By: Gina Volpe
Like most people, I’ve worked jobs I hated. I know what it’s like to rack your brain thinking of the least conspicuous liquor to slip into your coffee (hint: vodka) only to wimp out at the last minute because getting caught and being unemployed might actually be slightly worse than working in a pit of despair. I’ve felt hot tears rush to my eyes after realizing that the fire alarm is going off as part of a planned drill and not because the building is burning to the ground. I even once sacrificed my reputation as a girl who doesn’t poop in order to fake a diarrhea attack and spend a half hour locked in the staff bathroom. In other words, I have suffered for my paychecks.
It was during one of these misery funks while working as a tutor at a local high school that my coworkers and I cooked up a scheme to make the workday a bit more fun. We decided it would be hilarious to send anonymous naughty texts to one of our coworkers, a student teacher. I was the only one whose number Mr. Kolata* didn’t have, so my phone was the lucky winner from which we sent our messages. Pretending to be a student who is hot for teacher, we sent ridiculous, obviously (we thought) joking texts like, “Mr. Kolata, stick it in my twat-a!” Every few hours until the end of the day we’d send another filth missile his way. After school, he asked us if we were behind the texts and we coughed and giggled like unsmooth criminals and put on our worst, “Who us?” faces.
I forgot about our stupid prank as soon as I got home and the next morning was sound asleep probably dreaming of Slim Jims, when my ringing phone woke me. It was the police. The officer demanded to know who had been sexually harassing Mr. Kolata from my phone. I explained the situation and smoothed things over, so I thought the matter was settled until the furious assistant principal called. She informed me that the entire office staff had spent the morning, dirty texts printed out in front of them, investigating the possible student culprit. I rightly assumed it was far too late for damage control and, being nothing if not a ladylike prankster, didn’t want to drag my conspirators down with me. Too embarrassed to attend the meeting of doom the principal requested, I took the fall and resigned before I could be fired.
Unfortunately, my super embarrassing problem didn’t disappear when I did. My younger sister, still a student at the school at the time, came home with news that two of her teachers made somber and apologetic, “I heard about your sister…” comments. Unaware that the texting had been a group effort and a prank, it appeared that I was just a lone pervert, furiously texting innocent student teachers in my quest to sexually harass. Later that night, one of my two friends called me saying he had talked to his friend who taught at the school and she had told him a story of a demented employee who got in trouble for sexual harassment and he was just DYING to know who it was.
“Eric!” I cried. “IT WAS ME!”
*Name has been changed to protect the sexually harassed.
When Playful Sexual Harassment Goes Wrong,
Bocephus Jenkns
14 Mar 2011Is this one of those moments that Dave Chappelle called, “When keeping it real, goes wrong?”
Bred
15 Mar 2011It’s hard to rank this story. Although the writing is phenomenal, the content is borderline criminal. Oh wait, it was.
Regardless, I feel we all have some urge to play pranks/jokes/teases on others. Well, I can only speak for myself, but I’m in the same boat. I never have followed through with some deeper-devious desires, I have had them.
Unfortunately, I was more of the target than the offender. Experiencing this opened my eyes to harmful attacks so I avoided them at all costs.
I can’t blame you for expressing the child within, but I do hope it was a good and harsh lesson learned.
By the way, did this ever prevent future jobs in education?
worstginaever
15 Mar 2011Thank you for the thoughtful comment!
I’m sorry that you’ve been on the receiving end of some malicious pranks. I too have been there, and I should express that our prank was not in any way intended to be harmful or meanspirited. Our “victim” was someone we considered our buddy, who we went out with for drinks and hung out with at work. We thought we were being funny and that it would be obvious that it was us playing a dumb joke. He reported it on the off chance that it really was a crazed student to prevent getting in trouble himself. All in all, it was not a very well-thought out prank!
It was indeed a harsh lesson. I like to share it just because I think it’s a good lesson for anyone who is tempted to spice up the workday via pranks or silliness. Clearly, it can spiral terribly out of control. I consider it a lesson learned, and thankfully the incident happened several years ago and has not affected any jobs I’ve had since then.