I’m going to meet President Obama…wait, O Shit!

The 4 stages of a well designed and executed prank

I like to have a little fun with my friends and family and that means delivering a fair share of good pranks over the years. But unfortunately that also means I have been the victim of such pranks, one of which was so brilliantly executed I just had to tell the story. Hopefully this inspires the next wave of pranks this April Fools’ Day.

The Setup

In May of 2011, I was a Product Manager at LinkedIn and we were fortunate enough to be hosting President Obama for an employee town hall moderated by our CEO Jeff Weiner. Since seating was limited, we were told that a specific number of LinkedIn employees would be randomly selected to attended through a lottery. Needless to say, this was a big deal for LinkedIn and people were genuinely excited for President Obama’s visit to campus.

Now, it was pretty well known amongst my friends that I was a huge Obama fan. I would talk about him, I would listen to his speeches closely, and more often than not be awestruck by his charisma and likeability. I just really liked our President, and now I was a random selection away from attending a Town Hall with him. I started calculating my odds, I had heard that ~100–200 employees would be selected and at the time LinkedIn was probably 1500 employees strong. So that gave me roughly a 10+% chance of getting selected, I’ll take it I thought to myself.

Execution

On the morning of September 21, 2011, I got the call. Or in this case, an email in my inbox from President Obama Town Hall, and the message read “We are pleased to announce that you will be receiving a ticket to President Obama’s Town Hall at LinkedIn”

I was pretty pumped! I immediately grabbed the phone to call my wife and parents to tell them the good news. My parents were really excited for me and my wife was too. I then decided to keep it under wraps at LinkedIn for a while because I didn’t know who else got the invite and I didn’t want to be the guy running victory laps around the office as I jumped for joy.

Escalation

I was already thinking about what question to submit for the President, but first things first, as the notification email mentioned, I needed to fill out the background check forms from a company called Intellicorp. These forms were fairly long and quite detailed. Instead of typing into the PDF, I decided to print out the documents and handwrite the answers. Fortunately, I had recently bought a home so I had most of the information readily available: (1) list of all your employers including dates of employment, addresses of employment, contact info for managers (2) current address and list of all your previous addresses including dates and addresses for each residence (3) education history, dates and degrees. So, I spent the next 30 minutes or so inside a conference room just filling out the forms and getting them finalized. I must have proof-read them 6–7 times since I didn’t want to take any chances.

Next, I decided to head over to Building 2025 which was a short walk away. On my way, I stopped by Building 2027 to confirm the location of the security office (since Building 2025 doesn’t have a receptionist). To my surprise, I learned that the security office was actually in 2027. “Must have just been a typo,” I thought. So I get to the office and knocked on the door which was opened for me by one of the security staff members.

“Hi, my name is Sid, I got a ticket for the Obama Town Hall and I’m here to drop off my background check forms, I’ve got them printed and already filled out.”

The security guy looked like he wasn’t expecting anyone yet, but he took the forms from me to take a closer look. “He clearly didn’t get the memo that this was happening today” I thought to myself. A few minutes passed by and more security team members were summoned to take a look at my forms. There was a genuine sense of confusion but I kept thinking that this must be a function of me being so diligent about filling in and returning the forms so quickly. Eventually, the head of LinkedIn security arrived on the scene. “At last,” I thought. “This guy will definitely have the low-down on this.” I approached him and explained to him that I received the email and have my forms ready to go.

“We didn’t send out any email this morning for the Obama Town Hall,” said the head of security.

“But I got the email and filled out the forms that you asked me to, here they are!” I responded.

“Ok, but we didn’t send out any email communication about the event. If you are selected, you will be notified with a phone call. Can I see the email that you received?”

I’ll never forget that brief moment in my life, when it hit me all at once. I was being punked. I had two choices now (1) admit on the spot that I thought I was being punked by someone else or (2) save face and just walk away and conceal the embarrassment. At this point, I didn’t know who was potentially involved. Was it a LinkedIn employee? Was it a friend? I didn’t want to get anyone into trouble so I took Option 2 and said I would go back to my desk and send the email. I went back to my desk and I printed out a copy of the email. I then deleted the email so it couldn’t be tracked back to someone who could be in serious trouble. I dropped off the printed email with the security office and the commotion in the security office continued.

The Aftermath

A couple hours later, LinkedIn’s security team sent out the following email to all 1500+ LinkedIn employees.

It was a pretty embarrassing (borderline humiliating) series of events for me. To this day, I haven’t told a single colleague or friend from LinkedIn about the incident. To the culprits who got me (Mr. A and Mr. V), all I can do is say “bravo” and “watch your backs.” It may not be this year or decade even, but I’m coming for you.

Pranks like the above are some of the most memorable moments in my life. I’ll never forget them and in some weird twisted way, it allowed me to tighten the bonds I had with those who so cleverly duped me.

I hope this inspires the next wave of fun-filled (and harmless) April Fools’ Day pranks this year.

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