Office pranks

[LarryB]

Take clear tape and tape the underside of the mouse. Make sure you take the sticky end of the tape and apply it to the bottom of the mouse so it locks the ball in place. The victim will most likely check the connections in the back, reinstall drivers, reboot, etc. , before they realize what has happened.



This will mostly only work with people with very little PC knowledge. Stick in a floppy in there floppy drive. They will be unable to boot up windows until the disk is out. This is fun to watch.



Try to find a very obnoxious CD laying around. Preferably a reggae or rap CD. Pop it in their CD ROM. Put up the sound full blast by double clicking on the volume control on the bottom right. On normal configurations the audio CD will autoplay when windows first starts up. The person starting up there PC in the morning will definitely be embarrassed.



This is for that special person you just cant stand in the office, the one who talks on the phone all day with their boyfriend/girlfriend and gets personal e-mail all day. Go into their e-mail and change their defaults to autmatically "blind carbon copy" their boss or supervisor. Heads will roll!



Change the coffee in the office coffe maker to decafe. Wait about three weeks(or untill you think everybody has gotten over their caffine addiction)and switch to expresso!



Try "password securing" someone's screen saver. First I suggest changing the screen saver to "scrolling marque" and inserting your own word or phrase, "Mr. Jones (president or supervisor) eats ****" or something to that effect.



My absolutely most favorite prank I have saved for last. It is so simple to do and yields such nice results. Simply pop out the 'm' and 'n' key on someone's keyboard and reverse the two. Any flat tool will work. Just pry it with little pressure and they will easily come right off. Then just sit back and watch the confusion.

 

[dresslered]

Partially fill a plastic film container with cold spray. Set it near the the victim. The cold spray will keep the container cold enough for several minutes (giving you plenty of time to be long gone). As the container warms, the air inside will expand enough to blast it's lid off sounding like a fire cracker.

 

[BV]

It's pranks that those that force me to lock the screen before running down the hall for coffee.



I once had a manager that would put honey in your phone then call you from a cell phone or other office so he could watch you get an ear full of honey.



Another keyboard one is to switch the number pad keys around so the 1 starts in the upper left .

 

[PHaller]

We had a horses a** for a boss at my old job so we bought a Hustler magazine and subscribed his name and work address to every add we could find. Within 2 weeks his mailbox was full of suggestive and kinky sex adds and sex toys. :--) He got called into the supes office and had to explain to him why he was getting this stuff at work.

-Paul R. Haller-

Oo. Oo.

 

[Nordby]

Been a while since I've pulled off a good one. In the late 1980's we were still using reel-to-reel tapes for backups on a vax cluster.



My friend from school Bob was hired to take my place as the operator as I got promoted to wire-puller (big step, eh!). Bob was doing his first backup by himself when the reel came to an end, rewound, and the door opened waiting for him to swap the next reel in.



One co-worker distracted him long enough for me to take a junk tape, unwind it all over the floor, and put it in the tape drive for him. So bob walks in, tape kind of blowing up through the perferated tiles, covering a large section of the floor (big, wide tapes used back then). From 6 offices down through closed doors we could hear one single explitive that might have started with an F. We waiting until he got to winding the tape back on the reel for a few minutes before we presented him with the good backup... .



later

jon

 

[bighammer]

We once filled an office with giant balloons. It was the guy's 70th Birthday and his wife bought a bunch of 18" dia. balloons. We took my air compessor in to the office at night and had a group to tie them as fast as I could fill them. Sort of a nice harmless prank.

 

[jwdeeming]

Nordby - GOOD ONE! I was an operator in college - that brings back memories.



I had to quit doing the keyboard change routine at my company. I think the help desk has my name down on the debug flowchart when they get THAT call. The M and N keys are good, as are the G and H.



I actually got one gal to call the helpdesk when I simply turned her monitor upside down. Even left the pedestal sticking up, but she missed that detail - really thought her computer had "flipped". I planned to go tell her that always happens when they pour out the contents to get a backup, but I was laughing too hard.



