It's not April ...

The place I work can get pretty stressful. That's just the life in any type of customer service.

Sometimes, though, fun breaks through.

Our work campus is smoke-free. Meaning, obviously, there is no smoking on the property. But there's a hill right behind our building that's technically not on company property.

And this is where we smokers go.

Yes, management knows about it. No, management doesn't say much about it. It's kind of like the military's (super retarded) don't ask, don't tell policy. We don't talk about it openly and they pretend it doesn't exist.

This afternoon I was walking through the parking lot and towards the back, chatting with my manager and our department supervisor, when I lit one up. Just grabbed one from the pack and lit it right the fuck up.

At which point both women were all !!!! and !!!! and I realized what I'd done and quickly put it out.

Funny laughs at my expense.

A bit later our IT guru, Mad Man, came through and pulled me to the side. He laid out a practical joke my manager and the supervisor wanted him to pull on me.

They wanted him to tell me our HR supervisor saw me light the cig and that she was not only really upset, but that she had also talked to senior management about it.

This was the joke they wanted to pull, knowing it'd freak me out.

But he had a better idea - turn it around on them.

Instead, I sought out one of the women in our HR team and stood there staring at her for about 5 minutes. I gave her a rough outline of the joke, minus the action that prompted the joke (I'm not that stupid). She agreed to give the corporate line of "This is confidential employee information that I really can't talk to you about" should my manager come looking for her.

Then I headed for my manager.

By now I was nervous, afraid I was going to laugh. I walked up to her desk and just started yapping in a rush (I talk a lot faster when I'm nervous), twisting a paper I had been carrying around (one of my new hire's QRs that I actually had a question about). I told her that Mad Man had tried to play a joke on me, telling me our HR supervisor had seen me smoking in the parking lot and was really upset and was planning on meeting with me. So, being me, I went in search of her instead - it's better to be up front and admit your mistake rather than wait for them to search you out.

Only it turned out that he was kidding and she didn't see me at all because she's not even in the office. But the damage was already done because I had blurted it out to the afore mentioned HR associate, who then became upset and informed me that she had no choice but to tell the HR supervisor and that we'd have to have a meeting.

The whole time I'm going through this, my voice is shaking and I'm looking around and twisting the paper ... and my manager has this dazed look on her face. You know - one of those "oh shit!" looks.

Then my manager says "You didn't tell her what you did, did you?!?"

and I said "Well yeah. You know how I am, I'll admit to whatever I did wrong if I did it"

And that's when she admitted she had put Mad Man up to the joke, that it wasn't him. And asked me if I wanted her to talk to the HR person for me. To which, of course, I said yea.

And off she went, in search of the HR associate.

I let her go for about a minute before I followed. I was actually a bit concerned she'd find the woman and really tell her what happened and I'd really be in trouble.

When I caught up with her, she said the woman wasn't at her desk but that she'd talk to her as soon as she could. And I told her "That's ok since I made it all up anyway".

I've been warned that retaliation will be coming.