I’ve loathed practical jokes ever since I was the butt (literally) of one in elementary school. The class moron decided that it would be funny to place a large tack on my seat. There’s nothing like jumping up in pain with a metal fastener fastened to your bottom to generate a large mix of anger and embarrasment.

I’ve never forgotten that incident, and it has kept me from enjoying practical jokes ever since. So every year as April 1 approaches, I refuse to join in the planning of any prank.  Here are two examples of why I hate these pranks.

Example 1 

This year, my 11-year-old daughter awoke with a plan to use a doll that her friend had lent for the week. I shook my head as she and my wife began to concoct an April Fool’s scheme to play on my wife’s family. 

“Let’s tell them that we’ve adopted a baby,” my daughter said. “Wait,” my wife responded. “We’ll tell them that someone in our [church] congregation had the baby out of wedlock and couldn’t take care of it. We’ll say that we’re trying to help and are thinking of adopting it.”

“You’re going to hell for this,” I replied when they looked to me for a reaction. Then I went back to reading the newspaper and drinking my coffee.

Long story short: They called my wife’s mom and brother. The mother-in-law was suspicious at first, but bought the story for a while. The brother bought it hook, line and sinker. I told Kim to end the joke just before her brother left to purchase diapers, formula and who-knows-what-else at Wal-Mart.

“That was a good one,” he said later, when he stopped by to give Kim some grief about the prank. I thought, “A good one?”

 Example 2

I had begun to write a post that was a little morose because it was an update on my attempt to bring social media into the company where I work. After many months of planting seeds and raising awareness within management about the potential benefits of blogs, wikis and podcasts, I received the go-ahead to lead a project team to catalog the communications methods and technologies already in place, and to study how communications and employee engagement could be enhanced with social media technologies not yet in use there.

The report was to be submitted to two of the top leaders at work: the director of the Service Centers, and the CIO.

Long story short: I’ve been directed to avoid surveying employees about their knowledge or interest in social media tools — or communication tools already in use, because that might “raise expectations.” But it also prevents me from establishing baseline metrics regarding the use of communication methods and technologies here — so I won’t be able to easily and clearly show any improvements if and when other methods are employed here.

I was feeling very sad for myself when I stumbled across an article on the Melcrum blog that instanly brightened my day. The post was headlined:

“Internal Communicator” is world’s most-desired job, survey finds
  Internal comms beats rock star and footballer to top spot.

“Yes,” I said to myself while clenching my fists in a victory stance. “Someone actually appreciates what I do–even more than those wannabees in Marketing and Public Relations.” I quickly scanned the article and then clicked the link to the research behind it.

“NOOOOO! … not another stupid April Fool’s joke” I moaned. The pain I felt was 1,000 times sharper than the tack attack in elementary school. This one ripped my heart when I was already bleeding internally from the pounding of unrealized potential and too-typical corporate inertia.

Once again, a “practical joke” was neither practical, nor funny. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 6:01 pm and is filed under General, blogging, communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.