Office Pranks

[DaleB]

I've either seen or been party to a couple of office pranks. One coworker left on vacation for a week. When she returned, her cube had been stretch-wrapped in plastic, and completely filled to the top with Styrofoam packing peanuts. The pranksters had been nice enough to cover equipment with cardboard boxes to make sure not to damage the PC, but as they topped off the cube someone asked if anyone had turned off the monitor (a 20" CRT) -- no one could remember.

Another one found his cube full of balloons on his birthday. A third found his chair and computer gift-wrapped.

My favorite, though, and the simplest... one guy had an oddly-shaped red stain on his carpet. We never did figure out what it was, but it may have been Kool-Aid or punch from a long-ago birthday party or something. Who knows? All I know is that one morning he came in to find the chalk outline of a sprawled body drawn around it, and "POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS" tape blocking his door.

And, yeah, you NEVER want o leave your screen unlocked. Bad things can happen. I've been telecommuting full time for the past nine years as of tommorrow, and I kind of miss the office pranks... but any more the office where I would be working (if I moved and had an office) is mostly deserted anyway. In my line of work there is generally no reason to go to an office any more.

Edit: Almost forgot. We got a new manager once, who was immediately perceived by the rabble as being a little too detail-oriented and who let everyone know (repeatedly) of his Navy background. One of the things he started carping about right off the bat was the sorry state of the rat's nest of network cables in our data center. In the Navy, you see, all those wires would be properly secured. OK, yeah, they were a frightful mess... but my attention immediately turned to his office, where several hundred zip-ties gave their all to secure every single wire and cable in there, with no more than half an inch of slack anywhere.

 

[N747JB]

I used to have a used car lot next to a convenience store, the store was and small locally owned, it had a pay phone in the parking lot closest to our building. It was maybe 100 yards from the showroom. One of my guys got the number for the pay phone and loved to call it when someone was walking past. He would often ask for Mr. Thornton, the store owner, and explain that he had been trying to call him and the phone in the store was out. Sure enough, 3 out of 4 people would go inside and try to get Mr. Thornton to the phone! Of course after one or two times he figured out who was doing it.
So, our caller moved on to the Coke and beer delivery guys, while they were in the store, he would get a passerby to answer the phone and tell them he needed to talk to the delivery driver. Usually making up some story about them leaving too much or too little product at the last stop. Then when the delivery driver came to the phone, he would act like the driver had called him and want to know why he was bothering him while he tried to sleep. The delivery drivers and helpful customers often had words.
It was childish, but funny at the time!

 

[DaleB]

Wow, which companies are these that you folks have all this time to screw around at??? I want to get my application in ASAP.

I would estimate I've spent 2 hours over the past 15 years on office pranks. On the other hand, I've worked at least a couple hundred hours of un-compensated overtime. I don't think my employer objects to the balance.

 

[CJones]

After we had upgraded to Windows NT, we had a co-worker (not very well liked) that could never seem to remember to lock his computer. One time he went next door for something, so one of the guys took a screenshot of his desktop, then deleted all the icons from the desktop and made the screenshot (with all the "icons") his desktop. He couldn't figure out for the life of him why none of his icons worked. I wish we could have gotten rid of the start menu somehow.

I did something similar when I was IT Support for a small office. I checked with my boss before executing the plan:

I sent out an email one morning that said that there was a new virus circulating that made all of the icons on your desktop stop working, but not to worry because the only way you could get the virus was by visiting p0rn sites. I caught one of the ladies away from her desk and did the desktop snapshot + remove icons thing like above. Then we sat and waited to see how long it took her to say anything. It took a while...

 

[dell30rb]

In college, a few of my friends spent a solid 2-3 hours cutting up pictures from dirty magazines and creatively stashing them in another friend's belongings. In between pages of books, in his clothes drawers, refrigerator, car, taped to underside of furniture, you name it. This has resulted in multiple awkward moments. To give an example of how thorough we were, he told me the other day he is STILL finding p0rn - this was 5 years ago and he now lives in Australia.

 

[signu127]

I can see the vending machine from my office. When I am bored I will superglue a quarter to the floor and watch people try and pick up. I know its lame but I get some good laughs.

