Chapter 3: “The Final Countdown”
The week after the PowerPoint fiasco, the entire office was on edge. Everyone knew Tom would retaliate – it wasn’t a question of if, but when. People started checking their chairs before sitting, sniffing their coffee before drinking, and some even brought their own keyboards from home.
Tom had gone suspiciously quiet. Too quiet. He spent lunch breaks alone in his car, making mysterious phone calls. His desk was spotlessly clean, which was deeply out of character for someone whose idea of filing was creating new piles. The only sign of life was his rubber duck, now wearing a tiny military helmet.
Margaret wasn’t fooled by this apparent surrender. She’d installed a small mirror on her monitor to watch the reflection of anyone approaching her cubicle. She also convinced the janitor to text her whenever Tom stayed late at the office.
The breaking point came during the annual office party, traditionally the dullest event of the year, where people competed to find excuses to leave early. This year was different.
Tom had spent weeks preparing. He’d coordinated with the catering company, bribed the DJ, and even gotten the building’s security guard in on his master plan. As Margaret walked into the office party, everything seemed normal – if you could call mandatory fun normal.
The DJ announced it was time for the annual employee awards. Margaret straightened her blazer, confident she would win “Most Organized Employee” for the fifth year running. Mr. Peculiar Jr. took the stage, envelope in hand.
“And the award for Most Organized Employee goes to…” he paused dramatically, “Margaret Thompson!”
As Margaret walked toward the stage, her victory smile firmly in place, the lights suddenly went out. When they came back on, every computer in the office had synchronized to display a video compilation of Margaret’s greatest hits: her dancing spreadsheet emails, her infamous reply-all rants about proper paper clip usage, and – most devastatingly – security footage of her sneaking in early to reorganize other people’s desks.
The finale was a custom animation of Margaret’s beloved bronze statue of Herbert Peculiar breaking into a flawless moonwalk while spreadsheets rained from the sky.
But Tom’s real masterstroke? He’d programmed the office printer network to shoot out thousands of paper airplanes, each one printed with “Margaret Thompson’s Guide to Interpretive Dancing in the Workplace” in Comic Sans – her most hated font.
The entire office erupted in applause, even Mr. Peculiar Jr. was trying not to laugh. Margaret stood frozen on stage, her award forgotten in her hands, as paper airplanes continued to soar through the air.
Then, something unexpected happened. Margaret started laughing. Not her usual controlled chuckle, but real, genuine laughter. She walked over to Tom and extended her hand.
“Truce?” she offered, still picking paper airplanes out of her hair.
“Truce,” Tom agreed, reaching for her hand.
Just then, they both realized their hands were covered in color-changing ink – they’d each tried to pull one final prank. The office roared with laughter as their hands turned a brilliant purple.
From that day forward, Tom and Margaret became an unstoppable team, using their powers for good (mostly) – organizing office parties that people actually wanted to attend, and making quarterly reports slightly less soul-crushing. They even started a monthly “Creative Problem Solving” committee, which was definitely not a front for planning elaborate office pranks.
And Herbert Peculiar’s statue? It mysteriously acquired a tiny tutu that nobody could remove, but that’s a story for another day.