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The PETCO corporate office isn’t that different from other offices except that most everyone has a pet of some sort in their cube.
Over the years I have played a number of pranks on my coworkers on or around April Fool’s Day. I have gotten quite a bit of retribution for these pranks but it was well worth it. Here are my top 3 office pranks.
#3 AutoCorrect = Fun
Microsoft Word has a great feature that most people use every day and don’t even know about called AutoCorrect. The basic idea is that some words are misspelled so often that Word will immediately correct them for you without asking permission. For example, if you type “acheive”, Word will automatically replace it with “achieve”.
Here is how you have fun with AutoCorrect.
My next door cube neighbor Shannon (who writes for this blog) was away from her desk for a minute. I jumped onto her computer and quickly added a new entry in her AutoCorrect. Every time she typed the word “the” it would be replaced with “hot dog”. An hour later Shannon called me over to help with “tech support”. She isn’t a touch typist so she had written an entire letter without looking at the screen. When she started proof reading she was shocked to see “hot dog” interspersed dozens of times in her letter. He he.
#2 Key Switch
It is surprisingly easy to pop off the keys on a standard keyboard. You just need to wedge something under the key and apply a little pressure. I found that those long metal letter openers work the best.
One evening I had to work late and was the last person in my department. I went from cube to cube and switched the M and N keys on every person’s keyboard, including my own.
I made sure to arrive early the next morning to enjoy the results of my “experiment”. Most of my coworkers were touch typists and didn’t notice a problem right away. Pretty soon I started to hear confused exclamations from my surrounding cubes. People were convinced that it must be a problem with their computer, not their keyboard, since all their cubemates (including me) had the M in front of N.
#1 Spanish in a Hurry
Note a real P.A.L.S. card. Notice my poor Photoshop job and the horrible translation.
This prank is pretty elaborate.
My first job at the PETCO corporate office was answering calls in the Customer Relations department. The majority of people who called us spoke English but we did get the occasional Spanish speaker. In those rare cases we kindly asked the customer to please hold and we transferred them to one of the two agents who spoke Spanish.
For this April Fool’s Day prank the other supervisors and I convinced everyone in the call center that we would start getting a huge influx of Spanish speaking callers because of some incorrectly printed signs in our stores that said all agents spoke Spanish. A week before April 1st we told them about the sign “problem” an instructed them that they needed to learn basic Spanish in a hurry because our two Spanish speaking agents were going to be swamped. To make sure we weren’t discovered we had employees in other departments play along and send bogus emails explaining the signage snafu. We even went so far as to print up “cheat sheets” of common phrases in Spanish that agents would need to know to answer customer questions.
Here are some sample phrases from the cheat sheet:
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Customer English: What is the status of my Free Food?
Customer Spanish: Cual es el estado de alimento gratis?
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Agent English: OK, I can help you with that. May I have your new address please?
Agent Spanish: OK, yo le puedo ayudar con eso. Cual es su direcion nueva?
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Agent English: thank you for calling PETCO
Agent Spanish: gracias por llamar a PETCO
Even after all this there were a few skeptical agents who thought it was just too convenient that we were going to start receiving all these calls on April 1st.
On the morning of April 1st multiple agents started reporting calls from customers who were speaking Spanish. One agent even yelled out after a call “It’s real! It’s real! I just got a call in Spanish!”
You see, everyone who was in on the prank contacted all the people they knew that spoke Spanish and asked them to call 888-824-PALS and start asking random questions, about pets, in Spanish. The plan worked so well that when we told everyone at noon that the whole thing was a prank they didn’t believe us at first. “But, if it was a prank why did we get all those calls in Spanish?” we were asked. They just couldn’t believe we would go to all that trouble to fool them.
Have you pranked, or been pranked, by someone in your workplace? Tell us about it.
You are so funny and creative, Dan. I’m glad those pranks weren’t played on me, though. I would have been frustrated!
You would have been frustrated at first… then would have plotted on how to get revenge.
That’s too funny! I wish I had a job that cool and fun!
I STILL triple check my emails since the ‘hot dog’ incident. Ha! Spanish in a Hurry was my favorite! Hmmm… what can we expect from Daniel today?
There’s evil afoot in the PETCO Customer Relations dept again today. This time, instead of pranking the team, I had the ENTIRE call center request time off during a specific week. And each request was for a really good reason so that the supervisor who makes the schedules would grant the request. She is in a total panic about how to provide great service to our customers during a week when it looks like only 3 people will be working. They are all sending her an “April Fools” email in about 20 mins revealing our big gag. Tee hee.
At my last job, my coworker tied a few elastic bands from my chair to my pullout keyboard drawer.
It was annoying.
As part of the customer relations team, it has always been so much fun to see the pranks in action. The spanish prank was pulled off with great detail. I was new to the team at the time and totally bought it.
Today’s prank will go down as classic. My counterpart handled it very well too. It is awesome to work with great folks who have a great sense of humor.
I also see another problem here. GREAT EXPECTATIONS from your co-workers. i.e. WHAT is Daniel going to do THIS year?
Seriously. I haven’t done anything in a few years because expectations were too high. I am laying low for a while and biding my time.
Ah, the practical joke culture at PETCO. So many memories I would never commit to print…
It’s so funny how I was there to experience all of the top 3 pranks. Spanish in a Hurry was so scary and funny at the same time! All I got this April Fool’s Day was scotch tape under my mouse, which I figured out right away:) – thanks Jeff.
Wow that sounds like a lot of fun. Working inside the store we don’t have enough time to play pranks on each other. It sure would be fun if we did.
The “hotdog” prank was good, must check it out…. Daniel, we’re so glad you enjoy your job, a true dream job where you work hard and enjoy it with such zest….. Now that’s one way to keep your employees on their toes! Somebody is going to enjoy a little revenge, and you’ll never know when! Thanks for sharing!
Susan Rosenberg had a few pranks of her own this year! Before leaving for the day she sent out an email stating the Sports Arena Store had received several ostrich eggs that were beginning to hatch and she was on her way to help out!
This after telling everyone she was packing up her office as April 1st was her last day!
Great pranks! I think the best one was when I thought someone stole my mouse. I looked everywhere for it and eventually sent out an annoyed email to everyone I thought could be responsible for it. I got a response back saying “check the back of your montior.” Lo and behold, taped to the back of my computer was the mouse!!!
I won’t name any names for the sake of privacy (cough *Matt Rhodes*