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Eff this lady and your boss.

mrsconn23mrsconn23 member
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in Wedding Woes
Dear Prudence,

I work in a small office of about 30 people. Recently a woman who is a bit of a prankster has moved into our office suite. It started off with small things like moving chairs and silly threats, but this week it escalated. While working through my lunch hour I received a call from a man telling me he was delivering 30 pizzas to my house.
I tried to explain that he had the wrong number, but he got increasingly agitated until I finally had to hang up. It turned out that the call was a recording and a prank by our office jokester. I laughed it off.

My boss (who is away on holiday) told me that she was very unimpressed with the jokester but that I handled myself professionally. She also added that she could tell “by the look on [my] face” that the call was a little upsetting. I asked how she knew I looked upset and discovered that the jokester secretly videotaped me while I was on the call and sent the footage to my manager. I am unsure how to handle this. I like a good joke as much as the next person, but I cannot help feeling as though this prankster crossed a line by videotaping me. The prankster does not report to my manager but is a close friend of hers, so I feel like my hands are tied. I did express to my boss that I was upset that I was videotaped, but that is as far as it went. How do I keep this from happening again without putting my professional relationships, or my boss’s friendship with the prankster, at risk?

—Confused
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Re: Eff this lady and your boss.

  • banana468banana468 member
    First Answer First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment
    I can imagine that if the office did not disclose you may be recorded at any time you can mention to your boss that it's a violation of your rights that you were recorded without your consent.  

    If there is an HR department I'd also go to them but I would be VERY clear to the boss that you consider this hostile and want it to stop.   

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  • charlotte989875charlotte989875 member
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    mrsconn23 said:
    I hate pranks with white-hot passion.  Reading this letter made me all sorts of ragey. 


    Same. Maybe I'm no fun, but I HATE them. 
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  • MissKittyDangerMissKittyDanger member
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    This person crossed a line with the pizza joke when they video taped LW at home.
    I'm cool with jokes - pranks if they're harmless, but I'd rather not have those - but this is beyond.

    Tbh if I was told that someone video taped me, I would be really pushing for it to be dealt with. Where was the camera? Did the person come in? What was the point of the entire thing?
    This is pushing legal boundaries from what I'm understanding, and if I were LW I would look it up to know for sure. {also gives some back up if something happens again or if it gets dropped}
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  • short+sassyshort+sassy member
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    charlotte989875 said:
    mrsconn23 said:
    I hate pranks with white-hot passion.  Reading this letter made me all sorts of ragey. 


    Same. Maybe I'm no fun, but I HATE them. 


    Me three!  Every once in a great while, I'll hear about one that is harmless, cute, and funny.

    But, the majority of the time, they're not harmless.  They cause someone lost time, lost money, embarrassment/emotional distress, and/or injury.

    And even when they are truly harmless, they're usually not even funny.  So what's the point.

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  • OliveOilsMomOliveOilsMom member
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    LW needs to make a bigger stink about this BECAUSE she was videotaped without permission.  Who the hell knows if this co-worker posted it anywhere.  I would go to HR first, if there is one.  If not I would go to boss and start using the key words like "hostile" "harassed", etc. to get them to listen and take it more seriously.

    I do prank, but nothing serious.  I do the light hearted ones where no one gets hurt.  I worked at a pizza place and during a slow afternoon, my boss called the line and ordered 20 pizzas for the trailer park within our touristy island.  Except there is no trailer park within our touristy island.  I knew this.  I could also hear him calling me because he was about 10 feet away in the office with a hollow door!  So I took the order and immediately rang it into the register (this was before computer ordering - I would have had to walk back and give the order to the pizza guy next) before he could come out to say "Gotcha".  Instead, I had it rung into the register so he would have to fix the accounting at the end of the night!  So the joke was on him!  He learned to not mess with me!

    Back to the LW, I really hope that it wasn't an actual pizza place calling her and was just co-worker disguising their voice.  Being on the employee side of a pizza place, an order that large that was fake could be detrimental to their bottom line.  We had to start calling back large orders to the hotels because we had a large fake order for a hotel once.  The food was brought back and the employees ate it so it didn't go totally to waste - but I know it ate into boss's profits that day. 

    And was LW's real address ever used?  How did the co-worker get that?  That is another huge invasion of privacy.

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  • lovesclimbinglovesclimbing member
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    banana468 said:
    OliveOilsMom said:

    LW needs to make a bigger stink about this BECAUSE she was videotaped without permission.  Who the hell knows if this co-worker posted it anywhere.  I would go to HR first, if there is one.  If not I would go to boss and start using the key words like "hostile" "harassed", etc. to get them to listen and take it more seriously.

    I do prank, but nothing serious.  I do the light hearted ones where no one gets hurt.  I worked at a pizza place and during a slow afternoon, my boss called the line and ordered 20 pizzas for the trailer park within our touristy island.  Except there is no trailer park within our touristy island.  I knew this.  I could also hear him calling me because he was about 10 feet away in the office with a hollow door!  So I took the order and immediately rang it into the register (this was before computer ordering - I would have had to walk back and give the order to the pizza guy next) before he could come out to say "Gotcha".  Instead, I had it rung into the register so he would have to fix the accounting at the end of the night!  So the joke was on him!  He learned to not mess with me!

    Back to the LW, I really hope that it wasn't an actual pizza place calling her and was just co-worker disguising their voice.  Being on the employee side of a pizza place, an order that large that was fake could be detrimental to their bottom line.  We had to start calling back large orders to the hotels because we had a large fake order for a hotel once.  The food was brought back and the employees ate it so it didn't go totally to waste - but I know it ate into boss's profits that day. 

    And was LW's real address ever used?  How did the co-worker get that?  That is another huge invasion of privacy.

    The two bolded is where I am.

    Look a prank here or there with a chair moved I'm fine with.   If you do something that causes a few seconds of relatively harmless frustration I think those are amusing.

    But this has now invaded the rights of the workplace and privacy.    If the boss does not take those seriously perhaps an attorney can help her understand why it's just not so funny.


    Prank story - in college DH's RA would go visit his girlfriend out of town every few weeks.   During one of his out of town weekends the guys on the floor (all dudes and all engineers) sheet rocked over his door.   They found the paint used on the dorm floor and made it look realistic enough that the RA came home, walked by the door and then when he was about to go into his room he realized he was a door over and it was the floor lounge.   He gave the guys a big high five and then told them to take it down and make it perfect.  

    Also, it's about knowing the person before you prank them.  So not everyone is a joker and if you don't know that person well enough to know whether or not the joke will be received well and you do something that the LW's coworker did, you're an asshole. 
    Oh yes, this. I like a good prank, but making someone worry about having to pay for 20 pizzas is not funny. 

    At my summer job, two of the permanent employees tin-foiled everything in one of the other permanent employee's cubicle on his birthday. Then, they stuck the empty tin foil rolls on my and another permanent employee's desks. It was hilarious!
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  • MesmrEweMesmrEwe member
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