Man Working From His Home Tricks Colleagues Into Believing He Lives In A Luxury Apartment

"This is how I fooled my co-workers on video chat into thinking I live in a luxury apartment".

Damjan

• Published in Funny
• April 5, 2020

Andrew Eckel, a software engineer, and musician from Cambridge, Massachusetts, tricked his associates into believing that he lives in a luxury apartment. He managed to do this by making a background of a pricey looking home, and only after some time, he told his colleagues that they’ve all been conned.

He later posted it on Imgur, and most of the people seemed to like the prank.“A lot of people aren’t really in the habit of making their beds every day, and I can’t be the only person who didn’t want to show a messy bedroom this week."

"I thought the prank would appeal to a lot of people, but I’ve thought that about many projects in the past that never got much attention, like my music videos and a video effect I made that delays darker parts of the image,” Andrew says. “Within 10 minutes of making my Imgur post, it had a comment under it from Sarah, the co-founder of Imgur."

"That’s when I knew this one would be different. My favorite comment on Imgur was a suggestion that I make a new backdrop, of a room that looks totally normal but is upside-down. It wouldn’t fool anyone; it would just look really funny. I think I’ll do that.” 

Andrew pranked his colleagues

Andrew is working mostly on population modeling and cost analysis in the cancer research field. But he also sometimes works as a musician. “In my shows, I sing, dance, do spoken word, play piano, and duet with a cellist (not all at once). And I’ve always enjoyed a good prank,” he said. 

And how did Andrew’s coworkers respond when they realized they had been played.

“I told them that before we all hung up, I wanted to show them what I had ‘made’ over the weekend. They said sure, and I said, ‘It’s back here, by the window,’ pointing at the paper backdrop. Then I tapped on the paper and zoomed out the camera. They were laughing and laughing, especially when I moved the camera around the room to show them how flimsy the backdrop was that had fooled them all.”

“One coworker said she was wondering why I wasn’t using the nice office chair seen behind me, and another said she thought I lived in a Westin. The style of the fake room doesn’t really match my aesthetic, and a room with a sleek, curvy window like that wouldn’t be affordable in my area. I had purposely positioned my head to hide that window until late in the call,” said Andrew, referring to the curved window shown in one of the photos.

And how is Andrew coping with working from home? He thinks that coding at home is not much different from doing the same thing the office. His work isn’t affected, but he truly misses his colleagues.

“The other big change is that all my shows are canceled. The impact there is more cultural than financial since I rarely make enough from a show to pay for the Lyft home. But every show is a chance to get my music to a wider audience, and they’re super fun, too!”

“One of my shows coming up was going to be on my mom’s birthday, and my parents were planning on driving out from upstate New York to attend. Now I’m not sure when I’ll see them next,” he said.

“I miss my friends too, and I’m going to try setting up ‘parties’ in Zoom with them. It’s too late to fool them with a backdrop, though. The cat is out of the bag.”

Andrew added that he made a tiny error when writing up his Imgur post: “In my original post, I said I printed the backdrop on six pages and taped them together. Out of the 160,000+ people who have viewed it so far, only one commenter pointed out what you can see if you just use your eyes. It is obviously nine pages. Oops! A lot more commenters said the fake apartment didn’t look luxurious at all, but a reverse image search tells me it’s in a building designed by Zaha Hadid,” he clarified, referring to the famous British-Iraqi architect.

Some people were impressed, and others had some suggestions.

Damjan