Network administrators can have fun with login messages of the day. Something like, "Formatting drive C:" is a good one.



We used to have a phone system that had an automatic callback feature. In the computer room we had a workbench with two phones on it. When my boss got a call on phone A, I would go to phone B and dial A. It would be busy and I'd activate the callback and hang up. When Dale got off of phone A, phone B would ring, and he'd slide down the bench on his roller chair and pick it up. Promptly, phone B would dial A and cause it to ring, so poor Dale would wheel back down to A and answer it too. Then he'd cuss at me and light a cigarette. Sheesh - how long ago was THAT? When we could still smoke in the computer room... .

 

[Shrimpy]

Was working a turnaround on night shift years ago and everyone was watching the Texas lottery because it was up to 75 mil. or something. Anyway this one guy was calling his wife and giving her the numbers from the tickets he had bought on the way to work. He left the ticket out and someone wrote a line of his numbers down... ..... when he came back in for lunch break, the line of his numbers was written on the chalk board with the words, tonights winning Lotto Numbers.



This guy walked in and nearly I TRIED TO BY-PASS THE CUSSING FILTER his pants He called his wife and was screaming into the phone "we won, we won".



Needless to say it was VERY hard convincing him that those were not the winning numbers... ...

 

[TPCDrafting]

I used to jump on my buddies computer, he'd have up some big drawings up he was working on. I'd draw all kinds of lines, circles, put text going every where. He'd have to hit 'undo' about a thousand times to get back. Once I snuck over, backed his work to disk, then proceeded to erase the entire drawing, save then quit and get back into it so he couldn't 'undo'. He came in and started looking for his drawing. I told him his computer was making strange noises. He started turning pale. I waited till he was in the boss's office explaining that days of work had been lost, then I came in and told them I had found the problem. Boy it made me the hero. I played on it for the day, they even bought me beers after work. I told him the next day, I had to buy him beers at lunch to shut him up.



I used to get him all the time. He had one of those man purses bags, he thought he was cool carrying that thing around. One day he roller-bladed in to work. That afternoon he skated all the home with a big white page telco book in his bag and didn't know it. Except he whined the next day at how sore he was. I told him to look in his bag. He was sooo hacked. Good thing we were good friends.

 

[ACoyle]

In the logn script, you can test for certain users and make their last line LOGOUT.



We once has an anti gun person. We signed them up fro the NRA. Thought they would enjoy the magazine.



You can always send EASYRIDRS to their home.

 

[illflem]

Larry thanks for the m/n switch tip. Right after I read it went to the office next door and switched the keys on a gal with chronic pms' keyboard. Can't wait till tomorrow!

 

[Amianthus]

And I thought we were cool just gluing silver dollars to the floor and watching passers by try to pick them up.



We did the phone thing too. Grease was our "honey" of choice.



I gotta remember some of this stuff. These are great.



(I also used to work as an operator on a vax system. Talk about old times)

 

[Todd T]

we used to put blueing ink on the bottom of the pulls on all the drawers on someones desk.



they would come out of the office looking like a smurf and cussing anyone who was looking.

 

[Whitmore]

another good one is to trade someones mouse ball in for one that aint quite big enough for the job, they will pull it out and clean it off and it still no workie, they get p. o ed real quick



I did the m n switch to a guy yesterday and it got messie, his password has a m in it and he couldnt make it work 3 times in a row and the security system kicked him out , we had to call the help desk in Houston and have them re submit his password:-laf :-laf :-laf cant wait till he tries his numbers, they now start at 0 instead of 1 ... ... ..... too cool

 

[TomGolden]

I'm a Unix system admin. One day, several years back, a good friend and I, who were always messing with each other, started a work station fight. All of a sudden, some of my X-windows started disappearing! Every few seconds, another window vanished. Finally, I hear Dave let out a giggle from his cubicle... ... well, that gave him away and the full on war began in ernest! I checked to see who was logged into my w/s, and sure enough, there he was, logged in as root. So I logged into his system as root and started returning the favor. Well, after a few minutes, I pulled out the big gun and rebooted his w/s right out from under him :-laf :-laf :-laf Dave let out a shriek and started cussing me... ... I basically said "hey man, all's fair in war". He yelled that he had been doing the system backups of the file servers from his work station, and the program we used for that would lose it's mind if the graphical connection to the GUI being displayed on a w/s was lost. So, when his system was back up, he had to restart the backups



It's all fun though

 

[JLinder]

Take clear tape and tape the underside of the mouse. Make sure you take the sticky end of the tape and apply it to the bottom of the mouse so it locks the ball in place. The victim will most likely check the connections in the back, reinstall drivers, reboot, etc. , before they realize what has happened.

