Epic Pranks: A Unique Way To Build A Gratifying Company Culture

And we continue with our American Stories and with a story about a unique company culture. Tom Golisano is the founder of Paychecks, which helped six hundred and eighty thousand businesses manage their payroll, HR, and benefits. And it’s also a place that enjoys a good prank every now and then. By the way, we’ve done a bunch of stories on pranksters and epic pranks. Here’s Tom on a few of their pranks, starting with one from his late best friend, Jean Paulsini.

We got two little kids at home. It’s a Saturday morning. The phone rings, and it was just when people who are starting to use tape recorders. So I pick up the phone. There’s this guy on the bather end recording, “This is the Monroe County Water Authority. We’re shutting off your water for forty-eight hours. Make other preparations.”

“What, suck?”

“I think you can’t do that.” I call out the water at thirty. “This is Saturday, where nobody’s working today.” Yeah, I get a recording. “What the hell do you do?” said Glory. “Find every pan you can in the house and fill it with water.” We did that.

Now, two hours later, Jean comes over comes in the house and he looks around. He sees all these pants full of water, and I can see his slipping and how your lip curls when you’re trying not to laugh. I said, “You sup,” it was him. He could disguise his voice. So one day, Jean’s working at Paychecks. He was a Senior VP, a very important job. And, uh, we’re building an addition to our building. And there’s this huge crane on the grounds. And I know the contractor is a good friend of mine, so I said, “Waite, what’s that all about?” He says, “Well, we’re going to start moving steel in next week, and that’s what we put the steel in place with that crane.” “Can you build a little one platform for a car?” He says, “I got a friend. It’s Jane. He drives a Mercedes Roadster in the wintertime. Now nobody drives a roadster in the wintertime in Rochester, New York. He gott me a little nuts.” He says, “Yeah, I could do it.” He does it. I get a second set of keys from his wife. We send Jeane out to lunch with some other guys. He comes back. His car is hanging five stories up in the air, swinging in the wind. “Jeane, you’re the Employee of the Month!” To show you the attitude of this guy: though he gets out of the car, he looks up, he sees his car up there. I’m thinking it could be a seventy five thousand dollars joke if it falls off that platform. And he says, “I wish I thought of that, because he would have done it to me.” But that’s what our life was like. I used to have this thing with a training department. We had quite a training program. We brought all new employees, and that was, you know, like three, four thousand a year to Rochester for one week to four weeks of training, depending on the job. We believe it was very important because once when you’re a branch network like we are, people never get a feel for what the company’s like. They only see their local branch. So we’d like to bringing people in so they get to meet some of the officers and see the general atmosphere. Gives us a chance to brag a little bit about the company and so forth. Well, I used to have to stand at the training department. I used to like to play jokes on them, and they like to play them on me. So one day I was running for Governor, and my secretary was transferring to Arizona because of her husband’s new job. So I said, “We got to find a new secretary.” I said, “Interview several people. Get it down to two, and I’ll interview them on Friday when I come back to Rochester.” I come into Rochester on Friday. They send this woman in for the interview. Now, she’s got obviously bleached bond hair. She’s got her hand wrapped up in a little bit of a sling, short skirt and a really short skirt, tight open up blouse. So I start talking to her about her skill set. She doesn’t have any. So I’m saying to myself, “What’s happened to our standard here?” So I’m sitting there thinking, and all of a sudden, the cootie, she lights up a cigarette. Yeah, we’re no smoking building. She lights up a cigarette. I looked at it. I said, “Man, would you please put that out and leave?” So she gets up and she leaves like very normally. I look out and there’s half the training department standing outside my window. They’re laughing there at, and they recorded the thing. They had a microphone and a plant next to my desk. So, okay, and I walked by the training department, and there, there’s a classroom of middle managers, and they’re there for a one-week management training course. And I look at them. They looked bored as hell. I said. So, I just happened to go out that night. I go to a bar and the