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

Lazy bastards ought to be able to wrk 50-65 hrs a week without this retarded childish stuff.

It's team building. Pranks in the spirit of fun can be a good thing for the morale of the troops.

I wouldn't work at a place that thought people can work flat out for 8 or 9 hours straight, 5 days a week, 52 weeks per year.

 

[JB1842]

Lazy bastards ought to be able to wrk 50-65 hrs a week without this retarded childish stuff.

We can work those hours no problem. It's dealing with management and others that make life difficult that we resort to having some fun to make the hours go by.

 

[Matthew]

I used to work in a testing lab with temperature chambers for hot and cold soaking the electronic components we were testing. There was one guy who used to think he was a good prankster, but in reality was just a bully.

He had a habit of kicking off his shoes while at his desk and it didn't take a whole lot of effort to steal his shoes from the back side of the desk, from under the next cubicle. The next place they'd go was inside a temp chamber set to -40 with the liquid nitrogen turned on. About lunch time he'd start looking for his shoes. It takes a long time for dress shoes to get warm enough to wear when they've been soaking for a while.

 

[N747JB]

I took photography in high school, we shared the "darkroom" with several other folks, it was actually the seldom used concession stand at the high school theater. We had it last period of the day and knowing our buddies would be in there first period the next day...............We............I mean someone cut out a bunch of pictures from Hustler, they were pretty raunchy from what I recall and posted them all over the "darkroom". These pictures may have been beyond raunchy, I do have a vivid memory of one of them, but I can't share it here. What a great practial joke right??

Remember the part about it being a "seldom used concession stand"?? well that night was one of the nights when it was USED!! And of course the lady that ran the concession stand was (Bitchin)Betty Busbin, proud member of the First Baptist Church and first class prude. I grew up with her kids and don't think I ever saw her laugh in the 20 years I knew her. She did not think our little prank was nearly as funny as we did!! Neither did the principal!

In college, a few of my friends spent a solid 2-3 hours cutting up pictures from dirty magazines and creatively stashing them in another friend's belongings. In between pages of books, in his clothes drawers, refrigerator, car, taped to underside of furniture, you name it. This has resulted in multiple awkward moments. To give an example of how thorough we were, he told me the other day he is STILL finding p0rn - this was 5 years ago and he now lives in Australia.

 

[us AAirways]

Lazy bastards ought to be able to wrk 50-65 hrs a week without this retarded childish stuff.

This should be merged with the "Bully" thread. The 7th grade bully is now the office prankster.

There are other ways to lighten the mood at work. We have a Wii system in the break room for example.

 

[DaleB]

I know it seems fashionable this year to call everything that anyone does "bullying", but not everything is. There is a pretty broad line between a good-natured, harmless office prank and bullying. Most of us who made it out of grade school understand the difference, and those who don't probably never will.

 

[Seanaldinho]

We have a Wii system in the break room for example.

Your kidding right? Those darn things make me so frustrated. Maybe its just my competitive spirit.



Other day I met a friends brother for the first time. The brother is known for being a prankster so my friend and I arranged for me to get him. We bought one of those cheesy hand buzzers and wound it up for a good ten minutes. When the brother came and sat down I was introduced so I reached over and shook his hand and he jumped up from the table when that thing shocked him.

Cant beat the classics.

 

[Threefingeredjack]

While wearing the hat of maintenance officer at a large unnamed air station on a large unnamed bay on the western coast of Florida we were blessed with a truly outstanding commanding officer who prided himself in building teamwork and esprit de corps. He also had an inspired prankster residing within him. Vowing to even the score we finally hit on a scheme that worked out well. He took a well needed two week leave and the XO, myself and one of the pilots began a gradually escalating confrontation via email revolving around an imagined maintenance issue. The pilot complained the issue wasn't being addressed properly and I maintained an adequate pilot would be able to cope. The XO played peacemaker and as the days went by and the tempo of the messages escalated we got some really "heated" exchanges going.

