Those who know me well also know my love for a good laugh.  Many an April Fools’ Day past involved elaborate schemes to cajole my unsuspecting colleagues into a web of increasingly humiliating situations for a brief moment of “humor”.  I put humor in parenthesis because, as I found out on several occasions, not everyone finds these situations to be very funny.

So how does on approach this 24 hour window of alleged hilarity?  Let’s get some expert opinions:

• Popular Mechanics offers five do-it-yourself pranks you can pull on your office mates.  I’m personally torn between the refrigerator handle switch and the office filled with packing peanuts.
• Zug.com offered a contest for the funniest office prank.  Fairly elaborate but no one got hurt in the end.
• CNN and CareerBuilder.com posted an article on the Top 10 April Fools’ Work Pranks based upon responses from their annual survey, which found that roughly one-third of us are on the giving or receiving end of a workplace prank each year.
• This morning’s HR Executive article provides a light-hearted air of caution for today’s workplace jokers, including a funny (but risky) tale of pulling one over on the HR department itself.

If you do fall victim, follow the sage advice of SelfGrowth.com’s Anger Management Tips - “Even saying a phrase like ‘Serenity Now,’ popularized by Frank Costanza on the classic sitcom Seinfeld, can actually have a positive impact on how you feel.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 9:53 am and is filed under General Thoughts, Human Capital/Human Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.