I worked at a biotech startup about 20 years ago. - Two of the VPs at the company were named Jim Collinsworth and Peter Sachs (not their real names). - For reasons I can't remember, I was able to send emails through the company's Windows email server under any name that I wanted. - So, I merged the two VP names and I sent an email blast to the entire company from "Peter Collinsworth" (just swapping first and last nam…
The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
61–70 of 268 posts
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#62Hot take: workplace and social media April Fools jokes aren't funny and are often inappropriate and disrespectful to people's time. It's cool to do these to your friends in High school, but I once wasted a good amount of time at work because of an April's fool joke. I already didn't want to do the work so I got really upset to have wasted time doing something boring and useless. Additionally, the scale of social medi…
The university-wide email was probably too much but displaying INSERT 5 CENTS on an HP LaserJet 4 for a day is great.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#63Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#64Some Fridays (once a month?) were casual dress days where you could wear jeans instead of slacks (this was the distant past, when most professional workplaces still had real dress codes). This was an IT/Eng-wide thing, so we'd get an email reminder about this from an admin person in the department.
One time, I thought it would be funny to send my own email announcing pants-less Friday. So I took a copy of the email this admin sent and adjusted it accordingly. I did of course specify that you still had to wear underwear. I'm not a monster. Because I had programmer privileges in Notes, I was able to forge the sender so that it appeared to come from the department admin person, not me.
I _meant_ to send it to the small email group for just the other tech support folks (around 15 people or so). But I accidentally (?) sent it to all of IT/Eng, around 200-300 people, IIRC. Oops.
Needless to say, my boss's phone started ringing off the hook. I immediately went over to tell him what I'd done. He wasn't pleased, but I didn't get fired. I did have to write an apology email.
Of course, many folks in the department later told me it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen happen.
Soon after, I moved to programming at a different company. I think this was a good thing for many reasons, but one reason is that it was more challenging, so I wasn't bored with time on my hands to do stupid things like send prank emails to my coworkers.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#65I 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…
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#66The email is what turned it from being a speed bump to a major impediment to people, at least mentally.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#67Goes to show that jokes are 50% about the material and 50% about the audience.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#68Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#69TLDR: Just skip to the 7th paragraph where the story starts. For reference, see the HN thread from a few days ago: "How to write blog posts that developers read": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43503872 Edit: A few section headers might help. For example, paragraphs 2-6 could be under "Background," then add a header "The Joke" before paragraph 7. "Aftermath" might be good towards the end, too. --- BTW, taking a…
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#70I won't read this as by rule I am against everything related to pranks, and especially today of all days. I will take this space however to say that we should really do away with this nonsense.