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Here's my best one to date:

About 15 years ago my company got a new phone system at the main office. We went from 3 lines to 17 lines and received fancy new desk phones. For ten days after everyone in the company received a daily memo from the communications company detailing some new feature the phone and service offered.

The day before April Fools Day I took the phone company letter head and made up a bogus memo that read:

TO: All XYX Company Business Phone Users

From: Joe Blow, Systems Engineer (name changed to protect the guilty)

Please be advised that on 4/1/91 we will be cleaning the business phone lines at your location.

High pressure air will be injected into the fiber optic cables to purge the system of accumulated dust and debris.

We recommend wrapping your phone’s handset in a plastic bag to prevent the expelled dust and debris from settling into your phone’s key punch pad.

The cleaning will begin promptly at 10:00 am and last for approximately 30 seconds.

Please take the necessary precautions to minimize any inconvenience of this required service.

I took three (read, 3) of these memos and put them on the desk of the people who I figured would fall for this, along with a nice waste basket size white plastic bag.

The next morning, April Fools Day, at about 9:30 one of these three people starts to make it her business to find out who in our office does not have a bag for their phone. She starts a panic about some type of phone company test, where “they’re going to blow out the lines!”. Shes running around telling everyone they had better cover up their handset.

At about 9:50am I started walking through the building and EVERYONE had their phone wrapped in plastic. There were people talking with a bag wrapped around the hand set…overhead one saying in a loud voice..”Its some kind of test, they’re blowing out the lines” to the person she was talking to. I’m starting to feel like a kid who through a baseball through his dad’s car windshield and dad is going to find out real soon who did it.

A couple of minutes before 10:00 I go up to the reception area to make a system wide page announcing “April Fools!”. At 10:00 the phones are ringing but no one is answering. I’m holding the phone in my hand to make the page and the company President walks by and says, “PUT THE PHONE DOWN, YOU’RE GOING TO GET SPRAYED IN THE FACE!” By this time I’m laughing so hard I can hardly speak.

I make my announcement “Attention all of you with a bag on your phone, April Fools.” There was Dead Silence. Not a sound. Then I hear murmers and “I’m gonna kill him”, “He’s gonna get it”, etc.

Final count 27 phones bagged. I went and worked in a branch office at a neighboring city for two weeks before going back into the main office. Its been 10 years and I still get grief for that prank.

Two Lessons learned: #1. Panic spreads like wildfire. If people are not given time to logically consider the facts of a situation, they will become like cattle and follow the stampeding herd. #2. Never make the president of your company look like a fool.