local pub, and I ran into maybe ten of them, and, you know, so I had a great conversation with him. We had a lot of fun, and I didn’t talk much about the class, but I did grab one of them. I said, “You want to have some fun tomorrow?” He said, “Sure.” I said, “Okay, you just follow my lead. I want you to ask me about local income taxes, and I want you to be not happy with my answers.” He says, “Okay.” So we normally have a launch, and then we do Q&A. So now we’re doing the Q&A, and he asked the question. He says, “Tom, we’re not very happy in the State of Ohio with how he processed local income taxes. What’s being done about it?” So I gave him sort of a pat answer. “While where software is working on the development of it, it’s going to be some time, and it’ll be bye bah.” He says, “Oh,” a couple of people ask questions. He comes back again, and he asked the same question. He says, “I wasn’t happy with your answer. Could you expound on it?” So the two managers in a training course, the teachers are to see. I was getting peeved, so was he. So I noticed he put his hand on it on one of his legs, settled down, and she gave the other. She gave one of the guys to take an easy look at the guy that was making this comments. Sonny, I gave a same answer, and he got even, you know, a little peeved himself. Sure enough, he waited a few more questions. He came back with the same question. “I’m not happy with your answer, Mister gallis out.” So I look at him. I said, “You know, if you’re not happy with the answer, the door’s right there, why don’t you use it?” “Okay.” Picked up and he walked out. The heads of the training department out in the hall, plus the rest of the trainees, see this. They know the whole company’s going to know about it in fifteen minutes. So I didn’t say a word. I just sat there. About ten minutes went by. He comes back in the room, and he’s up. We’re all laughing now, and they all, “Oh, did we get him good?” Marty Mucy, he wasn’t CEO at the time, but he was head of all branch operations, and we had a little thing on the fourth floor of the executive floor of our building, where when it was somebody’s birthday, on their first birthday, we’d have cake and ice cream. And then one a little somebody got one of these little halloween ants with the, you know, the triangle, and it looks with a little rubber band, and you’re supposed to wear it if it’s your first birthday at the corporate office. So we’re all in the corporate office. Marty comes in, and I think it was Jean, says, “Marty, putting on the hat!” And Marty said, “I’m not putting that hat on,” and somebody else time did, “But you got to put the hat on.” I didn’t say a word. He didn’t put the hat on. Finally he said, “Oh, all right.” He does this, and he does that. There, I took out. I put out a hat. You know, he’s really irritated. He’s a little irritated, too. I didn’t say a word. Well, within a couple of weeks, we had an officers’ meeting, which was a monthly thing, and we had a rule: “One person talks at the time, all the time.” That was the number one rule: “One person at the time, so everybody gets hurt.” So I made sure Marty was the last one to come in the room. I think I had a secretary tell him something or something. So he comes in the room, he sits down, and I bring up a topic. I said, “I want to talk about it that’s been bothering me. I want to talk about the color of our payroll checks.” Marty looks at me. “What the hell? He’s so talking about.” You know, we’re doing millions of checks. They’ve all been great, the same color. So I made a small presentation on us, and Marty says, “Tom, I don’t see it.” He starts talking, and everybody starts talking to their neighbor and ignores him. So he kind of looked around the room. I went back to the conversation. He came in again, said something. Nobody paid attention to him, and I can tell you he’s getting a little unnerved. The third time was the cood. He ta, “What the heck is going on in here?” So we settled down, and I said, “Marty, next time, we’re the damn hat,” and then he knew.

And you’ve been listening to Tom Galisano. And by the way, corporate cultures, well, they drive in the end, employee satisfaction and output. And if you’re not having some fun at work, what are you doing? And this is a message to every boss in America. Have some fun. It’s allowed, it’s permitted, and Tom Glisano is saying it’s required, it’s required. And by the way, you can learn so much more from this great American voice by picking up Tom’s book, “Built, Not Born: A Self-Made Billionaire’s No-Nonsense Guide for Entrepreneurs,” and that includes a little nonsense. Pick it up at your local bookstore. Tom Glisano’s story here on our American Story.