My Boss vs. Whoopee Cushion

It all started on a Tuesday morning, which in our office is basically Monday with extra paperwork. I had just walked in, coffee in hand, when my coworker Dave cornered me with a conspiratorial grin.

“You won’t believe what I found in the supply closet,” he whispered, pulling a faded pink circle of rubber from his desk drawer.

It took me two seconds to recognize it. “Dave… is that a—”

“A whoopee cushion,” he said, grinning like a man about to commit a minor crime.

I gave him the kind of look that said, You’re thirty-seven years old, but he was already explaining his “genius” plan. Apparently, he intended to sneak it onto the chair of our boss, Mr. Perkins—a man so serious that even paper clips seemed to straighten themselves when he walked by.

“Dave, this is a terrible idea,” I said, sipping my coffee. “Perkins hasn’t laughed since 2003.”

“That’s exactly why it’s a great idea,” Dave countered. “We need to loosen him up. This will be hilarious.”

Fifteen minutes later, we had our chance. Mr. Perkins had stepped out for a meeting, and Dave sprinted into the boss’s office like some kind of prank ninja. He placed the whoopee cushion perfectly on the big leather executive chair and dashed out, leaving the door exactly as it had been.

Then we waited.

When Mr. Perkins returned, he was carrying a thick folder and wearing his usual expression: the look of a man perpetually disappointed in humanity. He sat down…

Ppppbbbbttttt!

The sound echoed through the office like a tuba having a nervous breakdown.

For one frozen second, no one moved. Then, to my horror, Mr. Perkins’ eyes narrowed—not with amusement, but with deep, investigative suspicion.

He looked around. “Which one of you…?” he began, scanning the room like a detective interrogating suspects in a murder case.

Dave tried to look innocent, but the corners of his mouth were twitching. My heart pounded. I was this close to throwing him under the bus, but then the phone rang in Perkins’ office. He turned, picked it up, and began a serious conversation with what sounded like a client.

We all breathed a collective sigh of relief… until he stood up halfway through the call, revealing the whoopee cushion still sitting proudly on his chair.

And that’s when disaster struck.

The wind from the air conditioner blew the cushion off the seat, sending it tumbling across the floor—directly into the path of Ms. Fletcher, the regional manager, who had just walked in unannounced.

She bent down, picked it up, and said in a voice dripping with icy authority, “Well. This is mature.”

Perkins’ face went crimson. “I… I have no idea how that got there,” he stammered.

Dave was shaking so hard from trying not to laugh that his chair creaked. I quickly started typing nonsense on my keyboard, hoping to appear too busy to be involved.

But Ms. Fletcher wasn’t done. “Perkins, I didn’t think you were the type for… juvenile humor.”

“I’m not!” he sputtered, clearly panicking. “Someone must have planted it!”

Ms. Fletcher raised an eyebrow. “You expect me to believe an adult man had a whoopee cushion placed under him… without noticing?”

Perkins’ eyes swept the office again, this time with the precision of a heat-seeking missile. “Who did this?” he demanded.

Dave finally lost it. He doubled over, snorting, tears running down his face. That was it—game over.

“It was you!” Perkins barked.

The rest of the day was chaos. Dave got a “formal verbal warning,” which sounds official but is basically a very stern lecture with paperwork. Perkins didn’t speak to anyone for the rest of the afternoon, and the whoopee cushion was confiscated and locked away in the supply closet like dangerous contraband.

But here’s the thing—two days later, something strange happened. During the Friday team meeting, as Perkins was giving his usual monotone update on sales numbers, he suddenly reached into his desk drawer. Without a word, he pulled out the whoopee cushion, placed it under his chair, and sat down.

Ppppbbbbttttt!

The room erupted into uncontrollable laughter. Even Perkins cracked a smile—a small one, but definitely real.

Dave whispered to me, “Guess he can take a joke.”

And from that day on, Tuesdays felt a little less like Mondays.