This is war.
“And we are losing,” said Clifford McManus, 25, as he scanned the carnage of battle Sunday morning.
The small yard at the home he and his spouse, Cory, rent near downtown Columbus was strewn with shredded newspaper from an overnight attack.
But it turns out the shredded newspaper was just a diversionary tactic — the real assault came later Saturday night.
“When I got off work, I went out to my car and there it was,” Cory said. “I called Clifford and said, ‘Quick, go look at your car.’ He caught them in the act.”
The results of this latest battle in a war that has been going on for six months now, was still visible Sunday morning: Both Clifford’s Lincoln Aviator and Cory’s Ford Explorer were covered, bumper to bumper, with yellow and orange Post-It notes. They had to remove the Post-It notes from the windshield and windows to drive home.
“At first, I didn’t realize what had happened,” Cory said. “I looked out there and was thinking, ‘Where’s my car?’ Then when I got close enough to see it. I knew what had happened.”
He also knew exactly who was responsible.
The Prank War between the McManuses and Mike Bober and his allies has been going on for six months now, a battle among restaurant workers that commenced not long after Clifford and Cory moved to Columbus from Dallas in September.
Clifford is a manager at Longhorn Steakhouse, while Cory is in management at Logan’s Steakhouse, which is where he met Mike and his unnamed co-conspirators.
“It’s a random thing,” says Mike, 30. “But that’s what makes it so effective. They never know what’s coming or when it will happen. It may be a month between pranks and it’s never, ever the same prank.”
The McManuses have had their yard rolled with toilet paper (it was the first prank). They’ve awakened to find their yard strewn with cotton balls. They’ve had their doorknobs and hand rails slathered with peanut butter and had their yard filled with “For Sale” and campaign signs.
“But this tops everything,” Clifford said, his voice tinged with awe.
With each strike, Clifford and Cory retaliate.
“But they just do to us what we did to them,” Bober says. “They haven’t thought of anything great, so it’s not even close. It’s pretty one-sided.”
Bober said the latest prank required three large packages of post-it notes. It took five people about 10 minutes to decorate Cory’s car, but only five minutes to finish the job on Clifford’s car.
“After the first one, we gained some efficiency,” Bober said, who noted that passing motorists paused to take photos and yell their approval as they decorated Cory’s car.
“This one was pretty awesome,” Bober admitted. “So I think we’re not going to do another one for a little while. This one was just so good that we want to let it ride for a while.”
Although he acknowledges the war is going badly, Clifford says he’s got something epic planned for pay-back for Bober, who lives just a block away.
“Before, we always just do to them what they do to us,” Clifford said. “The other thing is that we always come back and do it the next day, so it’s not as big a surprise.
“This time,” he said, “we’re going to do things differently.”
The McManuses are going nuclear, they promise.
Bober is not afraid.
“To be honest, I wish they would,” Bober says. “I’m not seeing any imagination from them. They need to step up their game.”
Neither side expect the war, which is closely governed by “rules of engagement” – “It can’t be anything that costs something to fix,” Clifford says – to end anytime soon.
“We’ve got a couple more ideas,” Bober says ominously.
“There will be no truce.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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