Office fun

Many apologies for the absence.  Work has been a maelstrom of confusion and home has been fun and happy.  Between the two, I have not much news to report, or even anything particularly funny.

Well, except maybe about how I'm making fun at work despite the confusion.  (Explanation of the confusion to come later, by the way, when things are done being confusing.  If they ever are.)

My colleague who has the office next to mine was out of town for about two weeks straight, both trips to warmer locales.  He was poking me with a stick about it before he left.  Which, of course, means I need to get even with him.  I didn't have much time to put into it, so I wound up just adjusting his monitor and chair, and changing his ring tone on his office phone to the highest setting.  I figured he'd know right quick who was messing with him.

Turns out, not so much.  Once he returned, he moved the monitor and the chair back without a peep.  When his phone rang, hours later, he about jumped out of his skin and somehow didn't make the connection.

So guess who now sneaks into his office at every opportunity and turns the ringer all the way back up.  Yesterday was the best day so far, because I was on it, and recruited an accomplice.  The admin who sits outside his office is now a co-conspirator and turns up the ringer every chance she gets, too.

Yesterday afternoon, his phone rang.  It's so loud everyone in the office can hear it.  We can also hear him startle and curse before he answers it.  Then he mumbles about having a heart attack and what the f*ck is wrong with his d*mn phone, anyway?  At that point, I couldn't keep it in any longer and burst out laughing.  So did the admin.  He heard both of us and asked, "What's so funny?"  She was quick and came up with something unrelated, and then said, "I don't know what Amy is laughing about."  Thankfully, he didn't ask me, because at this point I was giggling so hard I couldn't breathe and tears were streaming down my face.

He left before me yesterday, and so I went in and upped the ringer again.  Which scared the crap out of the admin when she came in early today and went to do the same thing. We agree it's worth it, though.  We'd rather have some overlap than miss an opportunity to make Kyle pee his pants.  She's taking it to new levels, giving the IT guy a heads-up this morning that Kyle will probably come asking him to "fix" his phone.

My best office pranks have always involved a team.  This one just may trump the one that's held the record for being The Best Ever for about 15 years now.  I was leaving on a business trip where my pager (remember those?) wouldn't work, so I was going to leave it behind anyway.  I set the pager to vibrate only and had one of the technicians from the shop come up to the offices with a ladder.  He put my pager on top of the ceiling tile directly over the chair of, once again, the guy who had the office next to mine.  As I walked out the door for my trip, I paged myself.

Apparently Dave drove himself crazy for two days, trying to figure out where the short bursts of buzz were coming from.  He tore apart his office.  He tore apart my office.  It never buzzed long enough for him to zero in on it.  He got a tech and asked him to poke around in the drop ceiling.  The tech did, and found my pager with my name on it, stifled his laughter and replaced it, telling Dave, "Dude, there's nothing up here."  The pager's batteries finally wore down and it stopped buzzing, and he never did figure out what happened.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, should you ever work with me, try to not have the office right next to mine.