I mentioned my boss Tony in an earlier “wise guy story.” It was 1986, Tony had moved to Perth from Melbourne. He was a “Geordie,” originally from Newcastle in England, then to London and finally to Australia. He had been hired as the sales manager, and somehow, we all just knew he was ripe for winding up.

Rotary phones were the technology of the day, it was a workout just dialing the phone to make calls to prospects. We devised a plan to modify his phone just to mess with him, with love of course, Tony was a cool guy.

Before he came to work one morning, I unscrewed the microphone part of his handset and put some padding in to muffle his voice. He had an office next to the larger shared one, the ones the reprobates occupied, so we could see and hear what was going on. It was amusing to watch, we would be careful not to let let him see us laughing, he would come into our office and complain about his phone constantly!

We alternated between padding the microphone and then the receiver. Sometimes he would storm out of the office to go and see the office manager to complain about his phone, we would rush in and remove the padding just in time. They would change it, and the new phone would play up as soon as we could get our hands on it. We ended up fessing up, he thought that was the end of our pranks but there was more to come.

Another day I brought my tools in and we reversed his door handle. When he was in his office with the door closed, I waited until he was on the phone and pressed the lock. He looked up but wasn’t sure what was going on. After his call he got up and found himself locked in, he had that look like: “huh, what happened to my door handle?” We were rolling around on the ground laughing. We let him out before we were all fired!!

There was much much more, we were devious types . 👿👹👺

I lost touch with Tony and often wondered where his is and what he’s up to these days… he was a good dear friend we had a lot of fun together and as families too.