OT: Suggest an office practical joke

[Maple Leafs]

The last few times I've been out of the office, I've had... um... inappropriate things done to my desk while I was gone. This week, I'm the only one here and I want some revenge.

Anyone have any suggestions on what I could do to someone's desk/possessions in their absence?

Ground rules:
- I don't feel like getting fired, so get your mind out of the gutter.
- I don't have all day, so some of the more clever but elaborate jokes are probably out
- No, really, I don't want to get fired. What's wrong with you?

Any ideas?

[DanGarion]

I'm always a fan of the piece of tape on the mouse trick, that one gets them everytime...

[Ksyrup]

The two best pranks I've seen successfully pulled off at work were the "take out the drawers, turn the desk upside down, put the drawers back in, and turn the desk right side up again" trick, and moving large filing cabinets in front of a guy's closed door.

Well, the latter would have probably been received better had the General Counsel not happened to be visiting from the Capitol that morning...

[CraigSca]

What kind of things were done to your desk while you were away? This will clue us in to what kind of parameters we're working with.

[Maple Leafs]

The first time I was away, I got back to my desk and was starting the day when the phone rang. On the line is a guy down the hall, asking me to help with a file he's going to e-mail me. I tell him I'm booting up my system, and we make small talk for a few minutes while I wait.

When I finally get into my e-mail I find his message and open the attachment. It's a JPG -- a photo of him and another co-worker at my desk, with big smiles and exagerated thumbs-up poses. One of them has my phone, the other has my keyboard.

Down their pants.

I turn around to see several people (who were all in on it and had apparently been there since the phone rang), cracking up as they watch me open this file, with hands still on keyboard and the phone still pressed to my ear. I have to say, the whole thing was well-planned and brilliantly executed.

(The second joke was just a poor imitation of the first one and didn't work out especially well.)

[WSUCougar]

Okay, these are juvenile, but I've seen them work pretty well:

Vaseline in the phone ear piece

Hooking all of someone's paper clips together

Reprogramming someone's speed dial to pizza places, etc.

Putting goofy or otherwise inappropriate photos in their picture frames

[Ksyrup]

(The second joke was just a poor imitation of the first one and didn't work out especially well.)
Removing a phone receiver from your ass isn't as easy as it looks, is it? :)

[Anthony]

you can always wait till everyone gets back and scream "OH MY GOD IT'S A GIANT TSUNAMI!".

hahahahaha....i'm a riot. thank you, i'll be here all week. tip your waitresses.

[Poli]

Take the keyboard apart and moved the keys around.

[spleen1015]

You could fill someone's filing cabinet with rice or packing peanuts or maybe even sand.

Silly string someone's desk. After this dtuff sits for an hour or so it gets really sticky and hard to remove.

If their phones are close enough, switch the wires so that the phones ring at the wrong desk.

If your office has a forwarding feature on the phone, you could forward their phones all over the place.

Steal all of the mouse balls.

Fill their desks with paper ran through the shredder.

Get some old video tapes and wrap everyone's desk in it.

[Ramzavail]

Steal somebody's keys and move their car and put their keys back without them noticing. When they leave work, they walk outside and think somebody stole their car. Priceless.

or

like in my office, there are two sisters, I switched their car keys on their key rings, both of them tried to get into their cars and they couldnt because they had the other ones car key.

they were livid both times.

[MacroGuru]

Do you have access to their comps?

My best practical joke was an installation of VNC on the persons machine.

Basically, you just need to know their machine name or IP address.

You can then take control of their machine.

I did this to a co worker for like five minutes...we also let our manager in on the joke, so when he went to talk to my co worker about his computer that was acting up...I took control, launched the browser, and started to go to playboy.com, he was helpless...so right in front of the boss, he turned the computer off..no one could control themselves, the laughed their asses off, right in front of him.... It was pretty good.

[rkmsuf]

Sharks with frickin laser beams in someone's cube.

