Discussion on:

Coins pasted to a computer monitor (Computer pranks that will make your friends curse you)

But mostly people with WAAAAAAAY too much time on their hands.

These days pranks have a 50/50 chance of resulting in law suit. Be careful out there.

Could someone tell me where these "ingenious" ones are?? This is Tech Republic at its lowest.....
What, is today a slow news day?

I actually was reprimanded by our HR department after using tin foil in a workers cubicle. Everyone thought it was funny, except the target person.

total waste of time and very juvinile.

No imagination, no cleverness. Mostly people with too much time and not enough brain to expend it on.

If you don't like that one, you've never been in tech support.

that there is funny!

get r done...

And so is taking a screenshot of someones desktop with icons and then setting it as the desktop background while removing the actual icons

I ran into one of my former students this week. We chatted for a while and he told of the practical joke they pulled at work on a project consultant. About a week before the project close date, somebody snuck into the consultant's office and downloaded the contents of his desktop onto a flash drive. They copied the shortcuts onto another PC, then played mix-and-match with the links (but not the names!) . The consultant was well known for logging on, then going to get a cup of coffee (about a 15-minute trip). While he was at the coffee shop on the project's last day, they copied his desktop shortcuts into a backup directory, then loaded up the shortcuts they had altered. I'm told the look on the consultant's face when he double-clicked the Project Manager Plus icon and Solitare opened was priceless.

Edit: spuling

His was lucky it was actually just the friendly Solitaire screen that greeted him instead of some sleazy or dubious web site / photo / video etc., for all his/her colleagues to see. Shame, reputations can get tarnished in a second. What creatures we are, indeed.

Here are some better pranks...I wish I could post the pictures...
1. Use plastic wrap to close off the cubical and fill it with foam packing peanuts.
2. Use aluminum foil and, carefully, wrap EVERY item in their workspace. Foil is better at keeping out alien signals than brown paper or duct tape!
3. Cover everything in the workspace with Post-Its. Save one to put on the door of the office with the message, "Please order more Post-Its."

Can you picture what happens when they pull the duct tape off that cheap laminated furniture? Can you say particle board? How about destruction of company property?

Although I have not placed it at anyones desk yet. I recently pulled apart an LCD display, and colored with yellow, red, blue, and green splotches on one of the internal pieces of plastic. So although you can still dee the desktop and picture, it is pretty annoying. Cool at first, but bugs quickly.
I was thinking about adding some red LED's on the top, and blue LEDs on the bottom, to really trip it out a bit more....

I keep seeing this and it keeps driving me crazy.

A cubicle is that small amount of space in which we are allowed to work. The 8' x 8' x 8' frame room is cubical in its dimensions.

Edit: type, post, proofread

Walked into my office one day and found Post-Its over everything! (Not fully covered, but including the ceiling!) Started me cursing under my breath while ripping them down. I was really getting ticked until my brother-in-law's smiling face popped around the door jam. THEN he had me laughing with him.

I'm still amazed at how much he managed to cover in the 15 minutes I was away on a support call.

I wasted my time looking at these

I think that, with the exception of the easily reversible screensaver ones, that these are not funny in the least and are destructive to boot. Most of these things would take a lot of time to rectify. None of these pranks holds a candle to the stapler in the Jello or throwing someone's cellphone in the T-bar ceiling above their desk and calling them all day (like in The Office); now THOSE would be funny. If I saw someone had put tape all over my ****, I'd be pissed and would not be a good sport about it. Woe be to that prankster's stuff...

Most employers, alas, have no sense of humor. A prank of any kind is usually classified as "horseplay" and treat it as grounds for dismissal. Silly stuff like this is often a release for repressed or depressed workers. This makes much more sense than "going postal" on your boss or trashing the IT center of a global manufacturer because you got laid-off. So, employers stop treating your employees like resources. In actual fact each employee at every nexus in the workplace hierarchy is both a supplier AND a customer at the internal level. By the way, you'll find employees with better self worth will be less destructive and more creative in their pranks.

Sigman Froid
of the Southern
U.S. Froids.

