Need A Few Post-Its Around The Office?

An anonymous reader writes "Like every company, we have an office prankster. So, whenever anything goes wrong -- say, your chair starts making unusual noises or your CD tray starts popping out for no reason, invariably you'll look up and see Dave, our esteemed leader, grinning foolishly at his handywork. So really, Damon shouldn't have been surprised when he came into the office one otherwise-normal Monday morning to find this. Nor should James have been surprised when he showed up early one morning to this birthday surprise. It certainly keeps us on our toes." Ah, the joys of not telecommuting ...

No wonder...

NOW I see why outsourcing to India is so much cheaper...

Re:No wonder...

Maybe this is a new web site stress test. Post a story on /. with at few pictures and see if it can handle the load.

Quite well is the answer here.

You Bastard

I was going to say that.

I must confess that when I visited my American colleagues I was, to put it mildly, nonplussed by their relaxed attitude to actually doing any f'ing work at all while at the office. They have a nice canteen, great Internet access, big cubicles, we had to book ahead for lunch at the local restaurants... AND /they/ get a bonus for Christma

No wonder we get the contracts. And six weeks off a year.

Re:You Bastard

So you are that boring bastard that no one talks to at the Christmas party

lighten up!!!

On a more serious side of things this kind of activity (if not taken to far) actually brings the employees closer together so that when it comes crunch time (IE dead line approaching or server dieing in the ass) they work far better together and are less likely to kill each other. It also makes managers more approachable thus allowing incouraging the flow of good ideas that otherwise would not have made it.

Re:You Bastard

Look, if you're like most people, you spend the majority of your waking hours on work or work-related activities (e.g. your commute). Are you really comfortable with just completely turning off the social, playful side of your being for all of that time? I have plenty of social activity outside of work, but that doesn't mean I don't care to be friends with my coworkers or occasionally have some fun with them, as well.

If you think you "play hard", chances are you don't really play at all. Invariably I've found that people who engage in macho posturing about "playing hard" to not understand the point of play at all. It's supposed to be fun. You're not supposed to take it so seriously.

Re:You Bastard

I don't go to work to be friends, I get that outside of work, what is the hard thing to understand?

Why do you go on living? Seriously. A man is not measured by the hours he works, or the deadlines he meets, or by the money he makes, but by the relationships he forms and the affect he has on the people around him. When you're dying and thinking about your life, what will you say? I'm glad I hit that deadline! That makes it ok that my children ignore me and I have no friends!

Competitive culture

No. I just work when I'm at work. Outside of work I play hard.

You get time outside of work?

Seriously though.

Here in the US, I'd say I've never seen this prankster phenomenon except in places characterized by many if not all of the following factors:

(1) Predominance of bright creative people.

(2) Creativity is a core value; breaking expected norms is an expected norm.

(3) Egalitarian businss culture emphasizing and things done over managerial hierarchy and perogatives.

(4) Main hierarchy is not managerial, but brainpower pecking order with intense competition to establish superiority.

(5) High intensity, pressure cooker atmosphere with long hours; people need to blow of steam.

In other words if I heard these kinds of hijinks were going on at a competitor, I'd take them very seriously rather than dismissing them as a bunch of goof offs. If you go head to head with them, you just might be facing a bunch of hard driving high IQ workaholics who think outside the box, and have both team cohesiveness and the flexibility to self-organize in novel ways to solve problems. In other words a competitive nightmare. Since in programming work (for example) there is easily a ten fold if not greater difference between the best teams and the mediocre ones, having a three or fourfold difference in compensation might not be enough to avoid getting squashed like a bug.

Then again, they might just be a bunch of immature goof offs with managers who are asleep at the switch. Paging Dr. Von Neumann: which assumption miminizes our maximum loss?

Culturally speaking, there's different ways to get things done. Having a little fun doesn't hurt.

Re:Competitive culture

(2) Creativity is a core value; breaking expected norms is an expected norm.

With a surprising number of these pranks, the "expected norm" seems to be "fill mark's office with a megazillion of some funny object", be it packing peanuts, post-its, balloons, rubber ducks, bouncy balls, chad, you name it. The only thing creative about it seems the particular choice of "funny object" du jour, but apart from that it looks like the same old joke over and over again... Hey pranksters, next time try breaking this "expected norm", and come up with some truly novel prank, hehe ;)

Re:Competitive culture

Not work related, but this [blacktable.com] put these balloons and post its to shame.

Re:No wonder...

Consider this perspective:

"I have 10 employees, all of them very capable and qualified, hard working, loyal. Many have been with me 10 years. None of them has tried to start their own company, although I would say at least 3 of them are capable of doing so, and perhaps even out-competing me in the marketplace."

They don't do that. Why not?

I am willing to bet that in your country, you spend part of your 6 weeks off planning how you will branch out on your own -- and those who can probably will eventually.

There is more to work than a paycheck, for many, many people. Given good options (like a fun, supportive and professional environment -- pranks and all), not everyone is looking for the next great opportunity.

Treat your colleagues with dignity, respect, and genuine friendship, and you may be surprised how fulfilling it is to work together year after year.

First Post-It!

'Nuff said.

Re:First Post-It!

I do balieve this man had the first post [3m.com]-it

Re:Time on your hands

1) Wasn't done on work time, at least not creating the messes. The clean-up wasn't so bad for the balloons, evidently. Can't eb so sure about the Post-Its.

2) A good manager sees the value of good clean fun, and knows that it can be a morale booster in moderation. Happy workers == productive workers.

Re:Time on your hands

I find that the ol' gun to the head makes my employees much more productive than any amount of "fun".

Re:Time on your hands

So you're telling me superglue is like perl?

Hell yeah it is. Nobody understands it, everybody screams about how great it is, promises to work forever but in reality only works for about three hours.

Hell yeah superglue is just like perl.

Re:Time on your hands

Bosses who don't allow it usually find themselves with companies that fail. Sure, workers should be productive, but if you as an employer try and make the workplace into something too rigid and constraining, your employees will be demoralized and will not function as well as in a more relaxed enviroment. I know that you might be thinking of a company which is at the other end of the spectrum - where very little work is done, and it's true that that is not a desirable situation. The truth is, though, that the optimum level lies somewhere inbetween.

You have to allow a certain amount of goofing around, you have to arrange company braais (BBQs for you American folks), go-karting, bowling, golf, horse-riding, etc. What you want is for your employees to get along with you and with eachother. If you don't allow that to happen, your employees will either not care about what they are supposed to be doing, or try in vain to do what they are supposed to be doing in an enviroment that they hate. Noone wins.

Now a whole lot of people will say: "But the employer has the power! They can outsource! Your job is not safe! As an employee you have no right to complain!". That's true, to a certain extent. But remember: If an employer was thinking of outsourcing, it probably wouldn't make a difference how well you were or were not performing, the key factor to companies that outsource is saving money and increasing profit margins at all costs. They will learn in time that quality products do make a difference, however, and will be back at square one. I've dealt with outsourcing first hand, and there are pros and cons to it, like with anything. In reality, what most companies will probably end up doing is outsourcing things that make sense to outsource, and bring things that make little sense to outsource back to the physical office. So that "but you'll be outsourced" argument goes out the window.

As for people having no right to complain and being forced to be happy that they have a job at all, this might be true for a lot of people in the current economy, but it still doesn't mean that slave-driving will produce good results. You'll end up with an employee-base that really hates working at the company, and every time you fire someone and get someone new in, the same thing will happen. They will start detesting their working conditions and perhaps even deliberately go on go-slows or worse.

Both employers and employees have to find a balance in the work enviroment. Employees must understand that they can't party at work and goof off for 6 hours a day, and employers must understand that trying to impose draconian rules and policies will not benefit them in the long run.