[Subby]

Get your hands on a wireless farting machine (http://www.prankplace.com/fart.htm?kbid=1103&sub=fartmachine). Stash the sound portion in the dark recesses of their cube/office.

When folks are in their office, use the remote to rip off a few...but don't over-do it...the absolutely awkward/uncomfortable reactions will be priceless.

This works best in a cube farm or in a public area, but someone's office is good to, because it is impossible for the office denizen to play it off.

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[3ric]

I saw a picture of a computer keyboard in which someone had put seeds of water cress which had grown (they grow fast) to about an inch.

[Flasch186]

Sharks with frickin laser beams in someone's cube.

that one got me LOL hard to get away from, with the lasers and all....I ran in a zig zag motion.

[kcchief19]

Let's see ... past gems in our office have included:

* Renaming a favorite mp3 file a person had been playing and replacing the file name with an mp3 of "Rainbown Connection" by Kermit the Frog.

* Encasing a coworker's cubicle in mosquito netting.

* Filling an employee's office with chairs, a television, a podium and anything else you can find laying around the office
http://www.deargodmakeitstop.com/rwbl/office.jpg

* Let a cat run loose in their cube or office
http://www.deargodmakeitstop.com/rwbl/kitty.jpg

[Coffee Warlord]

If anyone has any stuffed animals or any sort of thing like that, attach a cord or something to the ceiling and lynch said animal.

If we're talking cubicle farm here, wrap an entire cubicle exterior in saran wrap.

Find an empty computer case, (or one you can safely strip out all the components), and swap out person's real computer for a hollow shell.

[rkmsuf]

just give the guy a wedgie and get it over with.

[Bee]

burn down the building. That one always cracks people up.

[Ksyrup]

"The Brand New Fart Machine has “BoomBox” Technology, which allows more vibrant, natural sounding Farts!"


Thank God our advances in technology haven't gone totally for naught. I mean, adolescents surely couldn't have survived on whoopie cushions for much longer...

[jbmagic]

poke a hole with a paper clip on the foam cups

so when someone gets water , it will leak on them :)

[Ksyrup]

OK, I just have to know who walks around with this thing, waiting for the perfect moment to bust it out:


Watch where you toot - you never know who's packin one of our "Pocket Fart Busters" in their jacket pocket. With six different phrases, you can bust those phantom farters for every occassion. Tag those inconsiderate tooters in line at the grocery store, and flag those farters who hide in dark movie theatres. No more unanswered gas - you're busted!!




I was going to buy one, but they misspelled occasion, so I think I'll pass (no pun intended).

[Ragone]

Loosen the bolts in their chairs! when they go to lean back.. whoosh

[cthomer5000]

My favorite recent office practical joke. It requires some backstory....

A superior of mine (but not my boss per se) received a block of high-quality parmesean cheese as a gift of some sort from someone outside the office. He eventually started just screwing around and hiding it somewhere as a practical joke. There's now been an on-going game of one-upsmanship with it between me, another coworker and him.

We went in on this one together and were really pleased with the result. We asked his assistant who he had met with recently, and got the name of a very high-ranking industry exectuvie. It was perfect. We stuffed this block of cheese inside an empty box from a brand-new digital camera (real pricey one that we had around for comany use). I came up with some fake letterhead from the company our exec was from, and wrote a little note:

Bob, it was great meeting with you.

Hope you enjoy!

Execname

We then found a blank shipping label (no return address) from our local shipping carrier (the atrocious DHL). We filled out the return label with all the appropriate info for the company the exec was from, and put it alongside the other incoming packages. THe package eventually got handed over to him later that day.

We had the good fortune of overhearing him receive it. He was all happy and even called his wife to tell her about the great gift this exec had sent her. We were laughing our asses off.

Then it got to be about the one-hour mark and he still hadn't opened the package. We were getting worried he would actually call the guy up and thank him, and have some extremely awkward moment ensue.

We had another co-worker (the only one in on it) invite us into this quasi-meeting with a part-time employee around that time. She prompted him to show off the gift to this employee (he'd already bragged to us about it), but still didn't actually open the box (since it was nearing christmas, I imagine he had thoughts about re-gifting it to a child or friend). Eventually we casually prompted him to open it and take a look. He found the cheese, and we scored big-time on the prank scale.

The doubly amazing thing is that hours later he walked over to us about a work related issue. After talking about it he tossed in "You know, I still haven't found that camera." We then laughed our asses off, seeing that he thought we'd only pulled the joke after he actually received a real camera. I could see heartbreak in his eyes when we revealed the entire thing was a joke.

So in the end I'm saying I'm a fan of a highly detailed mail-them-a-joke sort of joke.

[jeff061]

We tinfoiled a guys office. The entire desk. The phone, books, binders, monitor (w/ventilation), his awards, pictures frames, pen and pencil holder, pens and pencils, stapler, lamp, everything. Yet everthing was fully usable. And it makes quite a conversation piece for passers

We did this as well, right down to individual quarters, nickels and dimes. Very good results.

[moriarty]

Lure your coworker away from his office.

Open up his version of MS Word. Go to Tools, Autocorrect. Enter in some mundane word (like 'the') and 'autocorrect' to another word or a mispelled one (like 'teh'). Save and close.

Everytime he/she types in the word while working in Word, the system will automatically 'correct' it to the wrong spelling/word. It'll drive him/her crazy and they'll never figure out why it's doing it.

[Glengoyne]

I once rearranged the homerow keys on the system console keyboard to spell out April Fools once. The next day, I learned that no one on the day shift could type, so they didn't notice and called out a service technicial because the Keyboard was "broken".


I once used some "Police Line Do Not Cross" tape to close off a vacationing co-worker's office. We also used masking tape to make a body outline on the floor. The guy on vacation was always the first to arrive at the office, but he was late that day, and his secretary freaked when she saw the office. I'll just say it is never a good idea to call the police about a murder that didn't happen.


A co-worker of mine wrote a little program to replace another co-workers windows executable. It called a graphics routine where a little work crew came out and assembled a Windows Desktop one piece at a time. After it finished, which took at least two minutes, the computer would boot as normal. It took two weeks before the victim cried uncle and asked us to fix his computer.

[Dutch]

We tinfoiled a guys office. The entire desk. The phone, books, binders, monitor (w/ventilation), his awards, pictures frames, pen and pencil holder, pens and pencils, stapler, lamp, everything. Yet everthing was fully usable. And it makes quite a conversation piece for passers-by.

[bamcgee]

Before the guy turns on his computer in the morning, log on to his machine and change his default startup sound to a .wav file that is particularly obnoxious. Anything inappropriate will do. If there is no risk of getting fired or this is a student, I personally like to use the following: (high pitched) "Get it out! Get it out of my butt!" Turn up his speakers all the way, wait for the victim to appear, and enjoy.

[Dutch]

Before the guy turns on his computer in the morning, log on to his machine and change his default startup sound to a .wav file that is particularly obnoxious. Anything inappropriate will do. If there is no risk of getting fired or this is a student, I personally like to use the following: (high pitched) "Get it out! Get it out of my butt!" Turn up his speakers all the way, wait for the victim to appear, and enjoy.

Ah, I did that one to our security guy years ago. I changed all the default windows sounds to the old Warcraft II Ettin fart where the Ettin farts and has that stupid laugh afterward?

But I forgot that what I did in the local Admin profile wouldnt' translate to what he would hear when he logged in. But I just figured the changes didn't take for whatever reason.

So months later when another SysAdm was doing something on his machine it starting farting like crazy! It had everyone in tears, I am just thankful that I was next door BS'ing with another guy when it happened. :)

[RPI-Fan]

Just want to say, this is one of the better threads ever on FOFC.

[rkmsuf]

Leave a dead horse in their office.

[Glengoyne]

One of the geekiest office pranks I have heard was in a C-book by a Developer at Sun. Something like "Deep C Programming" with a big fish on the cover.

