Working with HighSchoolers
I came in this morning and watched something unfold that reminds me of highschool - and not in a good way. This morning a co-worker came in and saw that his cube had been filled with all kinds of stuff - boxes of tickets, trash can, all kinds of stuff. Making it clearly impossible for him to even enter his cube - let alone work there. Clearly, this was a prank. It happens quite often around here - for a business office. If this were a movie theatre and we were all still in highschool, then it'd happen more often, but we're not, and so it really shouldn't happen at all, but it happens every couple of months.
This time, it was too far.
The guy who was pranked took all the stuff out of his cube and started filling up the alleged prankster's cube. I asked him in the process of this "re-pranking" how he knew this was the guy. He was angry and pointed out to me that this guy had hassled him all day Friday after he asked someone to move some boxes because they were in the way of him getting to a few machines he had to work on. Not an unreasonable request, and handled very politely.
The prankster thought differently. Or so the prankee thought.
When the alleged prankster arrived to see his cube filled with crud (some of which was new to the re-pranking), he walked over to the re-prankster and said "It wasn't me. I know you think it was, but it wasn't me. Can you help me clean this up?"
"Nope. I don't believe you." he replied.
This continued for about 15 mins each one trying to convince the other that they were in the right. That's the thing with pranks - you think it's nothing, so why get all upset about it, but when someone gets upset, as they have every right to, the praknster gets offended and makes it about the intolerance of the prankee.
Yup, highschool, all right.
In the end, I have a feeling this is going to escalate until management gets involved. These guys have been at this for years and years, and it's not stopped yet, so I have no reason to believe that it will stop with this re-pranking. Who knows... maybe it will. I sure hope so because I have no desire to be collateral damage in this fight.