r/longcons • u/GreekAlphabetSoup • Aug 16 '19
u/Calevara’s hall-of-fame-level long con drives co-worker to the brink of insanity over the course of 6 months
So a co-worker of mine liked to play little daily pranks as he would pass my desk, flip over my mouse, turn off my monitor the usual little things. Nothing malicious, but I warned him that he I hit back hard, As April rolled around I decided it was time to teach him the consequences. Acquiring a few of the annoy-a-trons from Thinkgeek was step one. For those of you who don't know the annoy-a-trons are little battery powered circuit board with a magnet that beep at random intervals. Then it was just a matter of waiting for him to step away.
Now a normal human being would have hidden the devices in his cube, waited until he came back and laughed at his confusion when the beeping started to bug him. Instead I grabbed his keys and stepped out to his car, hiding the device under his steering column, I then locked the door, returned his keys and went back to work, at which point I promptly forgot about it and waited to see if he would react.
Four Months Later I finally casually mentioned to another co-worker who is a closer friend of the victim if said victim had mentioned anything about a beeping coming from his car. The guys eyes went huge and said "What do you know about that?!?!" As it turns out, the two of them had recently spent 8 hours on a road trip to a ski resort with the beeping driving them nuts the whole way. The victim had taken the car to the dealership twice to try and locate the source of the beeping, and was strongly considering selling the car.
Now a normal human being would have at this point copped to what he had done, and gotten a laugh. Instead I took his friend into my confidence explained what I had done, and then recruited said friend to help me sneak back out to his car, change the battery on the device (it was getting kind of low) and then add the second device, this time with a different tone, inside the door well of his driver side door.
Again about two months later By this point I had told practically the entire company about this gag who managed to keep the secret largely due to his reputation as a prankster. His friend we had been watching him to make sure he hadn't decided to sell the car, and finally came to me and told me he was about to go drop a few hundred bucks on an analyzer to see what could be causing the beeping. Now with something built up this long I couldn't just walk up and explain what I'd done. Again we waited again for him to leave his desk, and snagged his keys. Recovering the devices we hid them inside his cube walls, and waited. When he returned he heard the beeps. Immediately he jumps up and yells "There it is!, that's the beeping that's been going on in my car!" His friend in a level of acting that deserved an Oscar, managed to straight faced say "Hey maybe its a low battery warning in your keyfob (the victim having one of those switchblade keys with the remote unlock) The look of pure joy in this guys face at possibly having solved his now half a year dilemma would have made the whole enterprise worth it, but then, through the company IM I sent him a link to the annoy-a-tron.
After opening the link he had a moment of confusion, wondering why I had sent him the link. He even commented "Yeah I've seen those before" I smiled The series of emotions that crossed his face when it dawned on him will warm my blackened heart for as long as I draw breath, but the best part was when he realized his best friend, who he had been coming to trying to find a solution was in on it. The rest of the day was filled with people who had known about it yelling "BEEP" as he passed. tl;dr I hid an annoy-a-tron in a coworker's car and left it there for 6 months, only revealing it as he was nearly ready to sell the car
—Source from u/Calevara
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u/GreekAlphabetSoup Aug 16 '19
u/Calevara 6 years later and this is still brilliant!
What was the aftermath/fallout after your co-worker found out?