Pranks Can Be Taxing, Especially When They Involve Faxing

I work for a customer assistance call center. Customers call in with questions, and we call back with answers.

I had one client who, somehow, kept getting put on my schedule to call back, and her question had nothing to do with our company. I told her three times that we only help with matters related to our products. Finally, I asked her to stop calling and wasting our time.

She showed up on my schedule again, and I simply skipped her and called the next. This happened a few times. I did eventually learn why she gravitated to me: a few coworkers of mine had conspired to get her switched to my schedule as a “prank”.

A manager came to me with concerns and said that I should be calling the client back to answer, even though it was a waste of time. So, I called the number listed… and a fax machine screamed very loudly into my ear at the other end. It hurt.

I grabbed the manager and demonstrated that the client’s listed number was now linked to a fax machine. I also requested a medical day off due to ear pain from this event.

The manager was quite upset to learn about this prank. When I got back to the office, he told me that he had tracked down the client’s original number and called her up to let her know, in no uncertain terms, that if she ever played a fax machine prank like that, he would press charges.

(He had the police swing around to her house to talk to her, as well, but the police said a single time wasn’t enough to prove intent to harm.)

He also instructed the office to simply cancel any call-back appointments in the client’s name if she called in again.

She’s the first — and so far only — person that we’ve banned from service.

My coworkers who were attempting to prank me by repeatedly putting her into my queue were written up by Human Resources. I was also interviewed by HR as they were worried that the workplace was toxic for me due to this “prank”.