There's a couple of guys who work with me at True Temper, in a different department with a different supervisor, who used to play an April fools joke on their supervisor, Hosea Bogan, every year. The supervisor is a great guy, as nice as can be, but he's slow as Christmas and is constantly falling for jokes that wouldn't fool a 5 year old.
In late February of 2004 one of the guys, Jimmy Armstrong, asked me if I could do a fake news article that stated that Gilbert Global, who had recently purchased True Temper, was going to move the plant to China. He said make it say it was because of a lack of cooperation at all levels of local supervision.
That night I grabbed the Wall Street Journal's main web page, changed the date to April 1, removed the lead article and typed in what the guys wanted it to say, that the CEO of Gilbert Global, Stephen Gilbert, had released a news statement to the effect that operations at True Temper would be phased out and moved to Hang Chow, China before the end of the year. I did it with html and it looked 100% authentic, with the stock market report, weather and all the other features on Wall Street's page.
I printed it out and took it to Jimmy at work the next morning and he said it was exactly what they wanted. He and the other guy showed it showed it to the plant production manager, Ron Riech, who thought it was really funny. At the 8 o,clock break Riech came out to the smoke area where I was puffing on my pipe and talked about it. He said he loved it, that it would be a great joke and would really shake Bogan up. He came by my work station several times during the rest of the day, laughed about it and commented several times on how funny it would be when Bogan read it.
Since it was over a month until April 1, Theodis Tisdale, the other guy who was Armstrongs co-conspirator, locked it up in his locker until April fools day but got it out just before the shift change on the last day of March. He showed it to some of the others in the department and told them it was fake and that it was a joke he and Armstrong was playing on Bogan the next morning.
That's when the problem started, he forgot and left it lying on the table at his work station when his shift ended. The operator who took his place on second shift noticed it about 15 minutes into the shift and went ballistic. He carried it around the department showing it to the other workers, then went in the QC lab and made copies and put them on every bulletin board in the plant. By 30 minutes into the shift, production in the entire plant had stopped, people were lined up at the phones in the break rooms calling their wife or husband telling them to cancel the credit cards and over 40 employees became so physically ill they had to leave the plant.
The second shift supervisors were as shook up as the production workers and started calling members of upper management, including Ron Riech. Ron went to the plant, called all the workers into a meeting and tried to explain that it was just a joke, but the only people who believed him were a few who knew about the jokes Armstrong and Tisdale pulled on Bogan every year. The plant manager, who was also the plant manager at True Temper's plant in El Cajon, California, who lived in Memphis and operated out of the main office there, was called and he had local supervision send the second shift people home so the third shift wouldn't be affected. It didn't work. As soon as some of the second shift folks got home they started calling their friends who worked on third. Less than two thirds of third shift employees showed up, and not much work was done on that shift either.
When I got to work at 6 a.m. on April 1, it was a madhouse, supervisors were running around like crazy and Ron Riech, who had been there all night, looked like he was about to cry. By 9 a.m. every person at every level of management at the Amory plant and Memphis was there and during the next two days meetings were held with all employees on all shifts to explain the entire incident was a joke gone wrong. Even then a lot of the workers didn't believe it was a joke and continued to believe it was going to happen for several months.
On the third of April I was at my work station and Ron Riech came up to me almost crying and said, "Brown, I need some help man. They're about to fire my a$$ and I gotta know what email address was on that thing you made." I told him there wasn't one but he didn't believe me. Luckily I had uploaded it to Armstrong's webspace, so he could print it out again if they lost or damaged the one I printed, and gave Riech the address to it. He came back about an hour later and thanked me about 50 times for putting it up so he could show his bosses there wasn't an email address on it. I still don't know what that had to do with anything but according to Riech that was the only reason he didn't get fired.
Other than that, no one said anything to me about making it and never said anything to Armstrong or Tisdale except they shouldn't pull pranks on Bogan again. There's no question that "joke" cost the company many thousands of dollars and the only reason all three of us didn't get fired was because Ron Riech knew about it over a month ahead of time and let it go. Needless to say, Amstrong and Tisdale gave up the April fools jokes on Bogan and I've not doctored any more news articles.
