Snake Prank Day
A series of stories
As sometimes happens, I got in a storytelling mood. As a result, I decided to skip the previous (and next!) Friday Medley, instead doing a full post of several stories. I hope you enjoy!
When I was at Microsoft Office over a decade ago, pranks were a small part of the culture. The most common prank involved redecorating a colleague’s office while they were on a long vacation. Another common one was celebrating a long tenure (eg. 10 year anniversary) by doing something… memorable. There wasn’t always a reason, though. Sometimes it was just for fun.
Now a friend of mine had come into possession of a great toy snake. Five feet long, reasonably realistic in dim light, and the best part was that it moved well. When the snake was thrown or dragged the rubber would wriggle in a fairly lifelike way.
Great for pranks.
Here is a contemporary picture of the snake (please forgive my 2012 potato-quality picture).
Having seen the potential of the snake at another event, I wanted to bring the snake in for a day at the office and see what fun we could have.
Some of the detail escapes me, but I made a very formal request to borrow the snake. This included creating, printing, and filling out a “Request For Snake” form styled after those boring, bureaucratic government documents one sometimes interacts with.
I dug the document out of my archives to take a screenshot:
My request was approved, I picked up the snake, and after some brainstorming about what might be fun I selected a day to become Snake Prank Day.
Here are three events from that day.
The Tech Lead
I arrived at the office extra early that day. I wanted the extra time to be able to do a more elaborate setup. My tech lead was reliably one of the first in the office but hadn’t arrived yet, so I decided to start with him.
I went to his office the next hallway over, bringing the snake and some very thin wire. Now all our offices had automatic lights with motion-sensitive triggers. The light came from a large fluorescent light fixture hanging from the ceiling. I rigged up the snake with wire, tying the tail end to the light fixture, the front end to the top of the door frame, and with a guiding wire attached to the door itself. The result was that the snake hung in the air, at about my eye level, and wiggled around when the door opened. I tested it a few times, and with the light just turning on and the snake wriggling around it kind of looked like the snake was jumping down at you. So I chilled nearby and waited for him to arrive.
Eventually, my tech lead came walking up the hallway to his door, and I could see that he was engrossed in his phone. He opened the door and walked on in, never taking his eyes off his dang phone. He's decently shorter than me, and he walked right under the waving snake and didn't see it! Just sat down at his computer and started replying to emails.
It wasn’t until 5 or 10 minutes later, when he got up to grab some coffee, that he finally noticed something hanging from the light fixture. By then, the snake had stopped moving, he was looking at it from behind, and it was more weird than startling. He stared at it, puzzled.
Total prank failure.
The Boss
I was disappointed but undeterred. The office was still pretty empty so, after retrieving the snake and cleaning up the wire, I decided to try again with a simpler setup. I noticed my boss wasn’t in yet so I went to her office.
Now at the time, we were all preparing to move to a different floor of the building. As a result, we had a bunch of boxes lying around and my boss had her office half-packed up. There was this stack of boxes right in the middle of the floor.
So I looked around, found an empty box, and put the snake in it. I placed the box upside down on top of the stack, figuring that when my boss moved the box to investigate, the snake would fall out or at least wave around for a good startle. There was nowhere good to wait, so having finished my extremely simple setup, I went back to my office and got lost in my work.
I was down the hall, around the corner, with my door closed, my headphones in, and my music playing. And I still heard the scream. I got up and quickly headed towards my boss' office. She stood in her doorway while other folks were peeked out to see what was going on. Since, you know, screams are kind of unusual in a Microsoft office.
Every time my boss saw a new face she pointed at them accusingly, saying “Did you do this?” As I walked up she saw another colleague and said “Did you do this?” Our colleague replied “Did I do what?”. Boss just points at the box. Colleague looked inside, smiled, and said “I wish I did that.”
Then my boss saw me approaching, she locked eyes on me, and simply said “Will”. I responded with “Oh, hey, you found my snake. Thanks! I was wondering where that went.” I nonchalantly tossed the snake over my shoulder and headed back to my office.
Now she had words for me about it later, plenty of words, but at the time she was flabbergasted. Just speechless.
Total prank success.
The Uninvited Guest
I’m pretty sure there were a few other attempts that day, but they weren’t memorable. By the end of the day, I had had my fun and was finished with pranks. I was working in my office and the snake was sitting in a box on a shelf, waiting to head home. Then a colleague from another team appeared in my doorway.
He greeted me, and I removed my headphones to respond. He asked if he could borrow my tape. I told him that I didn’t have any tape in my office. He insisted that I must have some tape lying around somewhere. I reiterated that I was pretty sure I didn’t have any tape, but I stood up and looked at my shelves to humor him.
While I was searching, he stepped into the room and sat down right in my chair. Made himself comfortable. Even kicked his feet right up on my desk. I was annoyed. That just wasn’t gonna fly around here. That wasn’t happening.
So I reached into the box containing the snake and said “Oh, you know, I do have some tape in here.” My colleague gave me this kind of smug look and said “See, I knew you'd have some”. Then I turned and tossed the snake right into his lap.
He bolted right out of my chair, dumping the snake on the floor. Not stopping there, he continued to backpedal through the doorway and into the hall before catching himself in another doorway. After a moment he realized the snake was fake and looked at me with astonishment. I said “Oh, sorry, I thought that was tape”.
My colleague then decided he’d be better off visiting the supply cabinet.
Fun Times
I suppose I should put some caveats here. This post is purely descriptive, it isn’t a suggestion that you should play pranks, or that this somehow made for a great company culture. I’ve worked with companies, teams, and people who would have taken this very poorly. Know your audience.
But remember to have fun with your work and your coworkers. Whether it’s pranks, morale events, bonding over your pets, or whatever does it for you and your team. Have some fun times.
We’re all in this together.