A preemptive April Fool’s joke launched by a local sales representative has sparked an intense inner office debate over the rules of April Fool’s engagement.
Matt Christian, a 28 year-old advertising sales representative, initially engaged in the prank by wrapping his colleague’s desk and all of its contents in tin foil, claiming that his co-worker had a well conceived plan to, “mess up his shit”.
However, Jesse Isaacson, fellow sales representative and recipient of the preemptive prank, is crying foul citing company standards and the unwritten rules of April Fool’s engagement.
“This is just sheer hubris”, Mr. Isaacson says, “I wasn’t even going to do anything to him. Ask Frank from accounting, he’ll tell ya”.
The event has triggered an inner office debate which may require the human resources department to intervene and to set written standards barring any future conflicts.
Office manager, Nathan Cunningham says that the implementation of certain written standards would lay a concrete foundation for the ethical conduct of future April Fool’s jokes.
“We need to know where to draw the line and without the guidance from HR none of the employees here are going to feel safe come March 28th of every year”.
Further complicating the story are revealing company documents which show that Mr. Christian and Mr. Isaacson had to be restrained from attacking each other due to a prank and a subsequent dispute over a young female account executive 5 years earlier in 2004.
Regardless of past history, Mr. Christian feels that further investigation will vindicate his preemptive actions, “Jesse had a bunch of plastic wrap that he was stashing in the kitchen area, so I struck first. If I can’t do that then I don’t know if this is the sort of office environment that I want to be a part of”.
Sources have yet to confirm the claims of large stashes of plastic wrap in the kitchen but an internal investigation is currently being conducted by the spring intern and is slated to be released in June when he receives his stipend.
::jrm also writes at Adaptive Easel::