April Fools Day

So I'm still on a hiatus from pranks after my spectacular one a couple years back. Here's how it went down.

We worked with this guy, I won't give his name, but he was a little paranoid and crazy and obsessive compulsive and psychotic. Anyway, since I tend to be a total dick I pushed this guys buttons all the time driving him more and more insane.

One June day at work, just before lunch, he comes up to my desk and says "See you later." I assume he means later in the day, but then he asks me to help him carry his shit out to his car. Apparently we drove him so nuts that on a whim, with no other job lined up, he resigned just before lunchtime, and about a month before his stock was going to vest. Definite dumb move for a startup.

Anyway, after he leaves I sit down for lunch with SGreth and Codemonkey and we ponder the weirdness of the morning, and the resignation and everything else. I notice that his lunchbag is still in the fridge, and that he had totally forgotten it in his haste to spontaneously resign. The lunchbag became a surreal object. Week after week when the fridge was cleaned out we'd check to see if it had been thrown out, but apparently whoever was cleaning the fridge thought that it was just being cycled in and out daily and hadn't been sitting there for months.

As April Fools Day approached the next year, I came up with a plan - a brilliant plan. One day during our Starbucks run we made a stop at another store where I bought some latex gloves and a surgical mask. The plan was to open the 10-month-old lunchbag, extract the contents, then FedEx them to this guy that was already a total whackjob. The plan was obviously sound, but I did have fears that the contents of the bag, having been in the fridge, might not be gross at all. After I opened it I was far from disappointed.

Donning the gloves and surgical mask, I took the lunchbag to an unused cubicle at the office. There I slowly unzipped the bag and got the first whiff of the scent. Lets just say I could have smeared dogshit under my nostrils to keep me from getting grossed out. Everything in the bag was covered with a fine layer of moldy powder. At least I had planned on the mask. One item at a time I carefully extracted from the bag and placed in the FedEx box:

• 1 banana - Almost unrecognizable. After turning black, apparently bananas work other parts of the color spectrum. This one was part brown, part orangish white, and felt like the inside was filled with liquid soap

• 1 sandwich - From what i can tell, it was once tuna, but it no longer looked that way. The bread was entirely covered in green, brown and black mold. Folding up a corner to identify the sandwich I found the tunaish contents to have taken on an entirely different color and consistancy. The tuna was particualrly greenish, and it too had changed consistancy to something more jelly-ish.

• 1 bag of unknown leftovers - Whether this was a piece of beef, chicken, fish, or whatever it was completely unrecognizable. It was entirely coated in mold, and if not for the grill marks I wouldn't have been able to identify it at all.

• 1 pickle - The pickle was wrapped in foil, but apparently not tight enough. The pickle was so soft to the touch that my finger pierced the side of it even though i was operating so gently as not to destroy the contents.

• 1 sealed candy bar - No degradation. I contemplated just throwing this out, but I figured I'd throw him a bone and toss it into the FedEx box anyway.

After sealing the box it was FedEx'd off to his last known address. I never did get to see the results of the prank, but I'm sure it was spectacular. I can only imagine the look on his face when the package arrived. Being that calling him "unstable" would be a compliment to begin with, there is no telling how this prank would go over. We later found out that he went totally nuts for a while, not from the April Fools prank, but just in general, and then found medication. He showed up on Facebook about a year ago and I sent him a friend request, but for some reason he denied it. :)

Took this year off from April Fools pranks again, but one of these years I'll make my triumphant comeback...

D