Leprechaun Poo

Brought to you by my loving friends.

I returned to my office after a lunchtime errand today to find my office dotted with piles of leprechaun poo (shreds of crinkly green paper). (Leprechaun poo is not to be confused with ghost poo [extruded-foam packing peanuts] or dirty ghosts [used Kleenex]). Unfortunately, the wily little bugger left neither a rainbow nor a pot of gold.

I like good, harmless, low-disruption office pranks. My coworkers once festooned my cubicle with bubble wrap to promote safety on the job, and we've all taken part in the crepe papering of birthday celebrants' workspaces. For the electronically inclined, there always altering the settings on a computer mouse so that clicking the left-hand button produces right-click functions and vice versa. Or you can type an obnoxious phrase into the victim's screensaver, then assign a password for re-entry to the desktop, leaving the taunt to scroll across the monitor until the victim either figures out the password or pays the prankster a blackmail fee to make it go away.

I've heard of much worse, though, like wrapping everything in an office — objects, furniture, even the walls themselves — in plastic wrap or aluminum foil. You could also tape or glue everything down, or turn everything upside down (including removable cabinet drawers). And my friend Fred, a building maintenance supervisor, likes to tell about the time he entered the locked office of a vacationing colleague through the dropped ceiling to fill it half full of ghost poo.

Not that you ever would, of course. But you could.

Today around the world: March 17 is St. Patrick's Day for all world citizens who like green beer. It's also, perhaps not coincidentally, Evacuation Day in Boston.