Scaring juniors was fun....
Many years ago, when big offices still had juniors (school-leavers who got stuck with all the worst jobs, badly paid and treated like scum - I was one and I'm not bitter!) they were the easiest of targets.

We had a particularly gullible wee lassie, very intelligent but absolutely no common sense. She may as well have had a bulls-eye on her back!

We told her repeatedly about the "haunted" sub-basement and how the faint clicking of a long-dead secretary's stiletto heels could be heard to this day. Always at the same time - 3:45pm. How the poor girl had killed herself after her boss ended their affair. How you could hear her breathing, sounding on the verge of a good sob! Always at the same time - 3:45pm. We emphasised that time over and over.

Then we left it alone for a few days. Let the story slip her mind just a wee bit. Let her relax.

Then one of the girls took her down to the sub-basement to do some filing, showed her the cabinet to put the files in, casually mentioned that it was twenty to four, she should be finished long before five o'clock (no flexi-time for juniors). And left her alone.

The rest of us gathered quietly at the bottom of the back stairs and waited. For five minutes. Til the caretaker took his little dog out for its daily walk. They came down in the lift, and headed out for the back lane. Now the caretaker wore rubber soled shoes and walked very softly. The wee dog had slightly overgrown claws which made a nice clicky noise on the concrete, and was a bit overweight. So it panted.

From where she was filing, she couldn't see the lift, which didn't "ping" to announce its presence, and the corridor was just out of her line of sight.

Sure enough, at almost exactly 3:45pm, man and dog mosied on past poor quivering junior, who could hear them, but not see them.

Seconds later, she shot past us without even noticing we were there. The noise she was making was primeval, and made the hairs on our arms stand up! We caught her up in the ladies toilets, and when the hysteria had subsided a bit, told her what had actually happened.

I swear I saw a little bit of her innocence die that day. She stayed for another year, but barely spoke to any of us ever again. The baleful, accusing glances eventually made even the strongest of us feel guilty, and no more juniors were ever subjected to this prank. So you could say she won in the end.....
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Thu 13 Dec 2007, 20:58, Reply)