With Halloween falling on a Sunday in 2021, I thought some of my co-workers might wear costumes at the office on the preceding Friday. I hadn't heard any talk about that happening however, but I still thought it would be a lot of fun to dress up. I wouldn't be present Friday, so I decided I would do it on Wednesday since we were having an employee Halloween soup contest that day.
On Wednesday I took a costume and scythe to work with the intention of again dressing up as the Grim Reaper. I was planning on walking through the training room where lunch would be and hand out candy, but ended up deciding to enjoy the full hour of lunch out-of-costume. I would wander the office after lunch and visit all the office spaces.
As lunch wound down, I went out to my car which I'd parked in the furthest reaches of the parking lot and got dressed. Scythe in hand (with the blade cover securley tied on for safety) I entered the building next to the training room where I found three people still cleaning up and got a few laughs. I circled the building from there and found however almost nobody at their desks. Where had everybody gone?
As I aproached the other end of the office, I passed the conference room and discovered it packed full of people. I was missing a staff meeting! It was then that I remembered HR vaguely mentioning an upcoming presentation while reminding us of the luncheon earlier in the day. I later checked my work calendar and discovered that the scheduled meeting had quietly sneaked into the company-wide calendar without any fanfare, and it was overshadowed by the luncheon, so I had completely spaced it off.
So as to not tip my hand, I sauntered toward the front door at a grim reaper's pace, then once outside I made a beeline for my car where I tore off my costume as quick as I could and quickly disassembled the scythe so that it would fit in the backseat. I then pulled my coat on and zipped it up so that it would look like I'd just returned from an errand, then ran up to a side entrance.
Once in the building I walked casually to the conference room where I poked my head in briefly like I was just observing how crowded it was, then fetched the office chair from my desk and wheeled it into an empty corner of the conference room. I was 15 minutes late, but a few other people came in after me, including one of the managers. Luckily I hadn't missed anything critically important.
I was surprised when I didn't hear any chatter about the hooded visitor later in the day or even the next day. On Friday however, the following chat happened:
A couple hours later I had a video meeting in which somebody asked, “Did we ever find out who that grim reaper was?”
I laughed and said no, then managed to wipe the grin off my face.
The next year I repeated my stunt (and I bought a candy I liked better so that the leftovers were easier to eat). This time there was no meeting to miss out on, and I found several people at their desks.
After I'd completed passing out candy and changed out of my costume, I returned to my desk and resumed my work. The guy sitting next to me asked if I was the grim reaper. “What? No,” I said, “but I saw that dude in the parking lot. He gave me a candy bar!”
“Whatever,” my co-worker said, then turned back to his computer.
No one else has asked me about the incident.