Prank shows Corporate Paranoia

A few years ago I had a technician that I loved to tease. She enjoyed a good joke and you know me the prankster. One of the best tricks I played on her was with ThinkGeek's Evil Tron:

It's a little batter-powered device that will make creepy noises at random intervals... not very loud, but just loud enough to be annoying. One of the sounds it will make is a whispering voice that says, "Hey, what are you doing?"

It also has a magnet so you can stick it to something metal. So I bought one and hid it really well in the pharmacy, under a metal shelf under one of our phones. The joke played well and the technician and I had a good laugh over it. I don't remember but I must have turned it off at some point and left it where it was so I could try a different sound at a different place in the future with another technician. 

Time went by and the Evil Tron was long forgotten... one year, two years... a change of technicians... and then one day I come into the pharmacy and the pharmacy manager and an RPM are standing there, staring at something on the counter... the Evil Tron.

A new technician had been doing a deep cleaning and found the device and brought it to the attention of the pharmacy manager who was showing it to the RPM.

"Rose the new technician was cleaning and found this bug. Someone is spying on the pharmacy," said the RPM. I look at the Evil Tron and immediately the memories come back.

I laughed and said, "That's not a bug." Then I tried to explain the story. I tried to flip the switch on the Evil Tron to show them but the battery was long gone.

The RPM, straight-faced, started to put the Evil Tron into a plastic bag.

"Uh, where are you going with that? That's mine."

The RPM, quiet for a moment, finally said, "I'm going to play a joke on someone" and left.

Then at 3am that night I woke up with the thought that somehow I'm under investigation. The "bug" was by the phone, I declared it was mine, it couldn't be turned on... somehow in the middle of the night I convinced myself that the RPM thought I was spying on my own pharmacy and she's taking it to corporate for further examination. In the morning I'll be fired for corporate espionage and out on the street.

Thoughts like that seem very real at 3 am.

So I jump up and find online instructions for the device. I quickly email them to the RPM with my comment, "You'll need these instructions to use the Evil Tron." I also listed the ThinkGeek website where I bought the damn thing. You can find it at this LINK, by the way.

I slept better at that point. I never heard back about the Evil Tron, nor did it get returned to me. My advice to you is to have fun pranking your work mates, but don't use devices that can be mistaken for a "bug" and certainly not with a company as paranoid as Goofmart Pharmacy.