- The Traveling Pencil
A guy I know stole a coworker’s novelty giant pencil, then started emailing said coworker in-character as the pencil, with photos of the pencil in different locations around Europe.
He even got another coworker in on the act to deflect suspicion away from himself, and used proxies to ensure the emails couldn’t be traced back to him.
The original owner of the pencil got so pissed off, it initiated a company-wide hunt for the perpetrator. So far as I know, it was never resolved, and Pencil McPencilface roams the world to this day.
- Phantom Mouse
Once I plugged in a wireless mouse into their computer without them knowing. And a few times a day I would just jiggle the mouse. Just enough to hear them slamming down the mouse and muttering under their breath and I’d stop. This went on for several days. Sometimes I’d stop by to chat, and I would bring the mouse. When they we go to click on something I would just move the mouse just slightly so they couldn’t hover over what they wanted to click. It was brilliant!
- Wardrobe Malfunction
There’s a guy in my office who often comes to work in jeans and a t-shirt and changes into his work clothes in his office. He’s taken over half of a closet next to my cubicle with his dress clothes.
A few years ago, on March 31, I came into the office around midnight and swapped his clothes for some Hawaiian shirts, checked pants, basically a whole wardrobe of the loudest clothes I could find at a thrift store.
When I got there the next morning, he was closed up in his office. His secretary told me that he’d been having a pretty rotten week in terms of workload and was in a foul mood. Finally, he emerged wearing his jeans and t-shirt. He sort of grunted a hello at me, opened the closet door, and just stood there for probably 10-15 seconds trying to wrap his brain around what was in front of him. Finally he just started cracking up laughing, and put on one of the more “understated” outfits. He spent the rest of the day trying to figure out who had done it; meanwhile, people from all around the office came to behold my handiwork. I finally fessed up at the end of the day. He swore revenge although he still hasn’t made his move.
- Bodywork Blues
You know how you can fray Duct tape and pull off long little sticky threads of it?
So, I pulled off a single long piece of it, and put it down the side of my manager’s brand new car. Looks like a deep, horrifying scratch on the paintwork.
The look on his face when we went out for a smoke. He threw his hands onto his head, his knees went weak, and he basically crawled over to it, and pulled the thread of sticky duct tape off easily.
Harmless and fun, that one.
- Perfumed Seat
I don’t work in an office, but my dad tells me stories frequently of the ways he messes with his coworkers. The other day he said that he bought a bunch of car air fresheners and taped them to the bottom of a chair. The victim kept swivelling around trying to figure out the smell but never checked under the seat. He said he put about 10+ air fresheners under it and the guy still never figured it out.
- Office Crush
There was this girl sitting next to me in an open plan office and we were always joking with each other. One day, she had a meeting scheduled at her desk with a male coworker I knew she had a crush on. So while she was in the bathroom getting ready, I went on her PC, found the guy’s photo on the company website and made it her desktop background. Then I tabbed back to whatever programme she had been using so she wouldn’t notice right away. She comes back. Guy arrives for the meeting. They’re talking away for about ten minutes before she goes to check something on the computer and just let an enormous shriek out of her and goes bright red when she sees the desktop.
In a way, that prank almost worked too well. Because her shock was so obviously genuine, it was obvious she was the victim of a prank (rather than a crazy stalker, which is what I was aiming for.)
- Divine Intervention
Someone in our office was selling candy bars to raise money for her chuch. When she left her cubicle, she’d leave the box of candy there, alongside a box to put money in and a little sign she’d printed reading, “remember: God is watching. :)”
My friend printed up a sign and snuck it under her “God is watching…” sign. It read: “God helps those who help themselves.”
- Beep Beep
I put a simple alarm clock in the ceiling tiles of the server room, so that every 12 hours, it would go off with a simple constant beep that would last about two minutes. I was in the room with my manager one of those times, and she went nuts when it went off. “Every day one of these machines has an alarm and I can’t figure out which one it is!!” She was frantically checking wires and buttons trying to find the source.
Very hard to stifle the laughter. This went on for about 4 months until another manager discovered the clock. He just left it on a desk with a post-it note that said “mad props”.
- Desktop Drama
We used to have a competition in our department for this one guy who never learned to lock his computer. He was a project manager and was constantly projecting in meetings and would leave his laptop for hours on his desk with no lock screen.
A lot of people messed with him, but the on that got him really angry was the one I hopped on while he was in the bathroom. I set up task scheduler to open a browser window with an image search of Cookie Monster (which was his nickname for various reasons) at random intervals between 30 seconds and 15 mins.
He was not a techy guy and had no idea how to stop it from happening and he’d get so frustrated when he’d present for an hour meeting and he’d have 6-8 browser windows pop up during the meeting, sometimes with customers.
His frustration was like manna from heaven. . .
- Red Herring
I used to work in this restaurant in the downtown area of my city which had several restaurants nearby. Whenever we would get a new dishwasher or inexperienced cook, we would say something like “Hey, we’re out of ice mix, head to restaurant X and grab some.” The other restaurants were in on this and the poor kid would be sent restaurant to restaurant until he caught on.
Another good one is to send them for the “long stand”. Same kind of thing but they come in and ask for the long stand, then they are basically left to stand there as long as it takes to realize that they are an idiot haha.
