Posted on 03/31/2006 10:17:18 AM PST by Nachum
Time to dust off the whoopee cushions and hand buzzers. April Fools' Day is here and there's no better place for wisecracks and shenanigans than at work.
In its annual April Fools' Day survey, CareerBuilder.com found 33 percent of workers have played a practical joke on a co-worker and 17 percent are planning office tricks for this year's holiday.
Although it might be thrilling to finally one-up the office funnyman, pranks also help beat something that's no laughing matter: workplace stress.
More than half of workers reported working under stress in another CareerBuilder.com survey. Stress and worry on the job can be harmful, causing problems that damage your health and performance. Having fun with co-workers can provide stress relief, build rapport, make work more enjoyable and possibly improve productivity.
If you want to commit an act of April Foolery at work and need some inspiration, here are the top 10 work gags from CareerBuilder.com's survey:
1. Changed the caller ID on a co-worker's phone to read "Mr. Kitten" every time he called someone.
2. Placed random objects from people's desks in the vending machine.
3. Placed a live goldfish in an IV bag in a clinic.
4. Snuck onto someone else's computer and sent out an "I love you" e-mail to the entire office.
5. Wall papered someone's entire cube with headshots of his co-workers.
6. Convinced a colleague that a co-worker was in love with him.
7. Sat on the copier and placed the copies back in the paper bin. Anytime co-workers made copies, they had the image of the prankster's backside in the background.
8. Turned all the clocks in the office one hour back to make the work day seem longer.
9. Locked all the doors, shut off the lights and put a "Closed" sign in the window when the boss went out for lunch.
10. Placed fake rubber chocolates in the break room and watched as co-workers tried to chew them.
Kate Lorenz is the article and advice editor for CareerBuilder.com. She researches and writes about job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues.
I am So tuned in. This is going to be good!
April Fools!
One that got me: a voicemail message from Mr. Lion with a phone number for the local zoo. I know, I should've seen it coming a mile away, but I didn't.
I want to rent a van, get some balloons, some friends and a sign that reads "Publishers Clearing House" on the side of the van.
Then just drive around town like you are looking for an address.
Too bad April fool's is on SATURDAY this year........
Sorry, but that list is very lame...
The best I ever heard of was the group that new an obnoxious co-worker always left his Powerball tickets in his desk. One drawing night, they went and bought a ticket after the drawing with the previous day's winning numbers, then replaced the co-workers ticket with the one that they bought. The co-worker comes to work, pulls the ticket from his desk, and checks the numbers.
You can guess the bad situations that soon followed.
Don't know if it's true, but a good story none the less.
He actually kept one of the top drawers an aquarium for about a year after that.
I also set his auto-correct in all MS Office applications so when he typed his name it tagged a comma and the word "Dork" on the end of it.
Sounds like fun. How do you do step 1?
Scott Adams (dilbert fame) had some great ones in his books.
One I remember:
He took a picture from a coworkers desk, of the coworkers family, and scanned his face over the faces of the coworkers kids.
Then he put the altered picture back in the frame.
Boy, that's cruel. Wow.
Get some of the waste "holes" from a hole punch and place them in a co-workers umbrella. Don't fill it up so that they will notice it and the next time it rains it will also snow.
That IS a good one!
1) Move the mouse pointer off the screen.
2) Press the 'Print-Screen' button.
3) Open MS Paint (Start|Programs|Accessories|Paint)
4) Paste the image from the clip board (Edit|Paste)
5) Save the file.
Put a note on the copy machine instructing people that it is now voice activated, with a list of commands.
Put a peice of onion or a clove of garlic inside the mouthpiece of a phone. Give it some time for it to fester and build up a strong odor. Then call them and keep them on the phone for as long as possible.
It is allways a good habit to lock your computer before heading off for coffee or a smoke. When someone forgets and leaves a Word document or an email open, type a single word somewhere in the text. “f*ck” or so will do nicely. They’ll never notice and send it out.
Get a hold of someone's cell phone and change the greeting banner to say "NO SERVICE". Many cell phones have greeting banners on them that you can personalize to say whatever you want them to and it stays on there when you're not using your phone. Also, when there is no service where you are, most cell phone companies have a banner that pops up on your screen saying "no service
I prefer barley in soup. lol
I'll let you know how I make out. Thanks... LOL. This might just be perfect.
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It's a hoot when he tries to do an email and can't type anything coherant on it!
By mid-day, he'll have desktop support trying to fix it.
Nice try :)
(Yeah, I fell for it.)
A "practical joker" deserves applause for his wit according to its quality. Bastinado is about right. For exceptional wit one might grant keelhauling. But staking him out on an anthill should be reserved for the very wittiest.
Lazarus Long
A friend bought a brand new Geo. We had to listen every day to his MPG report. Always, 40, 42, 41 MPG.
So, we started adding gas to his tank, a little at a time. the geo started getting 50 then 55 then 60 MPG.
We kept adding gas to the tank, it got up to 75, then 85 then 90 MPG.
We decided to wean him off the gas, so we added less and less. it dropped to 75, then 65 then 60.
Even less gas added, and it dropped to 45 then we quit adding gas.
Of course, we couldnt quit, we started syphoning. When it hit 25, he took it in for a tune up.
Mechanical Mouse: Remove the mouse ball, stick in a loop of tape, and replace the ball.
Optical Mouse: Short strip of opaque tape to block led's.
I did that but when ever the "victim" would type the word "The" it would change it to "f*ck"
Ok...here's one.