Upon the CO's return the XO called his residence and suggested he catch up on the "issue". The next morning's staff meeting began normally until we got to the maintenance section and my partner in crime and I began a heated exchange which ended in his calling me outside. We quickly exited and hid in a closet while the XO and CO went down the hall looking for us. We quickly returned to the meeting and when the CO returned I was calmly running through the availability report as if nothing had happened. It took him a few seconds to get his head around what was happening, and he tried to act ticked off but couldn't hack it. The whole room exploded in laughter and we got a "Well Done" from the CO.

 

[us AAirways]

I'll do that on my next job interview. A hand buzzer and a water squirting tie.

 

[Henning]

At the car lot I used to take condensers and charge them and lay them on the bosses desk...

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

We had a few super techs we hired right out of Tech school so of course they knew everything and were resistant to any advise from the old guys.

One day they went to lunch and we print screened their desktop and then saved it as their desktop photos and moved all their short cuts into a folder in the corner. So when they clicked on the desktop photo nothing happened of course.

They came back and couldn't figure out how their computer was locked. They hard booted it a few times before figuring it out or did we tell them, I don't remember.

 

[audiododd]

At the car lot I used to take condensers and charge them and lay them on the bosses desk...

My dad said he used to do something similar in electronics lab in high school. They would take a condenser/capacitor (of a small rating, of course) and pop it in a wall socket for a few seconds and then throw it to someone and yell, "Hey Bob!! CATCH!!" Of course, the natural tendency is to catch it and then...POW!!

I forgot another thing we used to do. I was in an electronics maintenance shop and we were supposed to remove all jewelry before cracking open any equipment (to keep from accidentally shorting anything out -- especially via your body). One guy was fairly recently married, so he would take off his ring and would forget to put it back on. If he left it too long, it would get suspended from a string tied to a pencil and put in a cup of water in the freezer. By the time he was looking for it at the end of the day, it was encased in a solid block of ice. After a few times of explaining to his new bride why he was thawing out ice with a hair dryer at home, he started remembering to put the ring in his pocket.

 

[Henning]

My dad said he used to do something similar in electronics lab in high school. They would take a condenser/capacitor (of a small rating, of course) and pop it in a wall socket for a few seconds and then throw it to someone and yell, "Hey Bob!! CATCH!!" Of course, the natural tendency is to catch it and then...POW!!

I'd use a coil wire on a car to charge it. I could usually get him every few months.

 

[ajstoner21]

Another good prank is to change the desktop icons to something else. Make the excel shortcut look like word, make the word shortcut look like PowerPoint, etc. It's fun watching them mutter to themselves "Wtf is my computer doing, I didn't click that"

Some of you have some brilliant pranks.

 

[JB1842]

Since I'm working for free today and for the near future, I expect the office pranks to rise in my office. I'll keep you posted.

In the Marine Corps, I was stationed at MCAS Miramar during the transition from the Navy. We sents the new guys (I was in a comm unit, most people didn't know jack about aviation) to supply to get 50 feet of flight line. Sometimes we would call supply and give them a heads up. One time a guy was gone for close to 5 hours. He got bounced around the base all day. Also telling them to get frequency grease to lessen the static on the radios was good, but they should have known better than to trust that, and deserved to fall for it.

 

[wabower]

In HS you quickly learned never to ride shotgun in a car with a chain dragging the ground.

 

[Bill]

We sents the new guys (I was in a comm unit, most people didn't know jack about aviation) to supply to get 50 feet of flight line.

Waay back in boy scouts we sent new scouts for left handed smoke shifters, striped paint, white carbon paper, the typical stuff.

One day a young kid came up to us at a district camp out and asks for white carbon paper, and one of our leaders whips a piece out and hands it to the young lad. The dad was an industrial drafter and had the white carbon paper for working with blueprints.

I would love to have seen the look on the face of his scoutmaster.

 

[JB1842]

Waay back in boy scouts we sent new scouts for left handed smoke shifters, striped paint, white carbon paper, the typical stuff.

One day a young kid came up to us at a district camp out and asks for white carbon paper, and one of our leaders whips a piece out and hands it to the young lad. The dad was an industrial drafter and had the white carbon paper for working with blueprints.

I would love to have seen the look on the face of his scoutmaster.

We also sent them to Admin to get ID 10 Tango forms.

 

[Corpsmaide]

Since I'm working for free today and for the near future, I expect the office pranks to rise in my office. I'll keep you posted.