Geez, what a bunch of sad, humorless people. An occasional cubicle prank keeps things loose. There's enough pressure in IT without having self-important people looking down their noses at attempts to have an occasional bit of fun.

one of the reasons why I'd rather be a field tech than in the office.

It would be funny except we actually had to do that in a small, remote building with no secure office space. The "john" has the only locking door!

A sense of humor keeps you young! As long as you're not ruining any furniture or equipment there's no harm in breaking up the day with a little fun! I especially love office pranks because work can be stressful and boring. The pranks bring the office "gang" closer and more relaxed around each other. And when you love the people you work with it makes getting up every morning to go to work a lot easier!
CherylofTexas

I know I'm wearing this out but I get on my customer service/employee relations pulpit and the adrenaline takes over. Attack and Cheryl are exactly right. Some of the best bosses I've ever seen were those who had a sense of humor and enjoyed it at work with people above AND below their assigned levels. A man or woman who can freely laugh at themselves earn more respect, are more trusted and tend to manage via a process that is more like leadership than supervision. If you are able to watch them they walk around a lot and ask questions with a sincere desire to learn. Oy! This time I'm wrapping my keyboard with duct tape and reading the responses of others.

CYA!

One of my favourite pranks was to use clear tape to "freeze" the ball of the old mice.
These days a simple sticker on the Mouse LED pickup works great.
Other options were to swap the PS/2 mouse and keyboard plugs.
These days another favourite when two PCs are close, is to swap the mouse and/or keyboard connectors between the PCs so that each user is moving the other users cursor.

Take the guts out of a musical greeting card and connect the leads to the "caps lock" LED on someone's keyboard (don't need the battery, the LED will provide power once lit). The thing is, some people will notice "strange music" right away, while others won't activate it for months...

That's the best one. With a toilet paper roll on the CPU. But, one advice. Be careful. Don't mix up the brushes

I am amazed at the number of people that are in favor of activities such as this. It is so environmentally wasteful - wasted duct tape, wasted paper, wasted plastic wrap, etc. - that it's disgusting. If anyone had attempted this at the office where I work, the cost of the supplies used would be deducted from their paycheck, they would have received a write-up for wasting resources and, depending on the extent of the "prank", could very well have been terminated.

In this economy, waste is thrown away money and no business can afford that right now. Destruction of the environment is a major issue, yet no one seems to have a problem with throwing away trees left and right by creating entire cardboard cubicles or wrapping an entire cubicle in paper.

The fact that TechRepublic seems to support these actions by highlighting them in a gallery and making no mention of the waste involved disturbs me. I really have to reconsider my involvement with TechRepublic after this. You have severely disappointed me, TR

-Jason

We always did.

There is nothing in this world more deserving of waste than a good joke.

Nothing.

tbh these are pretty **** ;-]

There goes a few minutes of my life Im not gonna get back :[

I read your post, so I know how you feel.

Perhaps you need glasses...or faster connection ;-]
http://tinyurl.com/26fd4ku

Felt like minutes.

When you take drugs....just cut back a bit :P

P.S I must admit, your last reply....now that was really funny! Well worth the time
But...you didnt think I was gonna let you have the last word? I am a female after all :]

He knows when to stop.

I can tell you the outlook is not good, Jason.

Lighten up, Frances!!

It is anally-retentive folks like you who make pranks necessary. You must be a blast at the Xmas office party.

While I agree there is a time and a place for this, and that there is professionalism in the workplace to be considered, there is also the other side of the issue, where people take it way too seriously.

Office pranks are an art and a form of expression, hence protected speech. As long as the prank is non-destructive and is done on the prankster's own ressources rather than the company's I cannot see any harm in it.

In other words, before pointing out the straw in our eye, take that stick you got out of your butt!!

We attached a wireless keyboard transmitter to a friends computer and controlled his computer without his knowing. Thinking he had a virus he contacted the I.S. Team, after which we annonimously sent hin an email telling him he had been had. hen he had to inform the IS Team of his demise. Bet they had a good laugh.

Stupid... Not even funny at all...

WOW!!! What a complete waste of my time... I can't believe I actually looked at as many as I did. I am wondering now - Are there any adults around who might supervise you kids???