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Everyone Loves a Good Cancer Story
By Max | March 30, 2007
Yesterday, Diana came home from work and told me about her day. That morning, she and her group were supposed to be training with their boss. Her boss told them before he started that he had been up since 2:45am preparing the materials and he was really excited to present it to them. One of her other coworkers, lets call him Ray, was there too. Ray, a more senior guy, had attempted to use a sick day that morning, but her boss persuaded him to come in.
“Ray, today is very important for training, and I really think you should be here. If you aren’t really sick I need you to come in.” I guess her boss convinced him, because he was there.
Diana said that after her boss told them about how he convinced Ray to come to work, he paused to get some materials together. Ray just sat there with his hands in his hands, which was a little out of character for the normally jovial guy. Then he spoke, “Guys, I just wanted to take this time to tell you all something. I’ve been struggling with this since I found out last week. I went to the doctor and they found a lump in my throat. They said that I have throat caner, and I don’t know how much I’ll be able to work once I start treatment for it.”
At this point, two of Diana’s female coworkers jumped up and ran into the bathroom sobbing. Diana said she herself began to cry, while another coworker tried to console Ray. The whole room was somber and everyone felt really bad for their friend and coworker. At that point Ray himself, ran into the bathroom. A few seconds later, they all got a text message on their phones. “April Fool’s!”, it said.
The boss was furious. He said, “I don’t know how I feel right now. Its a mix between relief and rage. No… its just rage.”
Everyone was so worked up that training was canceled. Ray had wanted to teach his boss a lesson about approving sick days, but quickly realized that it went too far. Fortunately he was one of the top salesmen in the office. He got off with a verbal warning, while some thought that a worse performing employee may have been fired.
I told Diana, she should have some flowers sent to his desk from someone like a former coworker. Pretend that the coworker had found out about the cancer, but not that it was a hoax. That would have been a good re-April Fool’s.
Share ThisTopics: Work humor | 2 Comments »
March 30th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Max is the man
January 17th, 2008 at 2:27 am
The thing about good stories is that you think you know where they are going, and then they take you in another direction…
My first thought was that if Max had my job, which is answering the American Cancer Society’s telephone to provide cancer specific information to individuals who phone, he would have never played that joke, because he would have realized that the bitch that is karma would surely make him pay…
My second thought was that the flowers should have been sent to his desk with a card that read:
“I’m sorry about the loss of your mother.”
He would never play jokes again.
Signed,
guy who found this site looking up info on wikipedia about whataburger