I used to work with this guy at a furniture store who loved to play elaborate pranks on his coworkers. Let's call him Farley. One of his favorites involved the telephone. Farley would take his lunch breaks and wait for a while, until we'd forgotten he'd even left.
Then the phone would ring. It was an irate customer, frantically screaming their head off. What was that, you'd say? Your furniture is late? We lost the invoice?
Farley did this about once a week, so it's not like we didn't suspect it was him on the other end. But you couldn't say anything because...what if it really was Mrs. Ballenger who has the wrong sofa in her living room right now? What if it really is someone who's lamp is five months late? Farley used to perform on Broadway, so like a parrot, he could imitate anyone male or female over the phone. So, you'd sit there trying to figure out if it was him, being polite as the disgruntled customer's complaints would get more and more bizarre, and the requests completely outrageous.
Finally, the customer would start giggling. The giggle would turn into a howl. You'd stop searching in that stack of purchase orders or whatever you were doing and start yelling.
"You little shit!"
"I got you! I got you!"
After a few times falling for this one, I was ready for some payback. So, me and Marina tried to get him back using the same prank, but Farley was too wiley. He'd always recognize our voices before we could even get going.
So I thought of a different prank. Farley had this pair of opera binoculars he would use every day to spy on the cute young man who lived in the apartments across from the store. He'd slobber and obsess over this man and drive us all nuts. So one day he left on his lunch break and I hid his binoculars elsewhere in his desk. But it got ugly and he accused me of stealing, and it wasn't very funny.
We had to get Farley back and it had to be something simple. Then we remembered the lists. The manager of the store used to dictate to-do lists in his absence on the weekends and the office girl, Rebecca, would type them up and put them on each of our desks. We got ahold of Farley's list and concocted a fictional version of it and laid it on his desk.
Dear Farley,
can you please do the following chores today:
1. water and feed all the plants in the showroom
2. alphabetize the catalogues in the back
3. clean the sink and mop the bathroom floor
4. move all four of the sofas from the front of the showroom into the basment
5. clean the entire ceiling
6. help Rebecca process PO's
7. move all four sofas from the basement back up to the front of the showroom
8. clean the entire ceiling again
9. take all the alphabetized catalogues and shove them in your ass
Farley came in to work that day, we were all silent. He sat down, picked up his list, put on his glasses and picked it up again and started reading. He read the first few items, nodding his head and making little grunts and sighs. We were all silent. Rebecca was pretending to type. I had my head in a filing cabinet drawer to hide my smirk. Then Farley read the next few items. He stopped. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, rereading it with this look on his face that I'll never forget. His salt and pepper eyebrows scrunched together, looking at the page all serious and angry. That was almost enough to make me pee my pants, and I had to crouch down behind the filing cabinet completely and put my hand over my mouth. Finally, the smile broke on Farley's face, he looked up and we all cracked up laughing.
See, it just takes a little while to come up with the perfect prank. But when you do, it's very satisfying.