Re:Time on your hands

Some companies actively encourage it.

Where I worked a few years ago, we had something called a 'friday meeting' the 1st friday of every month. A colleague of mine got severely ridiculed because he thought it wise to bring a pen and some paper for his first attendance --- which was about playing hockey in one of the empty studios. On other occasions we've been out go-carting, and even to a grand casino (complete with free pool-side buffet).

Sure this costs the company money, but they do get return value for it.

Re:Time on your hands

No one has mention that there are downsides: if someone is hurt in a workplace practical joke, then the employer is liable. So it's good to have fun, but be sensible and play it safe :-).

The two pranks listed in this article are fine, but you need to be aware of the danger.

Generally, (a) keep the pranks and humour safe and non-dangerous, watch out for anything that could be considered offensive, (b) if it's a large scale prank, make sure you have some "informal" chat with people (say, your supervisor) before hand just to get a verbal indication that it won't cause any problems. Your supervisor may tell you that the global CEO is going to be in the office that day so you might want to try your prank the next day :-).

Some pranks I have experienced that don't work well: (a) giving people supposedly "funny" birthday presents (a vibrator), taken the wrong way and employee was really quite offended, (b) publishing prank photographs on internet newsgroup that also included a couple of shots that a person considered offensive. I don't think there were any legal issues in these cases, but it quickly turned from fun into a problem.

Re:Time on your hands

...birthday presents (a vibrator), taken the wrong way and ...

Indeed. A vibrator taken the wrong way can bring tears to the eyes, I am sure.

Prime example of bad balance and bad morale

"...if you as an employer try and make the workplace into something too rigid and constraining, your employees will be demoralized and will not function as well as in a more relaxed enviroment."

We got a memo with weirdly over-specific instructions for how to live in our offices several weeks back. It included several bullet points like this:

• Adjust the slats to your preference, but do not raise the blinds. The work space needs to be uniform in appearance.
• Please keep photographs and personal mementos to a minimum. This will present a more professional work environment.

And so on. This memo's content was completely ignored by everyone, but it's had its bad effect anyway. After we got it, people sat around talking incredulously about the thing, spending untold hours of company time just bellyaching about it. The thought of those on high in this massive company spending time writing and approving stuff like that is just utterly despiriting.

Peanuts are better!!!

http://www.do-not-sleep.com/images/priceless.jpg

The boss....

Boss : Uhh Dave, what was the quotation from India
again..?

Dave: ....uhh I got it on a postit somewhere..

Boss : ........

The Third and Final Prank

Yup, Bill*, the network guy, is sure going to be surprised when he comes in this morning and finds that he's been thoroughly slashdotted! Post-It notes, balloons, HTTP GET....

*Simulated employee name

Re:The Third and Final Prank

I take it back, after an initial hiccup, the site seems to have stepped up to the plate!

Is there a big red button in the server room, labeled "BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF SLASHDOT" or something?

Post-its everywhere

Now try finding the one he stuck under his desk that has his admin password on.

Re:Post-its everywhere

Uhhh.....shouldn't it be under the desk where he left it??

People have tooo much time on their hands..

I use to work for HP and they were no fun.. :( and any messing and you were out.. - well I live in the EU so it not that easy to fire me. :) but my employer before HP saw that sort of messing good fun as long as the work was done and noboady or anything was dammaged... I think its realy important to have a good laught in work it helps keep the stress levels way down... is that why I am starting my own business.. ?

Re:People have tooo much time on their hands..

You're starting your own business to keep stress down?

Uh-hu.

Re:People have tooo much time on their hands..

we actually did the fill-the-office-with-baloons to the VP of engineering for a company I worked for (almost 20 years ago now ...) - came in on Sunday, worked all day 'till when we pushed on in through the ceiling tiles another would burst - it was a great team building exercise we had a great time.

