Now this is a story, all about how
My office got pranked, turned upside down.
And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there
and I’ll tell you how I got pranked by Sarah Fisher
Western Washington, born and raised,
Sarah Fisher was a manager during the Second Age.
Chilling out max and making our events,
she was pretty darn good, at making fun make sense.
Then a couple of interns, who were up to no good,
started making trouble in her neighbourhood.
They canned her one little office and Sarah got scared;
she said, “This means war, and your office won’t be spared."
The Good, the bad, and the Pranks.
Pranks have been played left, right, and centre, this internship, and most of the big ones have involved me somehow. Here’s the story of how I grossly underestimated Sarah’s threat level, and how well she could play this game.
It all started when one dev on my team, Kyle, was away until new years, and Travis, my mentor, wanted to prank him.
The plan we eventually went with was printing out many copies of Travis’ face and hiding them around the office, in obvious spots and many non-obvious spots - Kyle will be finding these for years to come.
Then Travis went to Thailand for 10 days, and there was no question as to whether I would prank him. Of course I would.
My idea for Travis was to print out a whole lot of pictures of huntsman spiders, red-back spiders, and cockroaches, and hide these around his office in the places where these animals would hide in real life.
For this, Travis called me a “lovable scamp”.
Then things started to ramp up.
Prank Wars: Sarah v. David
(Chris was also involved)
So on Sunday, I thought it would be funny to get my remaining to A4 pages of spiders and hide them around Sarah’s office, cos she would probably be more scared of the spiders than Travis (this turned out to be reasonably correct).
Chris and I were talking about this, and had just finished our can competition, and then came up with the hilarious idea of lining all our 341 cans out on Sarah’s office floor.
So, that night, at 11:30, we went to our offices and collected all 341 cans, and the many spiders and roaches left.
We went to Sarah’s office, and I went to town with the spiders, leaving some in easy-to-see spots, like on her laptop keyboard (closing the lid first, so that she would open it and be frightened), in harder spots (each in one page of a set of stickies), and in incredibly obscure spots (inside a box of tea bags).
We then arranged the cans on her floor, as per the picture, and closed the door.
Time: 12:15 am
 |
Later that day, I sat in my office, waiting for the reaction. It was not long before I receive a message: “Oh you are so funny"
Excellent.
She had found the cans.
But not all the spiders.
To add to this, later that day, after Sarah had cleaned out the cans, she came back to her office from lunch to find all the cans back on her desk, covering it entirely.
She immediately blamed me.
Funniest part: this wasn’t me. It was her coworkers, who had said to her that it was “that Australian hooligan”.
I was told this later that day during a games night. At the time, I was wondering how to enact a prank of Harley’s design: rig a koala toy to drop on her when she opened her office door. Now, Sarah had already told me that she locks her office at night, and I was wondering how I would set this up during the day without her noticing. I needed a suitable distraction ...
Cue Sarah showing me a Facebook comment by her coworker, naming and blaming me for their work with the cans on her desk.
I immediately thought, Thanks, Sarah. You just handed me your head on a plate.
I now knew his full name, and how to find him on Facebook, and that he was currently online.
Whilst Sarah played a board game, totally unknowing of my actions, I messaged this coworker, whom I shall call ‘M’, and planned the time and distraction necessary.
Come wednesday, and I’m hiding in the men’s toilets of their building, and M is waiting for Sarah to stop yakking so that they can innocently go on a coffee run ... and I was then alerted by M as soon as they left the building - "ok, we're out, go go go!".
She finally leaves, and I set to work, rigging this blasted koala up (with fangs I’d added).
She returns, opens her door …. and misses it entirely.
Why?
She was too damn short.
Ugh.
All that planning, wasted.
Then …
I come into work the next day, not expecting a thing.
...
Actually, before I go on, read these excerpts from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
Before this, Harry does not believe Snape to be any sort of intellectual threat.
>>>
A smile crossed Severus's lips. "Dear me, and I thought you were supposed to be perceptive. Are you truly so incapable of understanding your classmates, Potter, or do you dislike them too much to try? If Quidditch scores did not count toward the House Cup then none of them would care about House points at all. It would merely be an obscure contest for students like you and Miss Granger."
