April Fools and Pranks

I am a sinner.

Moe

Moe (yes, his real name) is an easy going guy.  He loves people and loves interacting with them.  He could talk with anybody.  He remembers the name of your wife and kids.  He remembers their ages and what sports they play.

He has only two deficiencies.  He is an Ohio State fan and he worked in a factory infested (his word) with Spartans and Wolverines.  And he is a Luddite, he hates computers.

His job required that he fill out a standardized report at the end of each shift.  He had to log onto his computer....for the first time of the day....and then he had to enter information from the shift's run.  It took him longer than most because he had never learned to touch-type.  He was strictly a hunt-and-peck guy.

Twas April Fools day

Twas April Fools day, and little did I know that Moe and his wife were planning to jump into the truck and drive down to Eastern Ohio to visit grand kids as soon as he could get out of the building.

About an hour before the end of the shift I snuck up to his office on the second floor.  He was out on the production floor hob-knobbing with people.  He would not be up to his office until very last thing because, like most of us, he put off the parts of the job he disliked as long as possible.

I popped the "p" key and the "q" key off of his keyboard and swapped them.  I did the same for the "m" and the "n".  Then I stealthily snuck down the back stairway and went about my business.

Five minutes after quitting time

Five minutes after quitting time I was overcome with remorse.  My original plan had been to switch the keys back the next morning.

I went back upstairs. Moe was standing in the center of his office screaming into the telephone at some poor fellow in Bangalore.  Moe's face was suffused with rich shades of magenta and purple.

Picture from HERE.  Many other beautiful photos at this site.

"Mellow Moe", the guy also known as "Moe Betta" was on the verge of heaving his computer through the plate glass window.

He was on his third password reset.  It appears that his original password had either an "m", "n", "p" or a "q"  in it.  The IT center in Bangalore had a stock password that changed each day.  It appears that the stock password also had an "m", "n", "p" or a "q" in it.

The poor fellow in Bangalore was trying to figure out how to expedite a computer replacement and still manage a hard-drive swap.  You see, somebody had set up Moe's desktop and he was incapable of navigating on anybody else's computer.

I quietly sat down in his chair and switched the keys back.

Aftermath

Mostly I am going to leave that to your imagination.  It was at least a month before I could look Moe in the eye.  His face would turn red every time he saw me.

In some ways I was lucky.  He could have had a stroke.  He could have been so late that he had a traffic accident.  He could have pitched the computer out of the second story window and hurt somebody.  The company could have scrapped out a perfectly good computer.

Moe is a perfectly mature adult.  Except when he is sitting in front of a computer.  Then he is a child.  It is cruel to play "mean" tricks on children.  Even when the child is in his fifties.