An Australian nurse has been fired after newspaper readers contacted her employers and informed them of a cruel prank she performed on an elderly patient suffering from dementia. Sudiksha Ahuja worked at a nursing home near Wagga Wagga in New South Wales in 2021 when she took a therapy doll – which looked like a newborn infant – and bashed its head on a table, caving in its face. She did this in front of an elderly patient who believed it was a real baby. The patient was reportedly near-traumatized by the incident and reduced to tears.
Ajuha subsequently resigned from the Wagga Wagga nursing home, moved to another state, and found a job at Pearl Home Care in Mornington, around an hour from Melbourne.
When the media recently covered the story about the cruel prank, readers recognized her and contacted her new place of employment. She has since faced a tribunal for the offense and lost her job. One reader who reported Ahuja to her bosses at Pearl Home Care said, “As a Mornington resident, I can tell you, we don’t take kindly to abuses of our large population of elderly residents.”
It is not unheard of for employees to lose their jobs over pranks, even if most are not quite so cruel. In one instance, a store employee called her boss on April 1 and pretended that they were being robbed. The joke went wrong when the boss dispatched the police, who arrived in moments and charged the employee with inducing panic. Similarly, a worker asked friends to pretend to rob colleagues at a party, but they turned up drunk and with guns, causing several unanticipated problems for the prankster.
In some cases, company bosses are involved. At a Florida Hooter’s restaurant, a manager decided to play an April 1 joke on his staff by promising a free “Toyota” to the whoever sold the most beer. When a waitress won the contest, her boss presented her with a “toy Yoda” doll. Less than impressed, the waitress sued her employers, saying they owed her a car, and won.
