Chapter 2: “The Revenge of The Spreadsheet Queen”
Three days after the email incident, Tom arrived at work feeling rather pleased with himself. His prank had become office legend, though no one could prove he was behind it. As he approached his desk, something felt off.
His beloved “World’s Okayest Accountant” mug was sitting exactly two inches to the left of its usual position. Tom was many things, but a mug-displacing anarchist he was not. He carefully inspected his workspace.
Everything on his desk was slightly askew – his stapler was rotated 3 degrees, his pencils were arranged in rainbow order instead of by length, and his lucky rubber duck was facing east instead of north. It was subtle psychological warfare at its finest.
But the real surprise came when he turned on his computer. His desktop background, usually a serene image of puppies playing poker, had been replaced with an endless loop of dancing spreadsheet cells. Every time he tried to click anything, the cells would break into a synchronized swimming routine.
“THOMPSON!” he bellowed, forgetting the sacred rule of office pranking: never reveal your frustration.
Margaret glided past his cubicle, a look of angelic innocence on her face. “Is something wrong, Thomas? Perhaps you’d like to interpretive dance about it?”
As other employees gathered to witness Tom’s computer performing Swan Lake with Excel cells, he noticed something else. His email signature had been changed to:
“Tom Jenkins
Senior Interpretive Dance Coordinator
Specialist in Magic Show Analytics
‘Life is like a spreadsheet – full of unexpected formulas’
P.S. I love Margaret Thompson’s organizational skills”
The worst part? IT claimed they couldn’t find anything wrong with his computer. According to them, everything was “functioning normally.” Tom strongly suspected Margaret had an accomplice in the IT department – probably that suspicious-looking guy with the Star Wars tie who always brought homemade cookies to meetings.
But Margaret’s coup de grâce came during Tom’s important presentation to the board that afternoon. As he confidently strode into the conference room, he didn’t notice the small bluetooth speaker Margaret had hidden under the table.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” Tom began, “I’d like to discuss our quarterly projections—”
Suddenly, his PowerPoint slides began advancing themselves, while “Dancing Queen” by ABBA played softly in the background. Each slide had been subtly modified: pie charts had tiny legs doing the can-can, bar graphs wore tutus, and every instance of the word “profit” had been replaced with “pirouette.”
The CEO, Mr. Peculiar Jr. (son of the statue guy), removed his glasses and squinted at the screen. “Jenkins, are you suggesting we improve our profit margins through… interpretive dance?”
From her seat at the back of the room, Margaret sipped her coffee, a small victory smile playing on her lips. The game was far from over, but round two definitely went to her.
As Tom fled the conference room, his face as red as the negative numbers in his dancing spreadsheets, he was already plotting his counter-attack. After all, he hadn’t spent three years in the company’s supply closet building an elaborate network of office spies for nothing.
Would you like to continue with Chapter 3, where Tom plans his elaborate counterattack?