Reader:Among our colleagues is understood for employing Internet services to make trick calls to others in our department. Obviously, she informs some colleagues when she’s selected her latest victim to prank.At least some people
in our department’s management group know this, however they are apparently reluctant to resolve it. Karla: I’m assuming you’re referring
to online prank-call services that permit you to send out a prerecorded message that strings the target along in a phony conversation to generate a reaction. These calls can range from irritating to really disturbing, depending on how quick the mark catches on. At minimum, they disrupt concentration– and the reality that your associate is “known”for this trick suggests these disruptions are frequent. If it’s becoming an obstacle to performance, maybe it’s time to make your whole management team– and HR, if available– aware. Or maybe if adequate targets let the prankster know that what she thinks is enjoyable is instead irritating and unwanted, she’ll hesitate to repeat the calls. Know your audience: The target of tricks such as this, which included a”Toy Story”figurine an employee kept on her desk, discovered them wonderful.(Courtesy of Ari Rapkin Blenkhorn) Due to the fact that I delight in a well-played, friendly gag, I asked readers where they draw the line on workplace pranks.Responses ran the gamut. Some discover all workplace pranks inappropriate, specifically in high-risk environments such as a hospital laboratory. Even if no harm is done, gags such as changing computer system settings, concealing devices and buying prank calls can develop mistrust, make it possible for bullying and stimulate escalating cycles of retaliation, notes Houston engineer Elizabeth Huber. And I think we all can concur some malicious acts run out bounds: messing up work item meant for customers or the public, planting material or spreading frauds that could get the target disciplined or fired, and triggering damage to the target’s residential or commercial property or wellness– for example, intentionally exposing a peanut-allergic coworker to peanut butter, or leaving a rubber tarantula on an arachnophobe’s desk. And as anybody familiar with unwanted sexual advances and the #MeToo motion understands, “It was just a joke” is often utilized as a disingenuous defense for indefensible acts.At the other extreme, however, are random acts of whimsy planned to entertain the target as much as the perpetrator. When she was a developer at Industrial Light & & Magic, my buddy Ari Rapkin Blenkhorn kept a toy alien figure from the “Toy Story” motion pictures on top of her large display. For two years, whenever she was away, she would return to an ever-growing crowd of the little green people. The prank culminated in an innovative desktop scene including an alien caught in a container being rescued by her workplace mate’s Lego figurines.
Blenkhorn was entertained, as her unidentified prankster clearly understood she would be– but a different individual in a various work environment might not have been. That’s why wise companies will heed problems, and why clever pranksters restrict their activities to appropriate scenarios and appreciative targets.
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