It was a shockingly good answer.
And that shock brought Harry's mind fully awake.
In retrospect it shouldn't have been surprising that Severus understood his students, understood them very well indeed.
He had been reading their minds.
And...
...the book said that a successful Legilimens was extremely rare, rarer than a perfect Occlumens, because almost no one had enough mental discipline.
Mental discipline?
Harry had collected stories about a man who routinely lost his temper in class and blew up at young children.
...but this same man, when Harry had spoken of the Dark Lord still being alive, had responded instantly and perfectly - reacting in precisely the way that someone completely ignorant would react.
The man stalked about Hogwarts with the air of an assassin, radiating danger...
...which was exactly not what a real assassin should do. Real assassins should look like meek little accountants until they killed you.
He was the Head of House for proud and aristocratic Slytherin, and he wore a robe with spotted stains from bits of potions and ingredients, which two minutes of magic could have removed.
Harry noticed that he was confused.
And his threat estimate of the Head of House Slytherin shot up astronomically.
<<<
and
>>>
"And perhaps I have been in Dumbledore's company too long," said Severus, "but I cannot help but wonder if that is the Cloak of Invisibility."
Harry immediately turned into someone who'd never heard of the Cloak of Invisibility and who was exactly as smart as Harry thought Severus thought Harry was.
"Oh, possibly," said Harry. "I trust you realize the implications, if it is?"
Severus's voice was condescending. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you, Potter? A rather clumsy try at fishing."
(Professor Quirrell had remarked over their lunch that Harry really needed to conceal his state of mind better than putting on a blank face when someone discussed a dangerous topic, and had explained about one-level deceptions, two-level deceptions, and so on. So either Severus was in fact modeling Harry as a one-level player, which made Severus himself two-level, and Harry's three-level move had been successful; or Severus was a four-level player and wanted Harry to think the deception had been successful. Harry, smiling, had asked Professor Quirrell what level he played at, and Professor Quirrell, also smiling, had responded, One level higher than you.)
<<<
So, in a manner similar to Harry, I believed Sarah to be a one-level player, and myself a level-two, because despite M’s inability to keep secrets, I still managed to keep Sarah double-guessing about how I accomplished some of my antics. Also, I did not have a very high threat level for her, because she behaved so innocently, as befitted an intern manager.
Then I got to work this morning.
Firstly, on the way, Chris messaged me, blaming me for the swathe of cans covering his desk.
I assured him it wasn’t me, and suspected perhaps his office mates …. until I saw my office.
Yeah.
Only one person on campus had that many juice cans.
Sarah Fisher.
Well played, Sarah, well played.
Not only that, but she didn’t do it with the other people I suspected.
Not only that, but she’d actually been planning this for days, choosing the right day so that I wouldn’t suspect.
Thing is, I didn’t suspect anything, because I had been modeling her as a level one player, and not nearly devious enough to try anything like that. She knew that I wasn’t in my office the night before, since I’d told her earlier that I’d be out with family. She picked an associate. She stored the cans.
These were all techniques I’d just used against her.
Damn.
I tip my hat.
However, that’s not the end of it.
When she taped up all those cans in my office and expected me to be inconvenienced, she forgot one very important thing, mate.
I’m Captain Jack Sparrow.
And her biggest mistake?
Doing it wednesday night.
See, if she’d planned it for thursday night, I would have no chance to respond, since I turn in my badge Friday arvo.
But she gave me one last chance to get back.
Which, of course, I did.
Thursday night, another person (call them 'Q') and I got all those cans from my office, and ... returned them.
With interest.
See, Sarah hates spiders, as I'd already noted.
So ...
We barred her sliding door closed with cans, and all those white bits of paper? Spiders.
I left a note on the door, saying Gimli's line from the battle of Helm's Deep: "I'll have no pointy-eared Elf outdo me!"
And the best part?
She can't get me back.
Now, she surely expected me to do something, and I know she knows I know this, but hey.
I am unemployed after this - she can do nothing back.
Sarah, you played well, you were an unexpected plot twist and you very nearly won.
My final prank was not as subtle, had far less finesse, and frankly could have been better.
So despite the fact that spiders are still hidden in your office, I'll call it a draw.
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