My Favorite Office Prank Was Firing You

The team bonding dinner. I followed the GPS for twenty miles. When I arrived, all I saw was a field of rebar and rubble. I called. My colleague on the other end was laughing so hard he could barely speak: “No way, Boss, you actually went? It was just a joke, ha ha ha.” In the background, the cheers and jeers of the entire table were deafening. I stood in the middle of nowhere for ten minutes, then spent another hour driving to the correct location. They were already gone when I finally arrived. The table was a wreck. The next morning, I called him into my office during the daily meeting. He gave me a lazy, easy smile: “Lighten up, Boss. Just a little office fun.” I placed a thin file in front of him, my face a mask: “Funny you should say that. I decided to make a joke, too.”

01 My name is Blair Kincaid, and I was barely two weeks into the job as the new Division Head. To fast-track a positive relationship with the team, I offered to pay for a celebratory dinner out of my own pocket—a peace offering from the new boss. The office broke into a chorus of fake, hollow cheers. No one looked at me. Only one long-time employee, Travis Shaw, volunteered, an unusual burst of helpfulness. He enthusiastically patted his chest and took over the reservation, a zeal that honestly surprised me. I was even naive enough to think he just needed an opening, a chance to show initiative, and my goodwill gesture had worked. On the evening of the dinner, an emergency file from HQ snagged my attention. I called the team and told them to start without me. Travis answered, his voice jovial: “Got it, Boss. We’ll save a seat for you.” It was past seven when I finally wrapped up. I opened the location pin Travis had sent. Navigation showed twenty miles, an hour’s drive away from the downtown core. My car drove out of the city’s electric glow. The streetlights thinned out, then vanished completely in the rearview mirror. A cold knot of unease began to twist in my stomach. But I checked myself. I told myself to trust my colleagues. I couldn’t afford to be suspicious. When the car finally stopped, the GPS announced, “You have arrived at your destination.” I cut the engine and pushed the door open. In front of me were bulldozers, twisted rebar, and the half-demolished steel skeletons of buildings. The wind kicked up a choking cloud of construction dust. This wasn’t a restaurant. It was a dead, silent demolition site. I pulled out my phone and called Travis. He picked up quickly. The background was loud, filled with the clinking of glasses and rowdy laughter. “Hello, Boss? Where are you?” His voice carried a barely suppressed edge of amusement. I tightened my grip on the phone, trying to keep my voice even: “Travis, what is this address you sent me?” The phone line exploded with unrestrained laughter. Travis was practically gasping for air. “No way, Boss, you actually went?” “Oh my God, that is rich! That is just too easy!” Then came the collective roar of my “dear” subordinates—a chorus of mocking shouts and cheering. The sound was like a thousand poisoned spikes, piercing the phone and driving hard into my ears. I hung up, standing alone in the encompassing darkness. The night wind howled over the ruins, a thin, desolate cry that chilled me to the bone. The past two weeks—the passive reports, the strange, knowing looks in meetings, the conversations that stopped the moment I walked into the breakroom—all the small details of my calculated isolation suddenly snapped into sharp focus. My attempts at warmth and my professional patience, in their eyes, were merely the hallmark of a soft, easily manipulated target. I reopened my navigation app and searched for the name of the restaurant Travis had tagged in his social media post. Another hour of driving. By the time I reached the brightly lit restaurant, it was nearly ten o’clock. The private room door was open, and the room was empty. The table was a disaster of half-eaten food, spilled wine, oily plates, and scattered napkins—all mocking my lateness and my stupidity in deafening silence. I walked to the host stand to settle the bill. The cashier looked at me with an immediate, deep sympathy. “Are you Ms. Kincaid?” “Yes.” “Your tab is already closed out. Your colleagues said you wouldn’t be making it tonight and told us not to wait.” That last sentence was like a dull, rusty knife, sawing back and forth across my chest. I sat alone in the empty private room, staring at the remnants of their feast. I thought this was team building. To them, it had just been a well-planned, elaborate public shaming. My eyes felt hot, but I bit down hard on my lip, refusing to let a single tear fall. Driving home, shame, fury, and a bone-deep sense of betrayal crashed over my rational mind in repeated waves. My hands, gripping the steering wheel, were shaking uncontrollably. Back in my empty apartment, I threw myself onto the sofa. Travis’s unbridled laugh, and the piercing shouts of the crowd in the background, played on infinite loop in my head. I stayed awake that night, staring at the ceiling until three in the morning. 