The Elf Game

The rich history of Worldbuilders office pranks is mostly documented online, from Amanda dumping so many copies of a Hank Green song onto Brett’s MP3 player and Brett leaving tiny messages all around Mindy’s desk that just say “el chupacabra” (both of which you may remember), there’s usually something going on around here to break up the day-to-day work.

One prank war that’s been raging for a while is an ongoing work of art. It all started when Anne brought in a box she was donating to Goodwill and asked if any of us wanted anything before she took it in. We’re not sure exactly who, but someone pulled two old elf-on-a-shelf precursors out of the box because they were hideous. The initial idea was to leave one where Amanda would find it and swear at us.

Since then, however, things have escalated. Amanda found the elf, swore at us, and then moved it. She refused to tell anyone where she re-hid the elf, because payback. Then the second elf turned up–Rachel found it in a box of books. And she re-hid it. Soon it was the Rule of Law: if you found an elf, you had to hide it somewhere else for someone else to find. Sometimes the elves were MIA for weeks. Sometimes they were found within hours.

Most of the time, whoever found the elf would take a photo of it, which is how we can bring you the following gallery of elf sightings around the office: