Harmless Pranks in the workplace..

I know work can be boring at times and just curious how many of you ever played pranks on your co-workers. If so what were they?

Does my sister count?

blackbrandt said:

Does my sister count?

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yeah LOL

Don't think the TRF database is big enough...

Working as both a tech and Service adviser in a large dealership for many years- the stories are endless . Techs can be BRUTAL -
One of the MANY favorites are the lesson the UPS man got about crapping in our shop toilet on a daily basis, that guy was rotten inside to say the least and we asked him to find another -place- many times. Well after that fell on deaf ears time and time again, he got the old Taco Bell treatment-
A well placed pre-split pack of FIRE sauce under the toilet seat works wonders :wink:
Dont even get me started about the coolant and soda bottle bombs / shock seat treatment/saftey clean shop rag balls or the ol ciggy butt in the open pocket :eyepop:

Where I work now and like most places you guys know they have vending machines. I work in a large office building with 800 plus employees over 8 floors. Everyone uses the one break room on the 5th floor and has access to the vending machines.

One of the machines is one of those "Lazy-Susans" where you can rotate it around and on each level there is a snack or some other type of food items such as sandwiches, burritos, yogurt etc.

Now how many of you have used one before and know the drill? Well what about putting "something" back in place of the food item you removed. I thought about getting some decals / stickers made of Elvis and below the Image have the words "Elvis Snacks"

Wrap the item in cellophane sandwich wrap and place it in the machine. What could pass as an Elvis Snack? Use your imagination. Peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich would be my first choice. I could see someone rotaing that machine to come across an Elvis snack. OMG! Sticking their money in and getting a mouth full of peanut butter!!

Too me that would be funny!

Or you could always put a bottle of prune juice? It's only limited by your imagination.

Everybody's cube whiteboard in the immediate vicinity has one of these:



I have NO IDEA why they keep cropping up. :neener:

TV-B-Gone + lunchtime Halo Matches on the xbox in the breakroom = hilarious.

What makes this especially funny is that the kids at my son's daycare twigged to what was going on the first night I did it to them. I pulled this same prank for 3 or 4 months at work. My coworkers never figured out what was happening until I fessed up about it to couple of them 6 months later.

The conversation went something like this:

Coworker: "Man that T.V. was a piece of junk - about time they got rid of it. It was always overheating or something when we were playing halo."

Me (launghing): "Dude, you guys seriously never figured it out?"

Coworker: "Figured what out?"

Me: "Someone was f-ing with you by 'randomly' turning the T.V. off."

Coworker: "Son-of-a ... who?"

Me: "Me..."

Coworker (laughing): "You bastard."

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We had a guy I worked with at many shops over the years that was - damn good at "getting you" with the classic coolant bottle air bomb and what not when you least expected it. Needless to say, after a while of not being able to share the same LOVE -we had to get creative :kill:
So one day one of the guys came up with the idea to run a jumper wire from the Yellow Mallory Super Coil on his ride to the frame of the bench seat-
Needless to say- we were all watching out the side door when he went to lunch that day- I almost felt bad watching him try and let go of the ignition key........
NOT .

My ALL TIME favorite involved the same guy at the same shop a few years later- we had an empty bay in the shop that kinda acted as our tool box room and general storage for crap area. pretty much every day we would have a beer or two- sit around and shoot the bull about the day and pack/clean our tools. In that back room there was an old moped that didnt run- dont know why, but I always sat on the moped at the end of the day. Well one day I got the idea to run a wire from the plug wire on the moped- completely around the entire bay of the shop- probably wasted 20 bucks worth of 12gauge wire and alligator clipped the wire to his tool box. I waited till he came in cleaning tools and leaned on or grabbed his roll cab- then I would slowly roll over the kick start on the moped. It took him several weeks to figure out why his tool box kept shocking him as I spent FAAAR to much time hiding the wire and clip :wink:
Keeping from falling off the moped laughing was the hard part.

Gosh-where to start? Ask the new auto parts driver for a cup of part cleaner and hand her a Styrofoam coffee cup.....

Run a blank piece of paper thru the copier and leave the lid up (all black) then slip it behind somebody's glare screen on their computer-that was great even when It got involved. Removed same from glare screen-friend wondered off to look productive and the It chap went to get a new monitor (never removed the glare screen-huh?)

Savaged a bunch of old keyboards and replaced all my buddies keycaps on his work station spelling dirty words

hacked the new time system for mechanics for personalized greeting like "Happy Birthday Ryan" They were overly impressed with the new system-hilarious!

After repeatedly telling a mechanic he could NOT take his metal tool box inside an aircraft to work out of-bonded it to a metal work bench with mil-spec epoxy. Bench was later salvaged out and seen in the boneyard with said box still attached.

Collecting all the 'holes' punched thru paper and loading them into a plastic spoon. Carefully bending spoon so it fits in the top drawer under tension as you gently slide it shut. Instant face party when they need a pen or such.

I need to take life more seriously- I'm running out of it......

excel sheet as a background is funny stuff I've done that few times

One of my other hobbies is solving the rubiks cube. My quickest time is 33 seconds.

So I will go around the building and pick up people's rubiks cubes they leave behind as desk toys and solve all of them. Then hear stories later of someone solving their cube. Kinda lame.

Oh, boy does this bring back some memories! I currently work in an office, and there is not much of a sense of humor for this kind of thing. But, I did used to work in an auto repair shop. Some of the fun stuff there was:

Asking your parts supplier for metric hose clamps, as the 3/4" clamp would not work on a foreign car.

Asking the Snap-on tool man for a pair of metric pliers, or the new metric hammer.

When you girl comes in to take the parts order, wait till she goes in the back, and mess with her car-turn the wipers on, radio to max volume, etc. She finally learned to lock it up, but we had a slim jim.....

The best stunt was the spider on Halloween. Every morning, the shop manager would come in, stick his hand through the door to the stock room, and wave his hand around till he found the light switch. So, on Oct. 30, I went back to the shop at night with a large plastic tarantula, and a spool of thread. As predicted, the next morning, while fumbling for the light switch, he hit the thread, and caused Mr. Spider to leap off a shelf, right at him. He never hit that switch again, without taking a look around first. Scared the carp out of him. Serious fun. Phil L.

A guy I know used to work at a golf course and got the ranger good one day. He came running up to him as he was about to take off in his cart and told him to go look for Dr. So-and-So in cart 58, his wife was trying to reach him but the calls weren't going through. So the ranger heads out and spends about an hour trying to find the guy with no luck. He gets back to the cart barn and my friend smiles and points out the number of the cart he (the ranger) had been riding in - 58.

1) Unplug co-workers soldering iron.
2) Add one wrap of the thinnest solder you can find to the prongs.
3) We called it the "Blue Blaze". Enjoy.

A while back (DOS 3.1? I think it was) I wrote a program that started when the computer was turned on. After the computer went through boot the screen would show "Format C: ?".
Whatever key (the 'any' key) was pressed, the screen would show the marching bar of a hard drive format. Didn't do anything to the drive, just a screen. I thought it was funny. Subjects did not. At least while it was happening.

mikemech said:

A while back (DOS 3.1? I think it was) I wrote a program that started when the computer was turned on. After the computer went through boot the screen would show "Format C: ?".
Whatever key (the 'any' key) was pressed, the screen would show the marching bar of a hard drive format. Didn't do anything to the drive, just a screen. I thought it was funny. Subjects did not. At least while it was happening.

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you should write something like that for windows LOL

When I was ins chool we had this utility file called "HD_KILL" it did exactly that, but it went undected by virus scans at the time. We use to send it to thsi one guy in our class every Wednesday night and thursday night at school he was always re-loading windows. If sent the file via email and clicked on it, the file would briefly open and do nothing. You could still navigate in windows, but it wasn't until you rebooted your system that you would wipe the drive and get a black screen. We had a lot fun with that file especially people that messed with us. You could be talking to someone via IM and upload that file to them and tell them it was pictures. Just change the name and all of sudden you never heard from them.

swapped the monitor inputs on a friend's 4 port kvm switch. So when he was looking at the display for machine "A" his keyboard and mouse were controlling machaine "B", "B" to "C", "C" to "D" and "D" to "A".

