Today I received an email from a former colleague that reminded me of one of the best pranks that I ever fell for. Even though I was the victim of this prank, it was so cleverly executed that I still think fondly of the instigators.
When I worked for Room to Read, we had an annual retreat for the headquarters employees. It was usually two days, somewhere in the Bay Area. We usually had a speaker or two, team building activities, and wine/alcohol with dinner and after.
We had two Asian men that joined close to the same time, Eric and Paul. They were close in age, both worked in Finance, and both Asian, but the similarities stopped there. For some reason, though, many employees in the organization confused the two of them.
At one of our annual retreats, a group that was going to the beach to go skinny dipping picked up my camera (not realizing whose it was) and took it with them for the evening (did I mention that I was the HR Director for the company?). The next day, I was flipping through pictures, and was very surprised at what I saw.
I sent an email to group in the photos, which included Paul, with the photos attached, and said I hoped they enjoyed their excursion to the beach, and let them know that I was deleting the photos from my camera. Paul immediately wrote me back and asked me why I had sent him naked photos of Eric. Absolutely mortified that I had confused the two employees, and potentially had sent naked pictures of one to the other, I scrolled through the pictures.
As I realized that no, the pictures were indeed of Paul (not Eric), Paul sent a simple email, “Got ‘cha!”
LoriLoo 