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A few years ago, a colleague took a weeklong course to become a certified instructor for a construction product.

When he returned, he spent several days telling everyone multiple times how life changing this class was to him.

(side note. I’m now a certified instructor-I wasn’t that life changing)

We decided we had to put an immediate stop to it.

We decided that he needed a letter from the organization informing him that he was caught cheating on the final exam and that his certification was revoked.

I wrote the letter. Our graphic designer made up a letterhear, We actually mailed the letter to the office. the HR Director hand delivered it to him. (Yep, she was in on it)

One of the Vice Presidents heard we were pulling a gag and asked to see the letter. I thought I was getting a Stop Order. Instead, he read it laughed and said “this is perfect.”

We videotaped the moment he got the letter and turned all red, stomping around the office.

Tow weeks later, we had our national sales meeting. You don’t think the video got played on the big scree for 200 people do you?

Yep.

My Aunt and Uncle worked with this guy who was a bigot, always talking about this group and that group that he hated. This was years before sensitivity training, political correctness, etc., so teaching him a lesson was left up to coworkers. He especially hated Jews so when my Aunt heard I was going to Israel she asked me to mail him some kind of a small gift from his Jewish friends.

Instead of that I made up the name of some society and wrote this elaborate letter congratulating him on being such a great friend of Israel, telling him his name was to be included in a reference book of famous Jews and that a tree was going to be planted in some memorial garden with a plaque and his name on it. I mailed it from Tel Aviv so it looked official. I know he received it because he talked about it at work.

Years later I was visiting my Aunt, now retired, and asked her if she remembered that prank I pulled. She said the man spent months trying to do research on the organization, the park, everything about the letter. There was no Google so he made trip after trip to the Library after work. She doesn't think he ever got over it. All his coworkers knew about it and egged him on about his tree and his book for years. They thought it was hilarious.