By Joe Moskwa
I missed a week. I’m wondering how many of you I disappointed by not giving up the tips last week on how to drive your co-workers insane. You should be ashamed of yourselves for wanting to torture other office folk!
But I’m nothing if not a sap for populist zeal. If you, the reader, have the urge to harass your fellow inmates in the cubicle prison you call work, I won’t be the one to deny you. In fact, I’ll offer instruction on how to do it most effectively.
I’ll start with something simple today. Here’s a list of live animals I’ve actually let loose into an office building full of roughly 300 co-workers. This list is in order of how much fun can be derived from letting nature loose in an office environment.
Sometimes I really scare myself.
A bluegill fish: I left this one swimming in a plugged bathroom sink. People went into the restroom to do their business and were confronted with a washbasin aquarium.
Grasshoppers: Did you know they could get caught in a woman’s long hair? I didn’t. Crickets were much the same except they’re louder. You could hear them throughout the office, but as you got closer to their hidden locations, they would go silent. Fun!
A snake: Forget Snakes on a Plane, garter snake in an office is the ultimate terror.
Editor’s note: I wanted to find a Sam Jackson clip from the movie to plug in here. Unfortunately, most were anything but “office safe†so I’ll treat you to another of my favorite bits involving Jules Winnfield. It doesn’t have anything to do with Joe’s topic, but a three-minute sidebar won’t kill you. Besides, I have it on good authority that Joe and Chris Chelios are tight.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx0tm8IQf30&feature=related[/youtube]
A mouse: In all honesty, I thought the snake would cause more of a commotion. On thing I did learn is that secretaries absolutely cannot tell the difference between an ordinary mouse and a sewer rat. You would have thought the little guy’s name was Ben or something. It was kinda like this…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrFThZgZ9Nw&feature=related[/youtube]
Okay, maybe not that bad, but close enough.
A bird: I caught the bird in my basement and set it free… at the office. I mistakenly thought he’d like to come to work with me. The bird actually just kinda found a corner and chilled. I was hoping for a Hitchcockian-type of attack, but it was still fun.
But what was the all-time winner?
Bees: Just nine or ten of them is all it takes. You would sware a swarm of little kamikaze pilots were laying waste to the office. The screams, good lord you’d think the place was on fire.
(And you wonder why I don’t work there anymore.)
I really did find an actual snake. Locating a fish is easy enough. Heck, ten-cent goldfish will suffice. How do you get ten bees? With a DustBuster. It works.
Need a couple little tricks that don’t involve live animals? Try these…
Paint every single Altoid mint in a tin with Wite-Out. Then leave the tin in your office’s cafeteria. You’ll hear mutterings about those “weird-tasting Altoids”. Curiously horrible, I would say.
This may also cross the line. However, what’s the point of having a line if I’m not there to jump all over it? Post in large writing on the bulletin boards a list of who has used the most sick days so far with something like a “Top 5 Office Leaders“. Just to add to the fun, post their annual salaries next to their names. Their real salaries? No. Fake ones. Ones that start some problems. Put $35,000 and a $67,000 next to a couple of names of people that do the exact same job. The reaction to the bees is nothing compared to this.
Need more tips? Keep checking back for more interesting lists. You guys can also e-mail me if you need any more tips: joe@canon-fodder.com.
Hope you all had a good Easter. Hopefully none of you asked any of your in-laws that a newly deceased family member could maybe rise from a cave and return to us three days later – you know, like Jesus did – after you drank a gallon of wine. I’m told that would make people upset with you. At least that’s what I would assume my wife would say if she were talking to me.
In the meantime, keep checking back for regular contributions from Craig and Jeffrey, along with an occasional guest writer. As soon as you’re finished unleashing Mother Nature on your office, be sure to pass Canon Fodder around so you can potentially dodge some of the blame when management comes looking for the culprit.
See you next week.