I got a guy in my office like that, except I took out his mouse ball. He screwed around for an hour with everything, then the 'puter nerd came in and reinstalled all his mouse drivers about three times before anyone checked the mouse itself. I was pretty funny.



Another good one is to unplug the headset from their phone and put a small amount of clear tape on the connections and plug it back in. They can answer their phone, but can't hear anything and the other person can't hear them. Or, for the mentally handicapped you can tape the button down under the headset. They can't answer their phone or make calls, but most people with half a brain figure that one out pretty fast. Also, you can turn off the ringer on their phone. That one's a little hard to catch.

 

[LSMITH]

Where I used to work the phones had a library in them of speed dial numbers, and caller ID. The phones were capable of quite a few languages, so I would program my bosses phone for a different language every couple of days. He had swapped phones with just about everyone in the office before he found out it was me. Clear tape over the mouthpiece holes made for some funny conversations, as did clear tape over the ear holes. It is amazing how a phone that is taped up will migrate throughout an office until someone sees the tape.



You can go on someones computer that is not very computer savvy and make a gay pride wallpaper for them in MSPaint pretty quickly, just make sure your office homophobe is not bigger or faster than you. A screensaver that is password locked that says something irritating is fun too. The computer guy gets a good laugh when he has to "fix" it for the big manly man.



Cell phones are often left laying around, reprogram the numbers for home and the wifes cell to 900 numbers, that will ruffle some feathers. Program it to call the boss is fun too. Turning the ringer off, keypad tones off and tape over the holes for the speakers are fun with cell phones too.



Drawers full of styrofoam peanuts are fun. Glue the items in the drawers down for a laugh. Tape the drawers shut with two-sided tape, or take the handles off.



If you twist the handset of the phone about 1500 times it gets to be about 3 inches long, very entertaining when a call comes in.



Two sided tape on the handset and then put it back in the cradle is hilarious for the guy that picks up the phone and puts it to his ear quickly.



Empty someones stapler every day for 2 weeks. Take the tape out of the dispenser too for extra irritation.



Take all the pens and pencils out of the drawers and off of the desk every day for a week.



Sign up your victim for seedy daily emails.



Just as soon as they light up a smoke page them for a phone call. Oh sorry, they must have hung up!



Critters (mouse or a chipmunk) in the lunchpail is incredibly funny, better yet if they are alive.



Salt the coffee in the pot lightly.



Grab their keys off their desk and move the car to the other end of the lot.



Take the door lock key of the chain and put another key in the ignition just a little way, it looks like they are in the ignition, and lock the doors.



Take the keys off the desk and park it in the bosses spot.



Jack up the car so the tires are about 1/4" off the ground and block it, really funny for the guy that likes to rip out of his parking spot.



If your "friend" leaves the doors unlocked get in the car and hide in the back seat at quitting time. Jump up and yell as soon as the door closes when he gets in. Disclaimer, beware of big guys.



Take the keys and turn on the radio full blast, the wipers, vent fan, turn signal and anything else you can.



LOL, what a jerk I can be but it is fun!! Enough for now.

 

[Pat_in_Utah]

Windows trick

Hit the printscreen key on the desktop. Make it the background image. Hide all icons and startbar.



Funny as heck to watch them figure out why their icons won't do anything!!

 

[wcaldwell]

Like another guy said, drawers full of styrofoam, BUT take a spray bottle filled with nail polish remover - the styrofoam turns into a slimy mess that you'll never get cleaned up.