02 The next day, I walked into the office with dark, bruised circles under my eyes. The office was buzzing with its usual energy, people gathered in small, tight knots. The moment I walked in, the low chatter abruptly stopped, but the barely suppressed, knowing smiles on several faces were more insulting than any noise could have been. It was time for the morning meeting. Travis and a few of the older employees sat together, whispering and exchanging glances. Their eyes would dart to me occasionally, a look of unmistakable, arrogant mischief on their faces. My phone vibrated. It was a text from my best friend, Sasha Reed. “Blair, you’re kidding me, right? Travis just posted the whole story in the company-wide chat, adding all kinds of garbage about how the new boss is a total amateur who got lost in the middle of nowhere. The entire company knows.” I swiped across the screen, opening the massive chat group. Dozens of unread messages, all about me. “Is the new boss that gullible?” “LOL, I’m dying. What’s the poor woman’s emotional damage score?” Followed by a cascade of laughing emojis. I turned off my phone, took a slow, deep breath, and shoved the churning emotions down. I walked to the front of the conference room. I started with a voice that was eerily calm: “The dinner last night was excellent. Thank you all for participating. However, starting today, we are refocusing all our energy on performance and hitting our targets.” The moment I finished, Travis interjected with an obvious, cutting sarcasm. “So, Boss, did you have a fun time last night? The scenery out there was nice, right? Fresh air and all that!” The conference room immediately erupted in boisterous laughter. It was louder, sharper, and more brazen than the laughter on the phone the night before. I raised my eyes and stared at Travis, silently, for a full five seconds. Under my gaze, his cocky smile briefly faltered. But that moment of stiffness quickly dissolved into a more aggressive bravado. “Come on, Boss, I’m just making a joke. Don’t be such a sore loser. Right, guys?” He even turned to his co-conspirators for support. I withdrew my gaze and continued to assign the week’s tasks as if nothing had happened. After the meeting, I retreated to my office. My new administrative assistant, a young woman, came in with a stack of files. She looked distressed, her face a mix of sympathy and fear. After I pressed her repeatedly, she whispered. “Ms. Kincaid… I overheard Travis and the others saying outside… that the new manager came in thinking she could establish authority by buying everyone dinner, but she got played and deserved it.” I called Sasha and recounted the morning. Sasha exploded on the other end: “That is straight-up workplace bullying! You cannot let this go! You need to go to Mr. Wallace, or you need to find a way to fire that snake!” I leaned back in my chair, feeling a profound helplessness. Report it up? I was a parachute manager. Crying to the CEO about a subordinate’s “joke” would make me look thin-skinned and incapable of managing my own team. Handle it directly? I had no roots here. Any rash move would spark a wider revolt and isolate me even more. Near the end of the day, I watched through the blinds as Travis slung his bag over his shoulder, walking out the door with a confident stride. He was bragging to a nearby colleague. “See? I told you she was easy to handle. Soft like a marshmallow. Played her, and she didn’t even squeak.” The words drifted clearly into my office. My hand, resting on the desk, slowly clenched into a fist. 03 Over the next few days, Travis’s provocations became more brazen. He either dragged his feet on tasks I assigned or deliberately botched them. A report due on Wednesday was finally dumped on my desk at 4:58 PM on Friday. When I pointed out the data errors, he just shrugged with a lazy arrogance: “Oops. You didn’t clearly spell out that requirement, Boss. That’s just how I interpreted it.” During the weekly team meeting, I presented a new, comprehensive performance strategy—one I had stayed up for several nights to prepare. The moment I finished, Travis was the first one to jump in. “This plan is completely unrealistic for our department. Too academic, too pie-in-the-sky.” Several veteran employees immediately echoed him. “Yeah, Ms. Kincaid, that model is too complex. We can’t execute it.” “Exactly. Too much theory, not enough feet-on-the-ground.” I brought out detailed data and case studies, trying to argue my position. Travis folded his arms and let out a cold laugh. “Data is dead, Ms. Kincaid. We’re the people on the front lines. You haven’t been in the trenches. You don’t know the territory.” With one sentence, he blocked all my efforts. The meeting ended in disarray, the new plan indefinitely shelved. I felt a deep, chilling sense of defeat. That afternoon, Mr. Wallace’s email arrived on schedule. “Blair, why are your department’s metrics continuing to slide for the second week in a row? I need a detailed explanation by Friday.” The cold, terse language was like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. I immediately pulled up the department’s performance dashboard and checked the figures line by line. The problem quickly became obvious: the large accounts managed by Travis had all flagged abnormal activity. Some project workflows were suddenly stalled, and others, currently in contract