Monday morning he came in a foul mood (usually he was a really great guy) - which kind of ruined it for us. Walking into his office with a pin was a lot of fun though :-)

payback

He was a great sport about it and is currently planning his pay back... :)

Seems like he chose /.ing the server :) The admin won't like this ;)

I remember someone like that

We attached bungee ropes to his swivel chair, and arranged it so that when he sat down, he'd go whizzing across the floor.

It was really funny when he went through the window, landed, and went whizzing down the road.

Re:I remember someone like that

Yeah, and while you were watching out I bungied from the ceiling and whizzed in your coffee!

Payback Part 2

Wonder if he's also planning payback for having his email inbox full of spam after having it posted on the website?

Re:Another David Brent

I vote yes.

For a colleagues farewell I once had all 6 external auditors blowing balloons to fill his office to the roof. We then over-decorated the entire floor. Sure we was embarrassed (marginally) but the entire staff had a great time and the target was flattered we went to the effort.

Unfortunately I had to work all weekend to meet board schedules!

Repeat after me, harmless office pranks build teams! - They also build relationships

Bruce Almighty

Those post-its remind me of a scene from the movie "Bruce Almighty" about an hour into the film. Bruce decides to 'hear' all the prayers in post-it note form and the result puts James and Damon to shame. It's interesting how striking a common office/household item can be when displayed in large quantities like that.

Hehehe

That is awesome, got to love your friends eh :) Reminds me of that friend that covered his friend's apartment in tinfoil.

Um yeah here is a mirror if the wrath of /. gets to them.
http://catsdorule.torpedobird.com/slash/dam ons_off ice/
http://catsdorule.torpedobird.com/slash/jame s_offi ce/

Refreshing change.

Sometimes you drink something because you are thirsty. It doesn't matter what it is, but every now and then you will drink something and it'll taste just right, and you will feel good.

This is one of those drinks, well story, that puts a smile on your face.

With all the cr*p that goes on in the world, it is great to see that there are people who get the job done but also have a good laugh doing so. People are too serious. It's good to have practical jokes and people that appreciate them for there good clean simply fun :)

Good choice on story.

New business plan?

Update: Sunday, March 21nd, 2004

We shared our story with 3M, the makers of post-its, and they must have got a kick out of it because they sent us 3 cases of post-its "for future decorating".

Aha! The missing step revealed:

1. Decorate office with products from Corporation X
2. Take pictures of said decorations
3. ??? = Send story and pictures to Corporation X
4. Profit! (as Corporation X sends you free product)

I suspect in a few months we'll hear a new story. Damon gets revenge on Dave by stapling a yoga mattress to every surface of his office. They share the story and ACME Yoga Mattress Co. responds by sending three trucks filled with yoga mattresses. Dave quits his job, sells all of them, and becomes the newest dot-calm millionaire. (Oh, you knew the punchline would be bad!)

google caches

PostIts [google.com] and Balloons [google.com]

Friends wrap Chris Kirk's apartment in foil

Everything in his apartment [theolympian.com] is wrapped in alumium foil, except for a copy of Penn and Teller's book "Cruel tricks for Dear Friends".

A great tradition continues.

Ah, the office prank. Best one I ever saw is still the glitter trap.

Example: joke subject sits at a desk, pulls out a drawer. A string runs from the back of the drawer, up the wall, into the false ceiling, over to a spot directly over the subject's head, where it triggers the trap: a mousetrap whose action snaps a card away from its position covering a funnel, releasing a handful of glitter, which flows down the funnel, through its spout, through a hole in the ceiling acoustic tile, onto the subject.

It was wonderful to watch: a muffled snapping noise, a quiet "chuff", and the slow, glittery descent of a cloud of brightly colored dust, to settle over the head and shoulders of a club member who by now has assumed an expression of appreciative resignation.

