I had been the Director of Applications Development for a large retailer for nine years when we announced  our bankruptcy and plans for total liquidation of the company.  Because of my knowledge of the system operations I was offered a decent bonus incentive to stay and support the applications and the data center until the final  shutdown.

The bankruptcy court assigned the Arthur Anderson accounting firm to perform the final audit.  In the beginning, we met several high-ranking partners of the firm but when the work finally started we only saw them one more time and that was a year later at a dinner,  which was given to twenty of us on the liquidation team.   Arthur Anderson sent twenty-six green beans to perform the audit work.   The leader of the group was a seasoned veteran of two similar liquidation projects and otherwise he was fresh out of college.   Everyone else on the team still had pimple problems.

The liquidation and audit dragged on for months.  Within three months of the bankruptcy announcement all of our stores were closed and empty.   Our corporate offices were located in one of those massive stores.  The executive offices and the data center was located upstairs in the front of the store and the rest of the offices took up the length of the entire side of the building.

On the weekends I used the empty store as my own personal jogging track.  Since the Arthur Anderson audit team kept missing deadlines, they needed to work on Saturdays.   One Monday morning the leader of the audit team, Madhu, came to my office with a problem.  He, and others on the team, believed that a homeless person had taken up residence in our store or in the offices at the side of the building.   I asked him what evidence supported his claim and he told me that on Saturdays they hear noises and whistling on the other side of the door that led to the empty store.  I knew right away that I was the culprit, but I saw an excellent opportunity for mischief.  I told him that I would go home at lunch and pick up a flashlight so we could investigate the empty store and the vast expanse of merchandising offices.  I drafted our in-house council, Ben, into my plan and we were both eager to stick it to  our young auditors.

After lunch Ben and I planted some evidence like dirty pillows and fast food wrappers in strategic locations and then we planted Ben.   There was a hole in the wall in the boiler room that led to a long, thin, dark corridor behind the merchandising offices.  Ben put on a  disguise that consisted of a black knit hat, a fake beard from an old pirate costume, a big black plastic garbage bag which he used as a serape and a raggedy old blanket that he used as a shawl.  I once saw a homeless man with newspapers taped to his legs, so we added that little extra effect to the costume.   He went about twenty feet into the narrow corridor and sat down in the darkness  with his back to the boiler room door.

I went upstairs and collected a search party of five green bean auditors including the young leader of the team.  I led the way into the dark store with my flashlight and I told them that I also believed that some vagrant was living in our midst.   We went back to the  dock doors and as I scanned the empty receiving offices with my flashlight we found the old pillow, blanket and some recent newspapers on the floor with the remains of someone's lunch.   "Look!", I said, "Someone HAS been living in here!".   You could feel the young auditors bristle with fear.  "Comon, let's check the merchandising offices".

We searched every room and these young men stood behind me, ready to run at the first hint of danger.  During the search I tried to maintain a calm atmosphere as I assured them there was no reason to worry.  The boiler room was the last room for us to search.  As we looked around the room one of the green beans asked what was behind the little door in the corner. We walked over to it and I told them that it was just an  empty corridor behind the offices.   We pulled open the door and I shined my  flashlight up high and I slowly brought it down to reveal a pile of garbage and  dirty cloth that was about twenty feet deep in the hole.

"What the hell is that?", I said.  All of a sudden, the pile moved and the "homeless" person turned around, yelled,  stood up and charged at us through the darkness.  My search party screamed and  ran for the door.   They tumbled up the stairs to the advertising offices and  they were screaming like little girls.   You should have seen them.  These were five college guys who were supposed to dismantle a billion dollar a year company and they could not even get the unlocked door open that was at the top of the stairs.  When Ben approached the bottom of the stairs they screamed in unison and they finally managed to get the door open.  I quickly chased them and told them that the homeless guy was Ben.   Ben and I doubled over with laughter.  We laughed even harder when we discovered that one of the young guys wet his pants.  Although Madhu was embarrassed, he appreciated a good joke and he wanted us to do it again with a fresh group of green beans from the audit team.  This time Ben and I switched roles and I became the homeless person.   I added a little twist to the plot and I locked the door at the top of the stairs so they  couldn’t get away.  Everything went exactly as planned and the second group squealed just like the first group.  When I stood at the bottom of the stairs I  snarled and I said, "I'M COMING TO GET YOU!!!”  They screamed and yelled and they beat on the locked door and Ben, Madhu and I couldn’t hold back anymore and we broke down laughing.  While we listened to their yelling at us for pulling  this prank, Madhu realized that one of the victims was not present.  He did not take the escape route up the stairs with the rest of the auditors.  He had run through the offices and the store and he went up the back staircase to the room where the auditors worked.

"There is a KILLER in the store and  he's coming to get us!!", he screamed to the roomful of auditors.  The whole  office cleared out, including the members of our first victims.  All twenty-six Arthur Anderson auditors raced down the front staircase and piled into their cars and disappeared down the street.  The work for the day was over.

Many months later when the project was over and I was working at my new job, Ben and I were invited to their dinner that they were giving as a reward for the project's successful completion.   Their boss heard the story for the first time but the story had changed.   Every  one of the victims believed that the homeless man came charging out of the hole in the wall with a big butcher knife.  Ben and I insisted that it was not true but there was an eleven to two vote and we lost.  I guess it was ok for them to remember a butcher knife that did not exist because they also remembered a successful audit that did not exist either.