With the April Fools Day just around the corner an office joke has officially become an office wide prank. Today we sent out the following email from the IT department to all the employees here.
After a conversation prompted by the Thurston County Fire Marshall and our corporate insurance agents we are going to be implementing a new corporate policy. Due to a potential fire threat, all optical mice with red lasers must be placed on a MouseDock® when not in use for more than 45 minutes. We will place an order for enough holders for the entire company; until these holders come in we do have six samples that the Fire Marshall has left for distribution. We will distribute these on a first come first serve basis. If you are not able to get a MouseDock® please turn your mouse upside down when you leave your desk for more than 45 minutes.
It is imperative that you place any optical mice on a hardened plastic mouse holder over night to prevent the laser in the red optical mouse from potentially overheating the formica on your desk. These lasers have the potential to cause the glue to heat up and reach a combustion point that may pose a serious fire risk. In the few cases where the desks are made of stained wood, the tests have confirmed that the lacquer coats on the desk are highly susceptible to overheating and spontaneous combustion. In addition to you being required to utilize the MouseDock® here at CCI Solutions, we advise you purchase one for your mouse at home. We will be placing a bulk order to outfit CCI Solutions with the MouseDock®, if you would like to be part of the purchase of these please let us know by 1:30 today and we will include your purchase in our order. The more units purchased the bigger our discount. If you choose to participate in the bulk purchase, your account will be billed once they arrive.
Thanks for your support and compliance in this important fire safety matter.
Rick Schnabel
Information Systems Manager
CCI Soluitons
I will keep you posted as the day goes on with comments about how this is being bought. So far its going great! Thanks Brad for the help.
UPDATE: Here are the photos of the MouseDock® that we are distributing to our employees. These "MouseDock®" devices are really the spool that our wirelabels come on.
For your viewing pleasure:
16 comments:
Rick Boring was not fooled, he wrote:
LOL!!!!!
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. ;)
Good one!
To protect the guilty we have blanked out names but please enjoy the new posts placed with the names masked....
XXXXXXXXXX just came down really worried that her mouse would melt her mouse pad. I assured her that the plastic only mouse pads would be ok but if they were glued on to a rubber bottom that the glue could heat up and possibly start a fire.
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX wrote -
Please order three for me personally.
Thanks,
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX just came down to ask us to wait on our bulk purchase because there were several employees who would want to be in the order but were not here today.
XXXXXXXXXX just came down and was concerned about her home computer but was really surprised she had never heard anything about this before. We informed her that this was new to us as well (of course it is cause we made it up) but that we will be moving forward in protecting the company with these docks.
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX just came down to our office to get a "stupid piece of plastic" to put his mouse up on. He was pretty sure that the laser wouldn't catch the formica on fire but once we said it was the glue he said "Ok I could see that, guess I need to take the batteries out of my mouse before I stick it in my laptop bag"
Today is great....
I’ll take a couple. There may be others in my dept. that need them – Penny, Elaine, Marketing, David??? They should speak up. If they don’t let’s ask them directly.
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX
For those scoring at home this is the 7th person who has bought this so far....
Seems a little early for April Fools people :p
But yeah, a quick modification of the text (and pending approval) I think the Mason County PUD #3 IS department may send out a similar message for tomorrow :p
We started this today as part of a two day April Fools Event. By starting today we are able to suck people in because they haven't been reminded about April Fools yet. Tomorrow after noon we will be sending an email out with all who fell for the prank.
Today has been quite entertaining for sure..
I was on my way out to lunch when XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX turned her mouse over to protect her desk from the DOOM of the ominous Red laser.
This April Fools Prank was brought to you by:
Rick Schnabel,
Derek Hanson,
Meghan Wentz,
Brad Hanson (Creator of the Prank),
Joe Brannberg (Co-creator)
I want to thank AJ for making this prank possible.
So far the list of people who were not fooled include (and have communicated that back to us):
Dean Caturia,
Micah Hansen,
Rick Boring,
John Ubben
People who found out before the email was sent:
Nat Beeson,
Bob Schmidt,
Carolyn Schmidt,
Shelly Larsen,
Eileen Forman,
Yvonne Eliott,
Jayna Williams
Action Pictures of the MouseDock® will be posted shortly.
Ok so now XXXXXXXXXX just came to ask about this fire threat. He wanted to know if the mouse was really a fire threat if the computer was powered off. We told him that even though it was a rare possibility that mouse would actually cause a fire our insurance company would only cover us if all of our mice were docked.
This is getting to be too much fun...
So we have people workin on a PSA for this April Fools joke.
In addition as I walked back from the warehouse XXXXXXXXXX who turned her mouse over at lunch and XXXXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXX who were walking with me were talking about how this new MouseDock® is going to be hard to remember to dock their mouse tonight.
I walked into the project management office to count computers to update our inventory. When I walked in XXXXXXXXXX told me that he couldn't believe this joke.
I thought he had seen right through this ploy but I quickly realized that he was frustrated that the government was mandating such stupid safety restrictions. He said, "the fire marshalls really have to much time on our hands. We can't even use a extension cord any more"
I have it on good authority that he and another employee were gripping about the governmental restrictions that caused them to have to use a MouseDock. I understand the over regulation concern but I can't believe they bought this joke...
nicely done.
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