A Lesson in Stupidity

This is the true story of a prank gone awry.

I was unpacking boxes of binders one day in my bosses office. He was out of town on business, but I told him I would take care of this while he was gone. There were 2 large boxes, to be exact, and both were filled with packing peanuts. As the clingy, annoying Styrofoam pieces fell all over the ground, I was struck with a brilliant idea. What if I were to dump all of these packing peanuts in my bosses coat closet, and when he returned the following day, they would all dump out onto the floor and all over him when he opened the door to hang up his coat. Brilliant, I tell you. Brilliant, I say. I had another coworker help me guide the packing peanuts into the closet while I held the box, then I quickly slammed the door shut. Perfect. As I looked around his office though, I saw tiny byproducts of the packing peanuts laying on the ground. I thought to myself, "self, don't leave the evidence lying around! He'll notice something is up the moment he walks in tomorrow morning." So I decided to vacuum. Let me say at this point in the story... in my defense... Even if I hadn't decided to do this lousy stinking prank that I still would have vacuumed his office floor because I would have felt bad for leaving Styrofoam particles all over the place. So I went and grabbed the vacuum. I was nearly finished sweeping when the backward motion of my arm knocked the lamp right off his desk and onto the floor. OH crap! I turned off the sweeper and ran over to the lamp on it's deathbed to assess the damage. There were tiny pieces of the lamp lying on the floor. This was bad. I picked up the lamp and the light and shade hung limp. Let me tell you something. My boss uses this lamp every morning. Right after he hangs up his coat in his closet, he walks over to his desk and turns on this lamp, because he never ever uses the overhead lights. I panicked. I thought through several ideas in order to fix it so that he would never know. I found a lady downstairs who actually had superglue in her purse and she offered it to me. I tried my best to superglue the stupid thing and no matter how long I held the plastic molding in place, each time I let it go, it fell over. So now, I had a broken lamp AND a horrible prank waiting for my boss's return. I decided to be conquered by the broken lamp and give up on that end, but remove all the packing peanuts from his closet. Then my coworker said that I would be an even bigger moron because I would have a broken lamp and no story to go with it. That sealed the deal. Until we realized that the lamp he had on the small round table in his office (where we sit for meetings) was exactly like the one he keeps on his desk! So I switched them out. Breaking the lamp he hardly ever uses was a bit more proper than breaking the one he uses every day. The only problem was, he had the cord ghetto rigged under his desk so that the cord wouldn't hang down, so I had to get the cord back in place just right. Done. I quit for the day, but went home feeling terrible.

The next day, he came in and I was in another part of the building folding mail. So I never got to see his reaction to the packing peanuts falling out, or his reaction when he saw a broken lamp on his table. I walked into his office and he started laughing and asked me what happened. I will say that hardly ANY packing peanuts fell out of the stupid closet! They all clung together in static masses. So.. I explained the entire story and he actually laughed. I grabbed the duct tape I brought from home and he helped me tape it together until I could get a replacement part (which he ended up getting) and then I cleaned up the packing peanut mess. His final statement to me about the whole matter was simply this:

"Joy, there are those who play pranks, and those who are meant to have pranks played on them. You are the latter."