You're fired !!!

 

 

COBRA

Years ago, when I was young, (that's about ten years ago), I was fired from my job at the zoo because I changed all the signs in the animals enclosures.

It was the night before the 1st of April, which would make it the 31st of March, unless it was just after midnight in which case it would make it the 1st of April.

I was working the night shift. There isn't much to do on the night shift. All the animals are asleep and I was there just checking on the nocturnal animals. Feeding them, cleaning their cages, or singing them lullabies to send them to sleep again.

I was bored, so I decided it would be fun for April Fool's Day to change some of the signs in the enclosures. It was an easy job. The signs were made of hard-wearing plastic and they fitted in a frame fixed to the enclosure. The idea was to make them inter-changeable in case we moved the animals from one enclosure to another.

So it was simple to pull out some signs and to put them in other enclosures. The bear became a cobra.

                                                  PELICAN
The llama became a pelican. 

                                                    OCTOPUS

Whilst the rhinoceros became an octopus. It was great fun changing all the signs around. I creeped slowly from one enclosure to another, without making a sound in case the other night staff heard or saw me, and I changed the signs around.

Having had enough fun with the animals I then turned my attention to other signs. The restaurant became the gents toilets in a quick sign change. The ladies toilets became the souvenir shop. The picnic area I designated as a car park. And so on it went with even changing the direction signs which tell the visitors where to go. People who wanted to visit the aquarium would walk up a steep hill only to discover it was the reptile house. Whilst those wanting to see various insects and butterflies would be sent to the parrots cage.

                              COMMON HOUSEHOLD FLY

Surprisingly enough, the next morning no one noticed what I had done. When you work in the same place, day in day out, you do not notice certain things that are there all the time. It wasn't until the visitors started coming in at eight o'clock that people began to notice.

Some visitors went somewhere only to find something else. Women went to what they thought was the lost property office only to find it full of urinals. Others walked long distances to find they were in the opposite direction to where they wished to be.

Everyone complained to a member of staff they found near at hand. Some became furious and wanted their money back. Others were confused as to why there were no owls in the fish tanks.

I took the joke a little too far by changing my name badge to Mike rather than my name.

Eventually the manager found out I was the culprit. He was furious. He was always short of a sense of humour that man. He called me on the tannoy system to go to his office.

At first I ignored it. Then some staff convinced me to go and see him and perhaps he would forgive me and see the humour in what I had done.

He was even more angry and fuming when we walked into his office and he noticed I'd changed his name on the door to Miss Iva Bigbum.

I explained that it was a bit of fun to entertain the visitors on April Fools Day. I told him to say it was a deliberate attempt by the zoo to entertain them on this day.

He nearly believed me. He was about to be convinced that we could get away with it by telling the visitors it was a bit of fun.

Then he saw the photo of his wife on his desk.

That's when he fired me.