The author told of taking one of those little noise makers that play songs when you open a Christmas Card, and wiring it to like the "scroll lock" led on his bosses keyboard. Then he modified the code for the in-house editor to turn on the scroll lock light when the editor starts. As a result a little tune would play every time the boss got into the editor, and continued to play until he exited the program.

[Farrah Whitworth-Rahn]

This one would work well if the cube has the overhead cabinets with doors that lift up -

Take a sheet of paper and tape it to the bottom of the inside of the door. Take the untaped edge and bend it so it makes a U (like a pouch) and rest it on the bottom edge cabinet. Fill the U with holes from all the hole punches in the office. And CAREFULLY close the cabinet.

When your co-worker opens the cabinet, hole punch confetti flies everywhere and it takes HOURS to clean up.

If you want a bigger mess, include more sheets of paper. Or attach a plastic cup. It also works in shallow desk drawers, with some modification.

Had this done to me many times (as well as done this many times), and is always good for pee your pants laughter.

[Draft Dodger]

we've slowed down a bit at work now that we don't have overnight shifts, but back in the day...oh boy...

the most recent one is identical to Dutch - completely wrapping someone's desk up in alumminum foil.

one time, this guy left for the day with his computer up...meaning we had access to his email. So, first we sent a bunch of weird emails to people in the company who he knew that were just strange enough for them to reply the next day with a ??? type of response (in other words, so he knew we were sending out emails.) Step two was to have one of us create a new online email address somewhere...something along the lines as [email protected]. Then we sent the guy an email from that NAMBLA address thanking him for his recent email inquiry and telling him that we'd be sending an information packet soon and also sending a recruiting agent to his house shortly (we included his physical address in that email). Of course the conotation was that we sent out all kinds of crazy emails from his computer, and, among other things, signed him up for NAMBLA. And it TOTALLY worked - he freaked.

When me and a buddy were on vacation, a couple people got together and reorganized our desks into complete mirror images (they took pics before to help them).

We also were big about taking a pic of someone and either A) submitting it to hotornot.com (I got like a 2.3) or B) digitally altering it to add braids or lipstick or something and then printing out a gazillion copies and plastering them everywhere.

I'm forgetting many, but the NAMBLA one, by far, is my favorite.

[digamma]

We had a large box full of documents for a transaction we were working on shipped to a co-worker at his hotel when he was on vacation. Both the partner on the deal and I got worried e-mails and calls from the guy wondering what he was supposed to do with the docs.

[Kevin]

The best one I've seen was to put a live chicken in a carboard box under the worker's desk. Since it is dark in the box, the chicken will usually go to sleep.

After the worker arrives at his desk, go in and sit down near the desk and start a conversation. After a couple of minutes, give the box a kick when he's not lookingto wake up the chicken. Priceless.

[rkmsuf]

The best one I've seen was to put a live chicken in a carboard box under the worker's desk. Since it is dark in the box, the chicken will usually go to sleep.

After the worker arrives at his desk, go in and sit down near the desk and start a conversation. After a couple of minutes, give the box a kick when he's not lookingto wake up the chicken. Priceless.

who has a live chicken handy?

[Esquared1]

who has a live chicken handy?

We could not find a live chicken, but we did get a bucket of KFC. (I think Joboo needs it.)

[Ksyrup]

who has a live chicken handy?This guy apparently still does...

http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?t=31211&highlight=constantin

[rkmsuf]

This guy apparently still does...

http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?t=31211&highlight=constantin

That story still cracks me up.

[JimboJ]

Here's one you can try if you have access to several beepers.

One time we took a bunch of pagers and hid them all over our boss's office. In his coat pockets, desk drawers, plants, etc. The harder to find the better. Then when he's in the office, you call each pager one by one. The first one goes off, and while he's looking for it, the next one goes off. Then the next one, and the next, and so on.

By the time you get seven or eight of the things going off at the same time, it will absolutely drive him nuts. Fun stuff!!

[Logan]

Just want to say, this is one of the better threads ever on FOFC.

I second this.