Newsflash, office workers: you’re not Jim and this isn’t The Office.
While I, too, love a good staged prank via the literal comedy writers on a fake TV show, the real world is not your playground and sometimes other people (shock!) you know, exist.
Redditor u/a_handle recently posted on Reddit’s AITA sub wondering if they were a jerk for, “replacing all the photos in our share house to pictures of a co-worker as a prank prior to a staff party we were hosting.”
Hoo boy.
OP starts by saying they guess they’re a “weird person”. Okay…
I guess I’m a weird person, but I thought it would be really funny to go on a co-workers social media, download their photos, print them off and replace all the photos in the frames around our house with said photos and not say anything.
So they thought it would be a fun bit to download pictures from a co-worker’s social and replace all the pictures in the office with those images. YIKES, DUDE.
I live in a share house and all my room mates did the same.
SURPRISE! Some co-workers thought this was an AWFUL idea and objected vehemently to this dumb, dumb “joke.”
Some of my co-worker’s found this hilarious, but it turns out that the co-worker who’s photos I printed off is a massive stoner and became really paranoid about it and didn’t know what to do. I spoke to him about it at the party and just said I’m a weird person and I thought it would be funny. He seemed to be chill about it, but another worker kicked up a massive fuss about it and basically ruined the staff party, labelling me an asshole and a psycho.
Am I the asshole here?
OP tries to clarify that the person IN the pictures was okay with it, but I’m kind of confused because that person has office-not-friendly photos. I don’t know that it matters: if anyone objects, you back off.
EDIT for those who seem to have missed it: I’ve received confirmation that the person in the photos thinks the prank was “hilarious” him and his housemates were laughing about it afterwards. He’s seen the thread too and finds it almost as funny.
Reddit was equally horrified by this dumb idea.
One user said it was “hella creepy” and another chimed in, “It could be hilarious, or it could be actionable. This really depends on the specific relationship between stoner and OP, as well as the overall workplace culture for their team. I can only think of one friend that could do this to me and make me laugh instead of cringe, but I can think of several people that would give me nightmares if they did this.”
Someone else said, “Great idea, horrible execution. This is hilarious if you do it to a friend. Not a co-worker of 3 months.”
“YTA. It doesn’t sound like you know your co-workers well enough to be sure a prank like that wouldn’t be upsetting,” said a third.
In the end OP wound up apologizing to the people involved.
So I’ve just messaged the photo guy apologising and double checking that we’re all good. His response was that when he talked about it with his housemates when he got home and was sobered up they thought it was hysterical and that the main reason he felt weird about it was because he was super stoned and had only noticed one of the photos. He assured me that I hadn’t ruined the staff party by any means.
Unsure as to what to do about the other co-worker who blew up. I don’t really feel like I should apologise to her as it didn’t directly affect her and she was being offended on someone else’s behalf.