Did Something Similar once

When I left a job, a friend of mine found a pack of Post-Its in my office and started labelling things. In the end there was one on the door, the chair, the telephone, the roof - even one of the Post-Its was labelled "Post-It!" When we had done my office we went to the secretary's office and started there. We even labelled the contents of her drawers! When I heard from her a while later she thanked us for helping her find her things! The best bit was that there was still a Post-It on the wall that she hadn't found yet! Aaaah, the joys of a piece of paper with glue on one side!

The REAL storyline:

The REAL storyline goes something like this:

Boss: Hey, Dave, what's the capacity of our website software?
Dave: What do you mean?
Boss: Well, a client asked me how much traffic load it can handle.
Dave: I dunnow, we never REALLY stress-tested the thing. Want me to find out?
Boss: Yes, please do!
Dave: OK, I'll need 400 post-it note pads, 650 balloons and a digital camera.
Boss: Huh?

Re:The REAL storyline:

They seem to manage allright though. Approx. 45 minutes after the story got posted, and they're still up. That's some nifty advertising :)

Call me Cynical

I'm a natural cynic and the deliberate nod to 3M at the end of the article makes me think this is a viral marketing campaign.

On the other hand, I've mentioned 3M twice in this short reply so perhaps *I'm* the viral marketer.

Sweet Revenge

I hada guy next to me playing small tricks on me all the time. One day I got him back by turning over everyhing on his desk - from computer and monitor to all his files.

Another time is was unintentional. I emailed him one of those stupid little flash games where you shoot up your desktop with a noisy uzi. Right in the middle of shredding his desktop, in walks the VP of the company. At the time we were seated with our backs to the entrance so it took my friend a minute that the room had gone pretty much silent. What really added to this was the fact that he was the most paranoid about using his computer only for company business - and the one time he decides to screw off....

Re:Sweet Revenge

I see the `preview` Button has been changed to a `post with wrong spelling` button, Taco you prankster!!!!!!

Newspapers

That reminds me of something that happened when I was at college. I got back one day to find that some other maths students had filled my room with screwed up balls of newspaper. And I mean filled. I couldn't even open the door more than a crack. It took a couple of hours and lots of black bags to clear that one up.

Careful -- This one might land you in court ...

... if you choose the wrong victim!

Back in the mid 1980s, I was working for a division of a large multinational. Some of the employees had quite a creative sense of humour (including, fortunately as will soon become apparent, the department manager).

At the time, there was a lot of hiring going on. On the manager's birthday, he was conducting job interviews most of the morning. His last applicant of the morning was a plant! You need to understand that, while blessed with a good sense of humour, he was happily married and quite conservative. The "applicant" was an attractive 24 year old redhead, very well endowed, and as sexually dressed as was consistent with a possible job applicant. The interview started normally, but gradually the young lady started making more and more pointed hints that she really wanted the job and would be willing to be very grateful if hired. Eventually, she was draping herself all over our leader who was desperately trying to ease her out of his office and looking as if he was about to suffer a coronary. [We had arranged to catch everything on video tape for checking out later.] When he finally managed to get the young lady across his office and open the door, the whole department was outside ready to wish him Happy Birthday. That was his first intimation that it was a setup!

A similar experience...

I work in a camera store as the manager. Including me, there are six people who work at that location.

We received about one hundred Russ brand stuffed bears, to be sold "as a deal" with film processing. As you can imagine, it didn't really take off, and in April I still have 70 odd bears lying around my store.

We had been playing games with each other involving the bears but for several months it was fairly quiet.

Until I took several days off following Easter.

I walked in on Thursday to start my week, and upon opening the door to the back room, discovered a curtain of bears in my way. The two girls at work used kite string to bind the bears about the neck and waist to suspend them, and tied all of their paws together so that they all faced the door. There was a sign in the center that said "Supplies!" (Referencing UHF)

On the white board on the door, there was this note:
"
24 Russ bears: $599.76
Kite String: $4.99
The look on your face right now: Priceless (We hope)
******* Camera, it's everywhere you want to be.
"

Somedays my job isn't so bad...

