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The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

(oldvcr.blogspot.com)
511 points goldenskye | 2 comments | 01 Apr 25 07:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.504s | source
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glimshe ◴[01 Apr 25 12:11 UTC] No.43545801[source]▶
Hot take: workplace and social media April Fools jokes aren't funny and are often inappropriate and disrespectful to people's time.

It's cool to do these to your friends in High school, but I once wasted a good amount of time at work because of an April's fool joke. I already didn't want to do the work so I got really upset to have wasted time doing something boring and useless.

Additionally, the scale of social media can create situations where it wastes everybody's time several times per day... Including on HN.

Feel free to prank your friends, but don't bring it to work or the Internet, please.

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fkyoureadthedoc ◴[01 Apr 25 12:27 UTC] No.43545936[source]▶
All jobs I have ever worked have collectively wasted more man hours through incompetence and the usual corporate BS than I could ever hope to with any conceivable April fools joke.
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roenxi ◴[01 Apr 25 12:37 UTC] No.43546051[source]▶
The deal is they pay you a fair amount of money to put up with that. Whereas people such as the gentlemen in the article are causing people stress for no reason and with no compensation - and barely even an acknowledgement of misbehaviour.

There are worse crimes in the world, but it is bad.

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circlefavshape ◴[01 Apr 25 14:04 UTC] No.43546933[source]▶
> There are worse crimes in the world, but it is bad

Bollocks, and bollocks to the parent hot take. Any moral framework that forbids fun, whether it's because it offends God or "causes people (a tiny bit of) stress", is repugnant to me

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1. roenxi ◴[02 Apr 25 01:00 UTC] No.43552794[source]▶
There is an irony that you're adjudicating away other people's stress while holding up your own opinions and feelings of repugnance as evidence of a problem.

The reality of professional standards is we can't control what people feel or happens to them but we sure can put a good faith effort in to try and make the experience as neutral as possible. This April fools prank breached that standard in an unpleasant way. I hope there wasn't a student tired and on edge trying to meet a deadline. It'd feel awful to think the print system was out, spend a morning running around and then learn that some IT bloke was abusing his power out of a misplaced sense fun. It isn't a serious offence but it is bad behaviour.

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2. hulitu ◴[03 Apr 25 15:40 UTC] No.43571313[source]▶
> The reality of professional standards is we can't control what people feel or happens to them but we sure can put a good faith effort in to try and make the experience as neutral as possible.

You should use some Microsoft or Google products. They "sure can put a good faith effort in to try and make the experience as" crappy and masochistic as possible, while siphoning all your data.

And yes, avoid people without humor, especially the serious types.