Working from home during the coronavirus outbreak means sleeping in, working with your PJs on, and doing your laundry during your break. It sounds like a dream come true. But working from home is also the perfect opportunity to prank your coworkers!

Andrew Eckel, a software engineer and musician living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, fooled his colleagues into thinking that he lived in a luxury apartment. He did this by creating a backdrop of an expensive-looking home and only later did he reveal to his coworkers that they’ve all been bamboozled. When he posted about it on Imgur, people went nuts over Andrew’s 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 told Bored Panda.

“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 said about his future plans. Scroll down for the rest of our interview with him.

More info: AndrewEckel.com | YouTube | Bandcamp

Andrew Eckel pranked his coworkers

Image credits: RelevantForOnce

Image credits: RelevantForOnce

Image credits: RelevantForOnce

Andrew works in cancer research and mostly focuses on doing population modeling and cost analysis. But he also moonlights 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. One of the songs that Andrew created is called “Porcupine” and we absolutely love it.

We were extremely curious to know how Andrew’s coworkers reacted when they realized they’d been pranked.

“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,” Andrew told Bored Panda, referring to the curvy window seen in one of the photos.

But how is Andrew finding working from home like due to the coronavirus outbreak? Well, in his opinion, writing code at home is no different from doing it in the office. So his work isn’t affected, but he really misses his coworkers.

“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.

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“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 also added that he made a small mistake 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 explained, referring to the renowned British-Iraqi architect.

Most people were very impressed, others had suggestions of their own

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