April is almost upon us. Spring showers. Easter candy. Summer right around the corner. And for the more unsuspecting of us as the calendar turns, here comes April Fools Day. Oh the joy.

Speaking of joy, we also seem to be on the cusp of a global recession and businesses, workers, and their families are struggling to make ends meet all over the world and here in startup land.

Changes are being made to ensure survival, at all costs. The tech focused publication the Information reported this week in their newsletter that layoffs are already on the rise, particularly among startups exposed to the travel & real estate verticals:

So, with the challenging macro economic picture and a lot of uncertainty in the air, it would only be prudent to capture in writing a quick guide to all you managers navigating the muddy waters of April Fools Day. Ready?

SKIP IT! DON’T DO IT! Please, your employees beg of you! You could end up on the front page of TechCrunch AND The Information!

We are in the middle of a global pandemic, people. Unless you can ensure light hearted reactions from your stressed out colleagues of your cheaply planned prank, pretend like next Wednesday is any other shelter in place day during this pandemic season. For the sanity of all involved. Or perhaps you stress tested your witty caper during the last global pandemic? In that case, please by all means proceed.

I’ve seen it go wrong different ways in better times, but it still usually goes wrong:

Exhibit A: changing the screensavers of the entire company workforce to a “prank” background. Privacy concerns, IT department? Yeah, that didn’t go over well with the engineers.

Exhibit B: hiring an actor to pose as a new hire and having this individual “fake” harass a variety of real employees. Fake male employee actor called a real female employee attractive in a company wide e-mail. This was in the #MeToo era!!

Exhibit C: Google’s 2016 “mic drop” button alerted the recipient of e-mails that the sender had archived their thread and was leaving the conversation. Ouch. Who knows how many awkward scenarios played out with that one.

Everyone has a face smash story from their open floor plan battle zone on April the 1st. This is not the Real World, The Bachelor, Love is Blind or any other reality tv show. Unless you can confidently predict the reactions of dozens of people, get outta here with April Fools Day during COVID-19!

In summary, if you know someone who has the gall to go near the Coronavirus this Foolz season, please try and suggest to them that they stand down. They are in for a backfire of epic proportions. Wednesday April 1st approaches, beware and be safe.