renewal talks, had been hit with extremely difficult demands from the client. I bypassed Travis and called the procurement manager for one of the key accounts, gathering information discreetly. The manager didn’t mince words: “Blair, I was about to call you. Your guy, Travis, has been completely useless lately. He’s short with us and ignores our queries. We’re seriously considering taking our business elsewhere.” I hung up, shaking with rage. I finally understood. He wasn’t just undermining me; he was deliberately sabotaging the entire department’s performance to make me look incompetent and get me fired. He was going to be the executioner. That evening, I stayed late to draft the damned explanation for Mr. Wallace. Halfway through, I stopped. I realized that simply reporting the problem and painting myself as a helpless victim would be the single most foolish move. It would only confirm to Mr. Wallace that I couldn’t control my own team. My phone lit up. Sasha’s text: “Dinner. I’m giving you a professional intervention, sis.” At the restaurant, Sasha listened to my story, then poked my forehead, furious. “You’re too nice, too professional! This isn’t a charity hall, Blair. It’s a coliseum! When you need to show your teeth, you show your teeth!” Her words hit me like a hammer blow. Before we left, Sasha lowered her voice: “Don’t forget, I’m in HR. Every employee file—attendance, reviews, disciplinary history—I have access to it all. Maybe you’ll find what you need in there.” I looked at her, and a flicker of cold, hard light ignited in my eyes. 04 From that day on, I began to watch Travis, quietly. I quickly noticed that he was often missing during the workday, slipping out of the office early, around three or four in the afternoon. I asked Sasha for help, and she pulled up the key-fob records for the past three months. The records showed that Travis had been late or left early over forty times. On several days, he didn’t even swipe in until after ten AM and was gone before four PM. Yet, mysteriously, the company’s internal time-tracking system showed full attendance every day. The only explanation was that someone was covering for him, clocking him in and out. Sasha also found something new. She discretely checked Travis’s HR file. It clearly documented that Travis and the former Division Head, Spencer Graham, had an unusually close relationship. Travis had been Spencer’s go-to guy when Spencer was still an analyst. When Spencer rose through the ranks, he brought Travis up with him. Travis was his core loyalist. Spencer, who had been demoted to a non-managerial role a month ago due to poor performance and lax management, was the manager whose spot I was now filling. All the pieces clicked together. I wasn’t just facing an arrogant pawn. I was facing a deeply entrenched snake pit, led by the former manager. Spencer was pulling the strings, and Travis was the front-man, aiming to discredit me, force me out, and thereby prove to the company that he wasn’t the problem—the department was simply “ungovernable.” My enemy was far more powerful and insidious than I had imagined. I widened my investigation to include the other veteran employees closest to Travis. With Sasha’s help, I reviewed their work-related emails for the past six months. A shocking discovery surfaced. Travis was repeatedly using his personal email address to send core client data and pricing sheets to several unknown external companies. This wasn’t just insubordination; this was commercial espionage. He was likely operating a side-business, profiting off the firm’s resources. I instructed my assistant to collect every project contract and financial ledger Travis had ever managed, under the guise of “end-of-year archiving.” After two days and two nights of auditing, I found two completed projects where the contract amount and the company’s actual bank deposit differed significantly. The discrepancies added up to just over five thousand dollars. Sasha warned me that it wasn’t time to strike yet. “You have to turn every piece of evidence into an ironclad case. No room for him to wiggle out. You get one shot, so make it a kill shot.” I took her advice. On the surface, I continued to play the role of the “soft marshmallow.” I met Travis’s constant provocations and deliberate delays with the same silence and tolerance. This posture allowed his little clique to drop their guard even further. Once, I accidentally overheard Travis in the breakroom bragging to a colleague. “See? I told you she wouldn’t do anything. I played her at the dinner, and she didn’t even squeak. A soft target like that can’t manage this department.” I stood outside the door, listening to the laughter, my face utterly devoid of emotion. I simply walked back to my office, opened my computer, and with a cold, slow smile, recorded the suspicious five-thousand-dollar difference in the encrypted document I had named “Judgment.” 