He was a bit quicker on the draw than the Halo players.

Fake spiders and snakes, unplug the garage door opener, move a vehicle just enough to make the person think they are loosing their mind, fake scratches on things.
-Ken

I had a summer intern like mechanic job at Del Monte between my freshman and sophomore year of college. There were three of us working for the shop doing general maintenance on vehicles and machinery. All of the machinery had lots of shafts and bearings that they wanted us to assemble using Anti-Seize. If you've ever used the stuff you know that a little goes a long way and always gets everywhere. One of the fellas hated the stuff to the point of obsession. He kept his time cards in the top center drawer of his tool box. As you might guess, I put a teeny tiny dab of Anti-Seize inside the lip of the drawer handle. For two weeks he kept getting Anti-Seize on his time cards before he finally found the tainted drawer. And naturally he assumed the third guy did it, because he was always ribbing him about his phobia. So while guy 3 was out on a call, he proceeded to slather ALL the drawers on the guys toolbox, while I stood and "kept watch" :dark: :dark:
After he finished the last drawer handle, I causally mentioned to him that I might have been the one who put said offending Anti-Seize on his time card drawer lip. Right as guy #3 shows up to get something out of his toolbox. Time for me to slink out of there as guy 3 goes ballistic :kill: :kill:
Needless to say, we all helped clean the toolbox, but it would have been easier to trade it off...

Adrian

My personal favorite is to hook up a wireless mouse or keyboard to someone's computer, then just randomly move their mouse around the screen, or type in a random character every so often, as long as you do not try to do too much you could drag it out for weeks. Or you could type messages to them when they are not doing anything as long as they have their word processor open.

I interned at a very large company in high school and one summer someone got back from sabbatical (in hawaii) we filled their cube with hawaii items like toy palm trees and then covered the floor (very generously) with sand.

An auto shop prank from the old days was to charge up an old condenser and lay it anywhere, except on metal. Whoever picks it up gets a jolt. Anyone remember breaker points?
Another was to remove the coil wire and replace it with a piece of vacuum hose.
One time (teenagers) a friend and I were rebuilding an engine. As I finished installing the piston rings, I checked the floor, bench and parts box. I found an oil expander ring in the box and said several bad words under my breath. (Our moms were in the kitchen.) I rechecked all of the pistons and everything was OK. We had an extra expander ring. Being the evil person that I am, I hid the ring until two weekends later when we were ready to fire the engine. Then I showed it to him and asked, "Hey, Pat, do we need this?" The look on his face was priceless. Then I had to convince him that the ring was an extra. Then I had to run.

One I came up with that was too late to try... I should have bought some Asian shrimp or fish dish and nuked it in the microwave on the day I knew I was going to be fired from ACS (now Xerox) (I was on the Apple account). Nothing pisses off people quite like a break room filled with the fishy smell of nuked shrimp.

Apple's tech support is/was run by ACS (purchased in 2010 by Xerox). They have a reputation for having a >150% turnover rate. They hire 20 people for two jobs, as they know that within 3 months at least 18 people will quit or be fired. My first round with Apple (working with Sykes (pronounced SUCKS!!!)) lasted 19 months, 6 times the usual lifespan of an average employee. My 2nd round (ACS aka Always CR*PPY Service) lasted 4. Until I worked for ACS, I had never had a job that I wanted to be fired from so much before. Their stats included customer satisfaction replies. If you helped someone who had a beef with the people who worked with them before on the same issue, and thrilled them with the brilliant and easy solution you came up with, you prayed that they didn't reply to a customer satisfaction survey. I had one who praised me as some kind of Tech guru, but blasted the guys before me, the negative score came down on me. That was when I knew I was totally Scr*w*d.