In late February of 2004 one of the guys, Jimmy Armstrong, asked me if I could do a fake news article that stated that Gilbert Global, who had recently purchased True Temper, was going to move the plant to China. He said make it say it was because of a lack of cooperation at all levels of local supervision.
That night I grabbed the Wall Street Journal's main web page, changed the date to April 1, removed the lead article and typed in what the guys wanted it to say, that the CEO of Gilbert Global, Stephen Gilbert, had released a news statement to the effect that operations at True Temper would be phased out and moved to Hang Chow, China before the end of the year. I did it with html and it looked 100% authentic, with the stock market report, weather and all the other features on Wall Street's page.
I printed it out and took it to Jimmy at work the next morning and he said it was exactly what they wanted. He and the other guy showed it showed it to the plant production manager, Ron Riech, who thought it was really funny. At the 8 o,clock break Riech came out to the smoke area where I was puffing on my pipe and talked about it. He said he loved it, that it would be a great joke and would really shake Bogan up. He came by my work station several times during the rest of the day, laughed about it and commented several times on how funny it would be when Bogan read it.
Since it was over a month until April 1, Theodis Tisdale, the other guy who was Armstrongs co-conspirator, locked it up in his locker until April fools day but got it out just before the shift change on the last day of March. He showed it to some of the others in the department and told them it was fake and that it was a joke he and Armstrong was playing on Bogan the next morning.
That's when the problem started, he forgot and left it lying on the table at his work station when his shift ended. The operator who took his place on second shift noticed it about 15 minutes into the shift and went ballistic. He carried it around the department showing it to the other workers, then went in the QC lab and made copies and put them on every bulletin board in the plant. By 30 minutes into the shift, production in the entire plant had stopped, people were lined up at the phones in the break rooms calling their wife or husband telling them to cancel the credit cards and over 40 employees became so physically ill they had to leave the plant.
The second shift supervisors were as shook up as the production workers and started calling members of upper management, including Ron Riech. Ron went to the plant, called all the workers into a meeting and tried to explain that it was just a joke, but the only people who believed him were a few who knew about the jokes Armstrong and Tisdale pulled on Bogan every year. The plant manager, who was also the plant manager at True Temper's plant in El Cajon, California, who lived in Memphis and operated out of the main office there, was called and he had local supervision send the second shift people home so the third shift wouldn't be affected. It didn't work. As soon as some of the second shift folks got home they started calling their friends who worked on third. Less than two thirds of third shift employees showed up, and not much work was done on that shift either.
When I got to work at 6 a.m. on April 1, it was a madhouse, supervisors were running around like crazy and Ron Riech, who had been there all night, looked like he was about to cry. By 9 a.m. every person at every level of management at the Amory plant and Memphis was there and during the next two days meetings were held with all employees on all shifts to explain the entire incident was a joke gone wrong. Even then a lot of the workers didn't believe it was a joke and continued to believe it was going to happen for several months.
On the third of April I was at my work station and Ron Riech came up to me almost crying and said, "Brown, I need some help man. They're about to fire my a$$ and I gotta know what email address was on that thing you made." I told him there wasn't one but he didn't believe me. Luckily I had uploaded it to Armstrong's webspace, so he could print it out again if they lost or damaged the one I printed, and gave Riech the address to it. He came back about an hour later and thanked me about 50 times for putting it up so he could show his bosses there wasn't an email address on it. I still don't know what that had to do with anything but according to Riech that was the only reason he didn't get fired.
Other than that, no one said anything to me about making it and never said anything to Armstrong or Tisdale except they shouldn't pull pranks on Bogan again. There's no question that "joke" cost the company many thousands of dollars and the only reason all three of us didn't get fired was because Ron Riech knew about it over a month ahead of time and let it go. Needless to say, Amstrong and Tisdale gave up the April fools jokes on Bogan and I've not doctored any more news articles.
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I wonder if as the years pass if eventually folks there will again do some April Fool's jokes? I wish that I could have been there and seen everything unfold, probably might have egged it on just a tab. 
