Mike Brennan, Bluffton

Many years ago. I worked in an office environment that was very upbeat — that is to say that it was a very loose office. Our supervisor was basically "one of the boys." Of course he was our "boss" — he ensured the office was run efficiently and he gave us our evaluations but there was never the sharp demarcation between the boss and the worker bees that exist in a lot of offices. He loved a good joke as well as anyone.

On April 1 of one year the office staff hatched a gag. We recruited someone (voice unknown to our boss) to call him up and say words to this effect, "Are you so-and-so, do you live at such-and-such location, etc.?” After establishing who he was, our "gagster" asked, “Why didn't you tell me you were moving? As the apartment manager for this building, you just can't pull a moving van up to your apartment and move out without giving us 30 days’ notice. The movers are finishing up and they are now bringing down your big TV (for that time period) and your bed.”

We heard this big yell and our boss (who incidentally was fairly young and in very good shape) slammed down the phone and started running out of the building out to the parking lot.

Fortunately, it was good that we had some athletes on our staff who were able to catch him in the parking lot before he could tear out of there. They had to tell him it was a joke. He was probably not very happy but when he came back into the building we all yelled "April Fools" and to his credit, he laughed along with the rest of us although his face was red. The rest of the time that I was a member of his staff, he was always on extra alert every April Fools’ Day.