Friday, December 17, 2010

Payback

Just today, two separate friends have said to me "payback is a bitch." 

You see, I love messing with people.  If I could figure out a way to do it for an occupation, I would.  For example, I have always wanted to show up at the home of a friend who has small children and no pets with a puppy as a gift, just to see what they would do. 

Logan loves messing with people, too.  One of his BFs, Sage (code name in case any pervs are reading this) is celebrating her first birthday this weekend in Boston.  So, Logan wanted to pick out the perfect gift for her.  First he thought it would be funny to send her a "band set" complete with drums so that her parents could listen to concerts all day and night.  But he decided that might just be too mean.  So, he settled on a talking puppy.  Logan read reviews about it, and apparently this puppy is possessed and just starts randomly talking hours after you are done playing with it, so he thought it would be perfect. 

When I told Willis what Logan sent as a gift and why, Willis asked, "what, are you trying to scare poor Sage?"  and I said, "not at all!  Just Lisa and B."

Happy Bday, Sage!  We love you. 
Another friend who shall remain nameless (Whitney) texted me and told me she was really hungover from her husband's company Christmas party last night, so I texted her back and told her to eat some eggs.  When she replied, "I hate eggs, in fact that just made me gag" I thought that was the perfect opportunity to send her a picture of the eggs I was currently making.  I mean, what a coincidence!  Making eggs at the very moment your hungover friend tells you she hates them?  It was almost like it was meant to be.

My previous boss (who is the greatest boss I will ever, ever have) who shall remain anonymous (his name is Ben and below you will find pictures of him) and I had a pretty good prank war going for a while when I was his assistant.  He used to take these crazy trips around the Middle East via a million different private planes, cars, etc. (and never once had a logistical problem thank you very much, taking a bow) which would make me just about break out in hives from stress every time (in fact once I did, and I always ended up crying by the end).  He knew how these trips wrapped me around an axle, and played into it.  He always had to have an extra box of tissues on his desk during these times for when I would run into his office, "BUT THE CONSULATE WON'T CALL ME BACK AND YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR VIIIIIIIIISA YET!  wAAAAAAHHAhahahahaha!!!!!"  He claims he misses working with me, but I don't buy it. 

During these trips I knew where he was supposed to be at every second because I was so paranoid something was going to happen, and once he called when I knew he was supposed on his way home from Saudi Arabia and I yelled, "WHY AREN'T YOU IN THE AIR" to which he answered, "Ali, this is serious.  This is not a joke.  Do you know how to wire money internationally?  We are in trouble."  My heart dropped to my feet and I started stammering a little, and I think I almost started peeing.  I had a note pad by the the phone and wrote in huge letters "WIRE MONEY INTERNATIONALLY" (like that was going to do something) then he started cracking up.  "AAHAHHHAAAAA just kidding!  We're getting ready to take off.  Bye!"  and hung up.  I wanted to KILL him. 


Bossman wore these sunglasses every day inside.

One prank war that continued for a WHILE starred Marty Feldman from Young Frankenstein.  See, there was a woman that I loathed at my old firm (who we will just call Spawn of Satan) who we thought looked just like him.  So, we started passing this picture around at various times.  Sometimes I would put it in a folder marked "urgent" for him, stick it inside random files he had in his drawers, put it on his car windshield, etc.  Another time I cut out tons of teeny pictures of Marty's head and taped them to all of the photos and bobble heads in Ben's office.  The problem was, if it took Ben a long time to discover what I had done, I would rat myself out.  I'd saunter into his office, "OH, have you happened to look at your BOBBLE HEADS recently?" and the jig would be up. 

Ben won that specific prank war, when he asked Willis to hang the pictures up around our condo.  One night after work I was in the bathroom (#1 people, #1) and looked up and THERE HE WAS, JUST STARING AT ME.  Marty Feldman, not my boss Ben.  I found several more pictures of Marty in our closet, my sock drawer. etc.

You know that song, "Jim Dandy to the Rescue...?"  Well I had that song stuck in my head for a good 4 months at one point after watcing Overboard, and used to harass Ben with messages and pictures from Jim Dandy.  If he was in an important meeting, he'd get a high importance email from me "SUBJECT:  URGENT MESSAGE" with the email saying "Jim Dandy called, call him ASAP."  Or he'd get the song on his voicemail over and over and over and over and over.  Ben was pretty particular with his Blackberry messages and would delete all emails once he read them (let's be honest he was pretty particular about everything - hardy har har) and one of the Jim Dandy messages wouldn't delete from his Blackberry for some reason.  So, for about a week he just had that one pesky, high importance message that wouldn't go away and it.drove.him.NUTS.  He finally had to take it to the IT department to get it fixed, and right after that he came into my office with his clean Blackberry, so proud the message was gone.  As soon as he left, I sent him another one. 
This is Ben at a Red Sox game acting like our friend Marty.
Not prank war related, but while we are on the subject of Bossman, one time he had to take me to the emergency room in the middle of work because I thought I had a brain tumor or was having a stroke.  True story.  Ben called Willis on the way to the hospital, and waited with me in the ER for Willis to arrive.  They asked me to get into a johnny which was totally awkward, and Ben decided at that point it was probably a good idea to go see if Willis had arrived yet.  Good times.  Another time when I was walking to the bus stop, I spotted Ben's Porsche Cayenne near my condo with Ben in it, just parked with the car running.  I thought, "what the hell is BEN doing in WATERTOWN?" and as I walked by, he rolled down his window (he was covered in crumbs, by the way) and said something like "oh, I'm here every morning, just making sure you are on time for work."  It turns out he was early for a board meeting that was up the street, and had stopped at the convenience store across from my condo for breakfast... a 99 cent Hostess cake... 

GO JIM DANDY, GO JIM DANDY! 

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