I even downloaded a few tunes for what I knew was going to be my last day, and I still have them... they are collected in my iQuit playlist.



Take This Job and Shove It!
9 to 5
Car Wash
We Gotta Get Out of This Place
Boney Fingers

I didn't quit though, they fired me over the phone the next day (a Friday), just before I was to leave for work...

Talk about not reading from the "Going Postal" prevention handbook.

Bottle rockets is big at are shop. The biggest thing they like to do with them is to wait for one of the guys to go to the bathroom and lite them off at the opening at the bottom of the door.

My boss (now the Chief Operating Officer) made the mistake of going on vacation... When he got back, there was a little piece of yellow plastic sticking out of the ceiling tile. What he didn't know was that that little piece of plastic was firmly attached to the steel decking above. When he moved the tile, all the superballs I left on the tile came raining down on his desk....

Which reminds me, he took the day off today...

Back when I was in the construction business, we would send our crews out "until the job was done". They would stay in local motels and usually stay in an unwind. One guy tried to develop a reputation as a "ladies man". Everyone, especially his wife, knew he was all talk.

He had an accident and hurt his back on one job and had to have some legit surgery. Everyone on his crew plus his wife chipped in to hire a big woman with a German accent and dressed her up in the old style nurse's outfit. (white with cap etc.). We sent her into his room while he was still recovering from the spinal block. He was numb from the waist down.

She clucked over him, fluffed his pillows and then asked, "Shatzie, can I ask a personal question?"

Sure, the stud replied.

"You are a handsome man. Why did you want a sex change operation?"

You could hear him howl from one end of the hospital to the other.

The charge nurse and surgeon read all of us the riot act but it didn't come across as very scary because they kept cracking up in the middle of it.

For someone that can't touch type, and they hunt and peck, swap the M and N keys on their keyboard. Usually they're looking at the keys instead of the screen as they type and won't notice right away.

Fill someone's desk drawers, every drawer in their desk, to the rim with packing peanuts.

I've used a sharpie to put a LOT of ink on someone's phone ear piece. It will color their ear when they take a call later. The guy I did this to unfortunately also placed his phone on his shoulder to talk to someone in his office, and ruined a shirt.

Unplug the phone cord from the receiver at the phone end, and hide the end under the phone so it looks like it might still be plugged in. The phone rings, they pick it up to answer, and can't hear anything. They'll hang up on a lot of people before figuring that one out.

A friend hooked up an extra mouse to the computer of the guy in the next cube, and the mouse sat on the floor near my friends feet. He would move the mouse as his neighbor was working and drove him crazy.

For office doors that swing into the office - when the door is closed one person lays down and presses against the bottom corner of the door, directly under the doorknob, with their feet hard enough to create about a quarter or half inch space between the door and the door frame. Another person holds a stack of 6-8 pennies (the more the better) between the door and frame close to the floor. The first guy then slowly releases the pressure so that the door is holding the pennies to the door frame, but be careful not to pinch the fingers of the one holding the pennies. If you do this right, the person in the office CANNOT open their door to get out. Practice before trying to make sure you can do it quickly and silently. To let them out you just have to kick the bottom of the door near the pennies and they fall out.

Also for an office that has a door closed - fill a large manila envelope with shaving creme, slide the open end under the door, stomp on envelope. This will spray shaving creme all over the office. Don't forget to run.

A guy I used to work with kept all his empty coke cans stacked on the edge of his desk, and over several months that stack grew very high and deep. There were probably 50 cans stacked nearly to the ceiling by the time he pissed me off. So after he left work I got a long string and tied one end to a can that was in the back of the stack on the bottom. I probably had to restack the cans to do this, I can't remember. I routed the string over the corner, around the deck leg, etc. and it ended up near the door. I tied a loop and with the door almost closed reached around and slipped the loop over the inside door knob.

The next morning when he came in and opened his office door, the entire stack of empty cans crashed down and scared the crap out of him and several other people.

Heh.