One of the problems with pulling good-natured pranks or practical jokes on others, or even having them pulled on yourself, is that sometimes, cultural differences (and bad memories) come into play.
The bottom line on all of this, is that what appears funny to you, may not be funny at all to your “target” (“victim”), and vice-versa. I’m sure that you may have, during your lifetime, witnessed a prank that went wrong, just because the target didn’t react as expected.
I saw one in an AT&T office where I worked, several years ago, that was played on a co-worker. I saw nothing at all wrong with the prank, but when it was pulled on the woman who worked with us (on her birthday), she ran from the room in tears, and whatever fun we thought we were having at her expense, quickly disappeared. She went home and called in sick for the next 3 days. When she finally did return to work, all of us pretended like it had never happened, and she treated us differently, from that point on. She was no longer “fun” to work with, because, in her mind, we had betrayed whatever trust she may have had in us, with what we truly believed was an “innocent” joke.
Many months later, she finally opened up to all of us in a memo, apologizing for her reaction to our stunt, but mentioning that what we had done, reminded her (in some subtle way) of a baby of hers who had died from SIDS (“Sudden Infant Death Syndrome”) when he was just 7 months old, and none of us had known about that, prior to the stunt, because she had never shared that part of her life with us.
After that revelation, some of us realized how our antics could have reminded her of her deceased infant son, and that made us feel all the more guilty about what we had done. I don’t wish to describe all of the details of the prank we pulled on her, because in light of all of the above, someone could indeed see the so-called connection to her dead baby (if a LOT of imagination was applied) and then I and my colleagues would appear extremely insenstive in your eyes, just as we did in hers.
Even though her memo mentioned that she was forgiving us for our prank (and saying that she knew that none of us had ever been told about her past tragedy), the fact was, she was very “cool” towards us, for the remainder of the time that we worked with her, until her retirement from the company, and all of us felt very sad about that, believe me.
Some of us wrote private notes to her, expressing our regrets, but her “distance” towards us was never eased, and any friendships we may have had with her, were forever strained, just because we pulled a stupid (as it turned out) “joke” for her, on her birthday.
Shortly after that disaster, upper management at that AT&T office issued an internal memo that permanently prohibited all such office “hijinks,” promising that, “any future displays will be dealt with, severely.”
August 22, 2008, 6:13 AM EDT
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