BSOD screensaver

Back in 98, I installed a screensaver on a few file servers (NT 4.0). What was nifty about it was that it showed the total RAM count and was performing a filecheck that actually read the files (RAID activity can be heard) and flagged them as corrupted. Of course, the files were perfectly fine in reality.

Oh man...did I catch hell from my manager when he dropped his coffee mug and ran into the server room and pulled the plug on the RAID. Though I laughed really hard...he obviously didnt.

From that point on, we had to restore the file server because the system wasn't shutdown properly. Fuck...he only needed to move the mouse or press a key to kick the screen saver off.

Re:BSOD screensaver

Around the same time (98) my coworkers and I also installed the BSOD screen saver. No big deal, we all knew it was a screensaver. Except our 'hands on' manager. We came into the server room one day, and he's sitting on the floor with the server disassembled (Compaq Proliant 6000) and blowing on various circuit boards and raid components with canned air. He kept taking apart the server, putting it back together, then watching it BSOD in a few minutes. Heh, that guy thought canned air would fix anything! He was pretty pissed, but we thought it was hilarious :)

Re:BSOD screensaver

If you want a simple way to mess someone up, take a screen shot of the desktop (with a window or two open). Then set it as the desktop background. "Why won't those #$%@ windows close?!"

Mirror

Mirror here [netfirms.com]

Priceless...

Case of Post-It notes to plaster office: $74 [officedepot.com]
650 Ballons for birthday prank: $55 [e-latexballoons.com]
1 air pump: $20/day rental [balloonlady.co.uk]
Advertising one last fun place to work to a million potential candidates on /.: Priceless [interactivetools.com]

Seriously though, it great to see that there are cool places to work still. One more sign of the IT recovery @!

Well, some people don't mind practical jokes....

And some do!

Maybe I'm the only guy on slashdot to feel this way but shit like that would just annoy me.

I've had a few jobs where there was strong office comraderie like that, but in general, I think I prefer a slightly more conservative set of relationships in the workplace even if it comes at the expense of office morale.

I'm not suggesting that things should be sterile. I do, however, think one's workspace should be respected.

Mr Party Pooper

Engineering pranks

My favourite trick is to wake people up with this cap I've got. It's 450VDC, 1000uF (that's 100J of energy). I charge it with some liberated PP3s (50 plugged end-on-end in series) and then sneak up behind a colleague half-dozing at his desk, carefully apply a screwdriver across the terminals and *CRACK!*. Watching the adrenaline rush combined with fight/flight reactions is very interesting and highly amusing. (Doesn't do the screwdriver much good though.)

I should point out that my victims always get me back, usually by spraying anti-static cleaner through the back of my desk fan when I'm not expecting it (instant winter wonderland), or by stamping "REFERENCE COPY ONLY" across my forehead with the drawing office stamp (permanent).

A friend and I

once got so bored in college we started drawing smily faces on a couple thousand postits of varying size and color (the smily faces and post it notes for that matter); once we were done with that we stuck them all over the campus; she even went so far as to go into the ladies room; unravel the toilet paper; slap a post-it in there somewhere and then ravel it back up.

Book on depression in the library, no problem. We took a post-it with a smily, wrote under it don't worry be happy, and stuffed it somewhere in the middle.

Hell, I'm sure there are still post-its from us in some of the books that were covered under and inch of dust when we got there, let alone now.

Yes, the devious things you can do with post-its when you're bored.

Cage arround an office...

Check this out, some guys in the office built a cage overnight...

http://www.klod.net/stuff/yannis_trap.jpg

It also had a door that could lock, the door closing would be triggered by pulling the chair when the guy got inside the cage.

More pranks than work

Some pranks from an old job:

Seal a vacationing manager's door shut with industrial strength plastic wrap and tape 2x4s across it like you'd see nailed across a broken window.