05 The time was ripe. I decided to make the first move and set a trap. At the Monday morning meeting, I announced that the company was launching a critical new initiative, the “Aurora Project,” which required full team cooperation. The project was, of course, entirely fictional, but the documentation, goals, and execution process were fabricated to be flawless. I specifically assigned the most critical, high-profile component of the project to Travis. And in front of everyone, I emphasized one key point. “Mr. Wallace is personally monitoring this project. Every communication, every step, must be formally documented and logged via email.” Travis clearly didn’t suspect a thing. He handled the task I assigned with his usual attitude of arrogance and delay. I, in turn, recorded every email reply, every verbal commitment, every status update, via email and voice memos. Next, I set him up to connect with a “very important” new client. In reality, the contact was a friend of mine, a seasoned executive with whom I had established the ground rules in advance. My friend followed our agreed-upon script, presenting a few slightly complicated but perfectly reasonable demands for the partnership—a stress test for Travis’s professionalism and service attitude. Predictably, Travis lost his patience after only a few exchanges. In the final phone call, he yelled at my “client” friend, his voice dripping with frustration. “We can’t deal with all these demands! Are you signing the contract or not? Because frankly, if not, I’m done with this!” That disastrous call was recorded verbatim by my friend and immediately forwarded to me. This was solid proof of him actively damaging the company’s commercial interests and brand reputation. Simultaneously, I worked with a contact in Finance to pull Travis’s expense reports for the last six months. I found several large reimbursements for cross-state travel, but the project names on the forms didn’t match any records in my files. Sasha’s information was even more damning. Under the pretext of a fire safety check, she pulled the security camera footage for our floor on those dates. The footage clearly showed that on the days Travis claimed to be on “client trips to Atlanta and Boston,” he never actually left the city. He was seen lounging around the office in casual clothes every single day. Falsified expenses, theft of company funds. The chain of evidence was complete. Attendance fraud, falsified expenses, operating a side-business, leaking commercial data, maliciously damaging client relationships, and acting against the firm’s interests… I compiled all the evidence into a dossier over fifty pages thick. That Friday evening, I sat alone in my silent office, looking at the final, complete “Judgment” on my screen. The crushing weight I’d carried for over a month finally eased. I took a deep breath and sent a single email to Mr. Wallace. The subject line read: “URGENT: Serious Violations by Market Two Employee Travis Shaw.” The moment I hit “Send,” I let out a long, quiet sigh, as if completing a sacred ceremony. 06 Mr. Wallace’s efficiency exceeded my expectations. Less than half an hour after I sent the email, his reply came: “9 AM sharp, my office, Monday.” I arrived at his office fifteen minutes early on Monday morning. The atmosphere in Mr. Wallace’s office was heavy and severe. I handed him the printed, bound materials with both hands. Mr. Wallace flipped through the pages, his expression moving from calm to severe, then to a hardened, iron-gray. A storm was gathering in his sharp eyes. He clearly hadn’t imagined that such a deep level of rot could exist in a basic division, right under his nose. He set the materials down and looked up at me, silent for a long moment. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner?” His voice was low, carrying a note of scrutiny. I met his gaze, my reply measured: “Before I had this complete and irrefutable evidence, any rushed report could have been seen as a new manager’s attempt to purge the ranks. I didn’t want to give the company that impression.” The scrutiny in his eyes slowly faded, replaced by a flash of approval. “You did the right thing. In this company, evidence always speaks louder than emotion. I will immediately bring HR and Internal Audit into this. How do you intend to handle Travis?” “By the book, sir,” I said. “He violated multiple policies. We proceed strictly according to the company’s code of conduct.” At ten AM, the department meeting proceeded as usual. I laid out the week’s work, my expression professionally neutral. At the very end of the meeting, I said, almost as an afterthought: “Travis, I need to see you in my office right after this.” Travis looked briefly surprised, then exchanged a confident wink with a colleague, his lips silently forming the word: “Here we go again.” A few minutes later, he swaggered into my office. The moment the door closed, he put on his usual smirk. “Morning, Boss. What critical directive do you have for me this time?” I remained silent, sitting quietly behind my desk, just watching him. In front of me, I had placed a single, thin piece of paper. Not the thick dossier, just a simple sheet. My silence made him visibly uncomfortable, and the smile on his face grew strained. I pushed the document toward him, without a single flicker of emotion. “Read this first.” He picked it up, confused. The moment his eyes registered the bold, black text on the page, the color drained completely from his face. It was a formal Notice of Termination of Employment, issued by the company’s Human Resources Department.