worker's folder that was something like: dir dir dir dir (x100) echo All files have been deleted.

I watched them from around the corner when they booted up, saw the flood of file names flash across the screen, and flipped out when they read the message at the bottom. They reached for phone immediately to call the IT admin and I rushed out from around the corner explaining the joke. Never got in trouble. Good times.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#176

Post by selimthegrim »

johnisgood wrote: post #32
jjbinx007 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I always set my password as 8 asterisks - that way when my password gets leaked the hackers still think it's encrypted.

Makes sense! Thanks for the tip.

Bash.org salutes you.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#177

Post by subroutine »

refulgentis wrote: post #173
afro88 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 99.9% of people, the funny of the prank would only hit later. Ie, upon finding out it was a prank, and hearing about the "insert 5 cents" part that they probably didn't see with their own eyes. Plus the retraction, and 2nd retraction. And reactions of other staff who fell for it (and caused chaos) before 8:30. And then extra value upon retelling all of the above to others.

Someone relating that sequences of events to me as funny, especially if they said it was only funny after the pileup, would significantly adjust my prior as to dark triad characteristics in their psychology. "prank" = IT guy sent campus wide email saying some printers will now charge $0.05/page "that they probably didn't see with their own eyes" = they did not check physically very every printer on campus to verify n…

Me checking my inbox at 9:30am...

    7:28 New Campus Policy printing now costs 5-cents per page

    8:34 Re: New Campus Policy - April Fools! Printing is free.

    9:14 Re: Re: New Campus Policy - Printing is still free, for now.
delete, delete, mark spam

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#178

Post by refulgentis »

subroutine wrote: post #177
refulgentis wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone relating that sequences of events to me as funny, especially if they said it was only funny after the pileup, would significantly adjust my prior as to dark triad characteristics in their psychology. "prank" = IT guy sent campus wide email saying some printers will now charge $0.05/page "that they probably didn't see with their own eyes" = they did not check physically very every printer on campus to verify n…

Me checking my inbox at 9:30am... 7:28 New Campus Policy printing now costs 5-cents per page 8:34 Re: New Campus Policy - April Fools! Printing is free. 9:14 Re: Re: New Campus Policy - Printing is still free, for now. delete, delete, mark spam

Absolutely.* Does that shed any light, here? They're not claiming it is a triviality, instead, quite specifically, they are claiming the funny part is chaos and the number of people who reacted differently.

* modulo marking the IT department as spam

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#179

Post by instagib »

thruway516 wrote: post #137

This was the most hilarious part to me: That went wrong also, because my retraction said that campus administration was not considering charging per-page fees when in fact they actually were, so I had to retract it and send a new retraction that didn't call attention to that fact

Probably because they were considering more per page and 5 cents was too low.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#180

Post by whycome »

thruway516 wrote: post #137

This was the most hilarious part to me: That went wrong also, because my retraction said that campus administration was not considering charging per-page fees when in fact they actually were, so I had to retract it and send a new retraction that didn't call attention to that fact

Right? It actually kinda makes it most believable!
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