Fill the company president's office with 1300 balloons, some helium and some regular air, for her 40th birthday. She almost had a heart attack when she opened the door the next morning and a wall of balloons fell out.

TP the comapny founder's office on a day when he wasn't in. Housekeeping cleaned it up before he saw it!

There was a roof leak over the development area so we put up a makeshift roof with 2x4s and tarps to protect the computers. My supervisor asked me to help her take them down after the leak was fixed. We were carrying everything back to the warehouse when I noticed the guy in the next cubicle wasn't around, so I dumped everything in there, rather than carry it the additional twenty feet.

We had foam rubber computer mice with the company logo, url, etc. that were supossed to be given out at trade shows. They usually ended up being used as missiles by the founder. The wars never lasted more than a few minutes, because the company president (also his wife) would hear the noise and confiscate our arsenal, and tell him to get back in his cage.

It's not surprising how often pranks were played at that company. My second interview (with every manager at the same time) degenerated to the founder and I insulting each other within ten minutes. He said I'd fit in well.

Times are changing

Last year our group moved from a satellite office into the corporate building. Gone are the parking lot BBQs, etc.

Last month our manager turned 40. We spent 3 hours after work decorating her office with black balloons, streamers, static stickers with over the hill slogans, a walker... You know the drill.

The next morning we were all called into human resources and for 45 minutes admonished for what they perceived as "age discrimination".

Yep... Isn't corporate fun?

And when the webserver crashes...

And when the office web server crashed from a posting to slashdot, low and behold, there was Dave closing a browser window to slashdot.org

Google Cache

Post-it note prank [66.102.11.104]
Balloons [66.102.7.104]

A good one.....

WAY back when, when news stories were delivered by teletype, I was at a small radio station that was NOT on the air 24x7. The thing is, when you had a contract with AP, they SENT you enough paper to run the teletype 24x7, and they did NOT want it back, and there seemed to be no way to say "Please, do NOT send any paper for the next 6 month contract, we have way too much..." (Let's face it, if you only run 12-14 hours a day, after a year, you almost have a spare years worth of paper)

Well, one day, we wallpapered a hall, and left out magic markers, and told people "Go nuts" - it was the graffiti wall. Took up about 2 cases of paper. We took the OTHER 30 or so cases down to recyling

Phone Forwarding

I went on a week vacation and the regional secretary who relied on my technical support made sure that I knew she'd call me at home if there was anything she needed.

I never got personal calls at home during working hours. So, on my first day of vacation, I forwarded my phone to her.

She tried all week to get a hold of me. When she called me her line two would start ringing. Waiting and waiting finally she'd hang up and answer line two but no body was there.

She'd try again and line two would start ringing. She'd try putting me on hold to answer the other line. No one was there, so she'd hang up and come back to me, but because she had answered and disconnected, the line she was calling me on was now a dial tone. She figured I had probably answered and hung up.

Apparently this went on all week. Every time she'd call me her other line would ring and then all the stuff with disconnects and no one on the other line... She never figured it out and by the end of the week was very frustrated.

When I got back she went on and on about how she tried to call me. Then all the stories about how every time she did the other line would ring and then the disconnects.

I fessed up and told her what I did. Everyone in the office was laughing their ass off, except for her. She was stunned. I could see her thinking back and then putting two and two together. She finely got over it, probably after spitting in my coffee for a week or something to get even.