One Saturday the company president's wife (also an employee) wound up locked in the ladies room (lock malfunction) for several hours until her husband got back from an errand. Since her husband couldn't keep his mouth shut the story became the talk of the entire company.
A couple of weeks later I hung a prybar on the door knob inside the ladies room with a sign "For emergency use only!" attached.
When the victim went into the ladies room she started shreiking with laughter.
She never figured out who did it.
That's a good one! I think I'll try it.
Better yet, just place a small piece of tape over just one of the little wheels inside the ball compartment. End result, mose works fine, jst won't go "left"...
About 15 years ago my company got a new phone system at the main office. We went from 3 lines to 17 lines and received fancy new desk phones. For ten days after everyone in the company received a daily memo from the communications company detailing some new feature the phone and service offered.
The day before April Fools Day I took the phone company letter head and made up a bogus memo that read:
TO: All XYX Company Business Phone Users
From: Joe Blow, Systems Engineer (name changed to protect the guilty)
Please be advised that on 4/1/91 we will be cleaning the business phone lines at your location.
High pressure air will be injected into the fiber optic cables to purge the system of accumulated dust and debris.
We recommend wrapping your phone’s handset in a plastic bag to prevent the expelled dust and debris from settling into your phone’s key punch pad.
The cleaning will begin promptly at 10:00 am and last for approximately 30 seconds.
Please take the necessary precautions to minimize any inconvenience of this required service.
I took three (read, 3) of these memos and put them on the desk of the people who I figured would fall for this, along with a nice waste basket size white plastic bag.
The next morning, April Fools Day, at about 9:30 one of these three people starts to make it her business to find out who in our office does not have a bag for their phone. She starts a panic about some type of phone company test, where “they’re going to blow out the lines!”. Shes running around telling everyone they had better cover up their handset.
At about 9:50am I started walking through the building and EVERYONE had their phone wrapped in plastic. There were people talking with a bag wrapped around the hand set…overhead one saying in a loud voice..”Its some kind of test, they’re blowing out the lines” to the person she was talking to. I’m starting to feel like a kid who through a baseball through his dad’s car windshield and dad is going to find out real soon who did it.
A couple of minutes before 10:00 I go up to the reception area to make a system wide page announcing “April Fools!”. At 10:00 the phones are ringing but no one is answering. I’m holding the phone in my hand to make the page and the company President walks by and says, “PUT THE PHONE DOWN, YOU’RE GOING TO GET SPRAYED IN THE FACE!” By this time I’m laughing so hard I can hardly speak.
I make my announcement “Attention all of you with a bag on your phone, April Fools.” There was Dead Silence. Not a sound. Then I hear murmers and “I’m gonna kill him”, “He’s gonna get it”, etc.
Final count 27 phones bagged. I went and worked in a branch office at a neighboring city for two weeks before going back into the main office. Its been 10 years and I still get grief for that prank.
Two Lessons learned: #1. Panic spreads like wildfire. If people are not given time to logically consider the facts of a situation, they will become like cattle and follow the stampeding herd. #2. Never make the president of your company look like a fool.
That would be absolutely infuriating.
Agreed. No work this year.
The next day I started a rumor he had taken the morning off to get a vasectomy.
It was two weeks before he finally had enough of the ladies in the office staring at him and making vasectomy jokes and sexual innuendoes that he finally asked what in the world was going on.
OMG!! I just told that one to my bosses in the other room and they're cracking up!!
Once a coworker of mine sent an emain to another friend/co-worker.. bitching about his job..
..not really bad but the typical "Man, this is BS!.. blah blah.. I should quit!.. I deserve more money,, yadda yadda" type sentiment that someone goes through when they have a bad day.
We got the e-mail, and you know how you can "spoof" the e-mail thread so it *looks like* the e-mail has been CC'd and/or forwarded to anyone you want it to look like.. we sent it back to where it looked like every single bigwig in the company had been copied in, including the CEO.. he almost had a heart attack right there... haahahha
I saved the image and then changed his wallpaper to use the image and then dragged all his desktop icons off to one side of the screen to hide them. The whole process took only 2 minutes while he was in the men's room.
No matter where he clicked with the mouse, nothing happened.
We let him in on the joke just as he was dialing the IT department.
We placed a remote noise maker(cellphone noise) under (taped) the Judge's chair in the courtroom. He go so mad but couldn't find the noise. I had to leave, we were giggling uncontrollably (Legal Aid and the prosecutor) in the hallway and he sent the bailiff after us but the bailiff started laughing he couldn't catch us....
The secret to a really great prank is that no one is quite sure that there has been a prank. I learned this from a co-worker who was the master of the art. People would stand around wondering what just happened.
EASILY PISSED
HEAVILY ARMED
I can always say I was kidding later...
Office pranks really are great.
I used to work at night with Asian countries. If things were slow we would just call a company in singapore at random and conference them in with another company in Hong Kong called at random. I would tell them I was the long distance operator from New Deli India and then hook them together. At 3AM it was a hoot.
1. Signed a male coworker up for panty-hose of the month club, to be delivered to him at work.
2. Stole my bosses hubcaps.
3. Pretend to be a fictional customer and call about a lost product.
4. Laxative in my snacks. (For the phantom snack raider who rifles through everyone's snacks in the breakroom)
5. Squeezed out a tube of fudge dough onto the bathroom floor.
ha! you got me! I was gonna flame you for being one of 'those'. lol
Mother Nature pulled the best one in Boston, think it was 1997. We got an 18 inch snowstorm. It was 70 degrees and sunny on March 31.
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