What follows is a prank for the record books - a carefully planned an painstakingly executed heist unparalleled by any in our history. Actually, let's not over-sell it. Just keep reading.

Background:

Dan and I were talking to the other night, and he confessed that he had been dating a girl from our work for a few weeks in secret. I guess they had decided to keep it on the down-low for the first little while and then decided it was time to "go public."

I told Dan that he would have to disclose his relationship to HR because it constituted a conflict of interest. He laughed it off an didn't believe me.

Phase 1:

So it was decided to play a little joke on Dan. We talked about it the next morning with Preston, our boss, and decided to have Preston call Dan into his office and try to tell him he needed to sign a disclosure agreement about his relationship.

Preston calls Dan into his office and they talk for a while. Eventually Dan emerges from the office and looks pretty angry. He is saying back to Preston "I just think it's stupid, that's all." He sits back at his desk and appears to be fuming.

Now, a few facts:

1. Preston wouldn't have let the joke go on long enough to let Dan actually be angry
2. We heard loud laughter coming from Preston's office
3. Dan is not a great actor

So what actually happened in Preston's office?

When Preston told Dan he needed to sign something about his relationship, Dan just started laughing. He knew it was a joke right away. Preston started laughing as well, unable to keep a straight face. So they agreed to turn around the prank and play a joke on us - making us think that Dan was really angry and that Preston had pulled off the joke. I guess they wanted to see how far we would take it.

We let Dan continue to believe that he had duped us into thinking he was angry about the whole thing, but since we knew what was really going on we decided to take it one step further. Remember Dan thinks that we think we've played a joke on him, so we have no reason to push the joke. That's why the next part works so well - Dan had no reason to believe we were behind it.

We spoofed an email to Dan that appeared to come from the owner of the company, Dave. Dave like to be somewhat cautious with his business and dealings with employees, so the email we sent seemed like it could be legit. And since Dan thought we had been duped, he had to reason to suspect otherwise.

Here is the email we sent Dan:

Daniel,

Preston addressed me with an issue that I believe he was taking some slight carelessness with, but that I feel is actually very important to discuss. This is with regards to rumors that you may be spending time in a romantic way with another employee. While I am glad for your success in dating and approve of your choice, I do think that this is an issue that can potentially have a negative effect on the work environment.

In the past, we have found that employees that are dating other employees tend to be less productive while at work. It has even led, indirectly, to an employee’s early termination. This caused me to investigate the potential legal outcomes of having someone, either directly or indirectly, released from the company. I consulted with our attorney and found out that there could in fact be legal repercussions. We were lucky previously that no action was taken against the company, but do not want to be so careless now that we know what can happen. While we do not want to discourage you from your relationship, we do ask that you maintain a level of professionalism both on and off the clock. We will have our attorney draft a document that would relieve us of any legal liability. We ask for your cooperation as we press forward with this so that we can be as mutually disruptive as possible.

If you would like to discuss this further, I will be at the warehouse today at 2:00pm.

Thanks

Dave

Dan was gone for a few hours after we sent the email. A perfect pause that made all of this seem even less like a prank. When he returned, he eventually found the email in his inbox and wasn't quite sure what to make of it. He had us all come over and read it.

Even though he was questioning the authenticity of the email, it was clear he had been duped. We just had to push it a little further to get him to fully believe.

Since Dan had been gone around 2:00pm, he missed Dave. So we sent this follow up email later that day:

Daniel,

Sorry that I missed out on seeing you earlier. I didn’t know what time you would come back so I left. I will plan on just meeting with you tomorrow morning. I’ll be in the office after 8 AM, please come by when you get in.

Thanks,

Dave

This was the icing on the cake, Daniel now believed that there was a good possibility this was real. Luckily, even though he thought it might be a joke originally - he never checked the email headers. Although they appeared to be coming from Dave, they certainly didn't come from any of the company's servers.

So we knew a meeting was coming between Dan and Dave, and wanted to prep Dave. We thought of just telling him "Dan wants to talk to you about something," so that Dave would call Dan into his office. We weren't sure how Dave would receive the joke, especially considering we had spoofed his email. But ultimately we decided to tell him to be prepared for Dan to come in to talk to him and to just play along.

This morning, Dan came in not intending to go into Dave's office. But thanks to a little prodding from Preston he finally approached Dave.

"You wanted to talk to me?"

Dave wasn't quite quick enough of the pickup "Oh, I thought you wanted to talk to me? Oh, I mean yea, come on in!"

"Uhh...."

An awkward pause ensued as Daniel realized what had happened.

They payoff wasn't quite as grand as I had hoped, but still well worth it. You have to understand the dynamic between Dave and the employees to truly appreciate how nerve racking it must have been to approach Dave on the subject of dating a girl who was not only an employee, but Dave's niece! (or second niece or third cousin twice removed or something like that).