Office Prank Poll

I just wanted to know how people would react to the following prank that a colleague and I pulled on a brand new hire. I was a coop back then and a new hire was brought into the group. On his first day, after the formal introductions, we took him to lunch at an all you can buffet and encouraged him to stuff himself. Back at work, his boss gave him an extremely boring book and he sat there reading it. The temperature in our office is often cold when the air conditioning kicks in in the summer and wearing a t-shirt, he was a bit cold. Chilled, full and bored, it was 15 minutes before he went to sleep. That's when the fun began. The first dare put out was putting a post-it note on his monitor with the words "How was the nap?". That was simple. The next one I came up with was a little meaner: Take a picture of him sleeping. Still not really mean... someone inevitably falls asleep once during the year. The stakes were raised when I suggested we change his desktop background to the picture of him sleeping. So after transferring the picture to a machine (didn't have a digital camera so had to use a Sony DV camera and find the external card reader), we dropped it into a network share, and the biggest guy(6'4" - yet most nimble amongst us) snuck into his office, balanced between the chair and the desk and changed his wallpaper. 15 minutes later, the victim woke up to find a picture of him sleeping on his monitor and 4 people peering over his cubicle wall waiting for his reaction.

He was shocked but took it well. Some others there stated they would have resigned on the first day if that had happened to them. I'm curious as to how many people feel that way.

Office Pranks

Office pranks are OK. The swapping of telephone and keyboard keys. The taping up of mouse balls. Phantom phone calls... but nothing compares to factory floor pranks. They can be truly evil.

As patternmakers, my colleagues and I had to make...um...patterns. This involved a lot of measuring and marking out with steel rules. One day I guillotined the first 10mm off of my mate's steel rule - it's not the end you look at very often. He marked out half a dozen pieces that would have formed a box shape and proceeded to cut them out... The laughing started when his pieces wouldn't fit together properly as they were all 10mm short. It slowing turned into howling as he marked out the pieces again and proceeded to cut them for a second time. We were all clutching our sides when both sets of pieces were sat side by side - they were identical. He never found out it was me.

We played around with plaster from time to time too. The favourite was to fill a plastic coffee cup with plaster and attach a self-tapping screw to it. When set, we would screw the cup to the floor upsidedown... Everyone who walked passed would kick the cup in their best David Beckham style and fall flat on their faces. Oh the joy. They didn't see that coming.

Rubbing people's pencil down the crack of your arse was a favourite too. Some people, mainly the smokers, could not go for more than a few minutes without having a good chew on the end. The smell hits you second. Hmm tasty.

Filling people's gloves with grease was always good for a laugh too.

Holes for washers, long weights (waits) and left handed screwdrivers were a favourite with the apprentices. Each year September was the best.

It’s a wonder how we ever made any money. Oh wait, we didn't and that's why I now work in an office...

Office prankster

We had an office prankster at one of my former workplaces. He would always lower my chair before I went into work. He would mess up my desk so managers would think I was sloppy. He would take employee photos and Photoshop them and print them out. Every day we got joke messages from various Yahoo accounts. I confronted him in email about it, as I was getting sick of the jokes. He finally admitted to it, but kept on joking around and didn't do much work.

Eventually they let me go but kept him, he was the boss' favorite friend. Favoritism, you got to love it! :(

Yep, office pranks are good...

A manager had done the ping-pong ball avalanche and, afterwards, he asked where all the balls went. The response was, "in a safe place." He spent the following days opening his cabinets... ever... so... slowly...

Of course, we had much more elaborate plans...

We took several bungee cords from one guy's truck and attached them to the doorknob on the back of his door. The other ends were attached to a large file cabinet behind the door and the cords were stretched to the limit (and I mean it) as the door was shut and latched. Between the door and the cabinet, we placed two large, hardware-grade, garbage bags. The bags' openings were taped to a series of 15-20 cardboard tubes, cut and joined to create several angles, with the openings pointed at the doorway. The tubes were filled with the balls, the bags inflated, and the openings were lightly taped.

When he opened the door, there was an ungodly bang and a volley of ping pong balls went flying everywhere. It was over before he even had a chance to react. He said that the extra resistance in the doorknob didn't tip him off until it was too late.

The kicker... when he unlocked the door, his keys were on a small chain to his belt. If the keychain hadn't broke, it could have only been better had his pants been ripped off in the process.