I got reprimanded one time at a previous job for pretending to throw a bee at my supervisor. A nest had formed in some concrete overhang in the building, he freaked out and got adrenaline ampules at the pharmacy (epipen shortage year) like "you need to inject me with this if I get stung". So later on, I walked up to him sitting next to a coworker with nothing in my hands and a shit eating grin on my face. "What's that?" "A BEE!" as I opened my hands with nothing in them... He fell over in his chair and everyone in the office stood up and pointed and laughed at him. It was ultra funny though he insisted I was insane for this and demanded I see a psychiatrist if I wanted to keep my job. Just ended up getting xanax pills I really didn't want or need. This was close to a decade ago and I wouldn't pull something like that now, but I mean what do you expect out of hiring people in their early 20s?
Look, I don't want to come off as judgemental, but it really wasn't funny. He was genuinely afraid of bees, perhaps bordering on a phobia. Whether that's a "rational" fear or not isn't important (although the epipen/adrenaline makes it sound like it's quite rational; people can die from bee strings), people have all kinds of fears and they almost never find practical jokes about them "funny". Even worse, you put him in the extremely uncomfortable and embarrassing situation where the entire office was laughing at him over it. It sounds like an absolutely horrible situation for him.
"What do you expect out of hiring people in their early 20s?" is a lame excuse. A 11-year old? Sure. A 21-year old should know better. We all make errors in judgement, but this really was a spectacular error, and some "official" response was entirely warranted.
That's funny, pretty much everyone else thinking him demanding someone see a psychiatrist over a prank thought his response was a bit over-wrought, especially the psychiatrist
I don't think we have those departments where I live except in American or Euro companies that do outsourcing, nor any "STOP BULLYING" signs around the office in this neck of the woods.
