I was listening to the radio the other night and the talk show asked, “What was the best High School Senior Prank you’ve either seen or personally done?” Talk about memories flooding your head. But one stood out amongst the rest and it actually can be tied to your business – even I’m going to stretch to get there.

I attended Branham High School in San Jose, California. It was early June. The year? 1984. Graduation was about two weeks away. I worked after school at Shell (a gas station) 2-3 nights a week and every other Saturday. It was a pretty good job. I still remember my best friend, Dan Ostrander, got me the job.

We already had our Senior Beach Day and all of the activities were done – so it was “prank time”. You see, when Senior Pranks occur, and things need to be “cleaned up” the bill is sent to the current graduating class. Since all of our activities were done, the bill was going to go to the Junior class.

Nice.

That’s a great tip for any high school seniors – don’t pull pranks until AFTER your Senior Trip, or it might either get downgraded or worse, canceled.

Okay, back to the story. So, we had a full-service garage, which are quite rare these days, and behind the station were a ton of old tires, I mean a ton. I asked my boss what he did with the tires. He said that twice a year he had to go to the dump and pay $4.00 a tire to get rid of them. Ouch.

Light Bulb Moment.

I asked my boss if he’d be interested in having the tires removed for him for the same $4.00 per tire and he wouldn’t have to hassle with renting a truck and spending a few hours on the round trip drive to the dump. He said he was VERY interested.

Sweet.

I drove around to three other neighboring gas stations with the same offer. All the owners agreed to the arrangement.

Do you know the prank yet?

I roped in two of my senior classmates, Todd Staley and Dimis Martinez. We started at 10pm and took the first load of tires over to our high school. We had an open air quad area, and we began to build a monster tire pyramid on the roof overlooking the quad! We finished around 2am and while I can’t remember the exact tire count, it was well over 100 tires. It looked spectacular.

Unfortunately, I overslept and barely made it to school on time and saw the maintenance staff loading all the tires onto a truck. They dismantled our structure before it was seen. That sucked.

But what didn’t suck was going around to each gas station, my boss included, and handing them an invoice for the tires. Each store owner was VERY appreciative of saving them both time and money and as one owner said, “You took care of it off-hours which didn’t disrupt my business. Thank you.”

No, thank you.

Oh, and after I collected nearly $500.00, which was nearly a month’s pay for me at the gas station, did I tell my two buddies? No. I kept it. My reasoning? I pulled the business transaction, they were there just to have fun and be a part of it!

I should also state that I worked in the school bank and I saw the bill the Junior class was charged for the prank, which of course, made it even funnier … well, at the time.

After high school I got a great job at General Electric in their Nuclear Division. Before I left for college that year (just a few months after the prank), I returned to my old high school, and gave a check in the amount the bill was. I still remember Mrs. Newberry, the dean, who was in the office and took the check, asked me what it was for. “I’d rather not say, just make sure it goes into the current Senior Class fund.” She responded, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with tires, would it?”

I guess the look of guilt on my face said enough so I turned around and headed for the door.

“Jerry,” she called out and I stopped and looked back, “this took a lot of class. Keep it up and you’ll make it big in whatever you decide to do.”

Dang. I hate it when the dean is right.

This story shows you that even in something as juvenile as a Senior Class Prank, there was a business opportunity. Think outside the box and see what opportunities present themselves to you … just don’t put any tires on my roof.

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