In the Marine Corps, I was stationed at MCAS Miramar during the transition from the Navy. We sents the new guys (I was in a comm unit, most people didn't know jack about aviation) to supply to get 50 feet of flight line. Sometimes we would call supply and give them a heads up. One time a guy was gone for close to 5 hours. He got bounced around the base all day. Also telling them to get frequency grease to lessen the static on the radios was good, but they should have known better than to trust that, and deserved to fall for it.

Working the flight line in the air force there have been times where new troops were sent to the tool crib for 100 feet of flight line. We would also send new troops to NDI (nondestructive inspection) to have their steel toed boots xrayed for cracks. NDI would fail a boot, red tag it, and send the troop back to our shop carrying the defected boot.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Once upon a time, I posted "Happy 30th Birthday Laura" signs all around our office.

Everyone liked Laura, so she was greeted with a warm "Happy Birthday" by virtually everyone she ran into that day.

Laura was ****ed. She wasn't 30 and it wasn't her birthday.

Hah! Reminds me of what my future FIL did to my future MIL... He sent her flowers and balloons at work that said "Happy 40th birthday!" on them...

It was her 39th, and she spent the entire day unsuccessfully trying to convince everyone of that.

 

[Bob Noel]

One day a young kid came up to us at a district camp out and asks for white carbon paper, and one of our leaders whips a piece out and hands it to the young lad. The dad was an industrial drafter and had the white carbon paper for working with blueprints.

I would love to have seen the look on the face of his scoutmaster.

that is AWESOME!

 

[Henning]

Working the flight line in the air force there have been times where new troops were sent to the tool crib for 100 feet of flight line. We would also send new troops to NDI (nondestructive inspection) to have their steel toed boots xrayed for cracks. NDI would fail a boot, red tag it, and send the troop back to our shop carrying the defected boot.

Used to send green deckhands aft to get a bucket of prop wash while underway to check for cavitation. Most kids would take the bucket on the line and hold on to the line to have it torn out of their hands. This is a good lesson on the power of water and gives us an opportunity to have a 'man overboard' drill with the new guy. One kid was pretty smart though, he knew he wouldn't be able to hang onto it, so he tied it around his waist. Since he was wearing his required work floatation vest and it was warm water, I let him go ahead and we had a man overboard drill for real. The engineer couldn't stop laughing for about half an hour.

 

[kujo806]

Probably the best one I heard about was from my brother. Years ago, he worked at Motorola doing software. He has a friend that worked in the cube next to him. This guy is a very conservative no nonsense kind of guy who has a tendency to complain about a lot of things and people that he disagrees with. The guy was in a double cube, but had no cube-mate. There was not even a desk on the other side of the cube. When this guy went on vacation, my brother and the other guys in the office went to work. They brought in a portable printer stand type desk and set his stuff up on it on the other side of the cube. Then they decorated his former side of the cube with items such as family pictures in frames of an apparent middle aged woman (printed from the internet), I love Hillary coffee mug and political stickers, crayon drawings from supposed grand children, a shawl hung on the back of his former desk chair, new computer equipment complete with family pictures on the screensaver, and even a name plate on the cube (I think her name was Martha). Well safe to say he was stunned when he got back to the office. Considering everyone around him was in on it including the admin, they all had the story down. They told him a new employee had started last week and requested his cube. She had this week off, but would be back next week. They told him she was a real character, and that he was going to have a fun time sharing a cube with her. He was freaking out and swearing. He was threatening to quit. At first he thought it had to be a gag, but everyone he asked about it was in on it, and backed up the story. Apparently he went about his work sitting at this ridiculous printer stand desk, and throughout the day the guys around him would hear him swearing under his breath as he coded away at his printer desk. They had trouble keeping it together and cracking up hysterically, but they held up most of the day. They even made it through lunch with him practically threatening to go postal. In the afternoon, the director of the business unit was walking by (he was not in on it), and did a double take by this guy's cube. He stopped at the cube with Dave coding away at his printer stand with his pictures and belongings arranged compactly on the new desk and said, "What the hell are you doing?" Dave jumped up and said I knew it!...and the director walked away saying, "good one".