It Should’ve Been Common Sense

I have read and heard about terrible pranks that get pulled on people which have resulted with bodily harm, property damage, or personal loss. These stories are absolutely horrible. It sickens me that people find amusement in causing others pain. It also seems that these types of occurrences are on the rise. I hear about such terrible things, such as these, happening more and more frequently. Why do people find it so amusing?

Now, I know that anybody can be conned. Nobody is immune to it. No matter how smart a person may be, there will always be a con artist out there that is so good that they can even con the brightest and sharpest individual. I have a lot of sympathy to those who are victims of a con, but I do not have much sympathy for people that can’t simply use their brain and logic in something that “should” be blatantly obvious to anyone.

What am I talking about? Well, I found this news article on The Smoking Gun’s website. Maybe you are familiar with the news story that took place on June 9, 2009. At a Holiday Inn Express Hotel in Conway, Arkansas a prank caller phoned the reception desk posing as an official from Grennel Fire Sprinkler service. The prank caller told the lady at the front desk that there was a problem with the fire sprinkler system and that she had to pull the fire alarm to fix the problem with the sprinkler system. When the fire alarm came on, due to pulling the fire alarm, the prank caller told the receptionist that she needs to smash all the windows in the hotel in order to prevent the water sprinklers from turning on. At this point a customer at the hotel assisted in helping the receptionist break all the windows in the hotel. The prank caller proceeded to tell the receptionist that she now had to physically break one of the water sprinkler heads to prevent them from flooding the hotel. However, by doing this it caused massive amounts of water to flow out of it, flooding the hotel as a result. The customer that was helping her got on the phone with the prank caller to seek advice because he had smashed the windows and the fire alarm had not deactivated. The customer gave the prank caller his mobile phone number so they could keep in touch while the customer was roaming about the hotel trying to help the receptionist. The prank caller then called the customer’s mobile phone and then proceeded to advise him that he needed to find the electrical breaker box and shut down the electricity to the hotel. The customer found an employee and was able to get the employee to unlock the main electrical room and he shut down the main power to the hotel. To make a long story short, the prank caller succeeded in causing an estimated $50,000 worth of damage to the hotel. If you want the full story or if you want to read the police report, which is much more detailed, follow the link I gave at the beginning of this paragraph.

Now, as I said before, anybody can be conned or fooled by someone else. When someone calls over the phone you don’t really have a good way to verify their identity. I don’t blame people for being conned; I do blame people for not using their brain. Let’s think about this logically for a second. If someone called you and told you that the only way to turn off your fire alarm is by smashing your windows would you believe them? What if someone said that the only way to prevent the water sprinkler from turning on is to break the head off of it; would you believe that? If you think about the things that the caller requested that they to do, you will see that the requests are absolutely ridiculous. I don’t care if someone called me and claimed to be the president of the world. If they told me that the only way to prevent a fire is if I drive my car into the elevator and then jump off the roof I wouldn’t do it. Common sense would tell me otherwise. So why can’t people just stop and think once in a while? Even if the caller had truly been an official from the Grennel Fire Sprinkler service or even been a real police officer, since when does smashing windows make a fire alarm deactivate? Since when does breaking the head off of a fire sprinkler prevent it from turning on? What next? I suppose chopping off your right arm will prevent you from aging and drowning kittens will fix your computer problems right?

On top of all of this, I will try to imagine a person that is gullible enough to fall for it; then I find myself baffled by how in the world other people got conned into it as well? There was at least a customer and another employee that were also involved in the chaos. So the prank caller didn’t just con the receptionist, but they conned a customer and another employee. Are people really that dense? What has happened to our minds? I am not the brightest person nor do I consider myself to be very smart, but I at least have “some” common sense. It is possible that someone may con me someday, but this story is absolutely ludicrous!