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.
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.
"10. Placed fake rubber chocolates in the break room and watched as co-workers tried to chew them."
Also works to dip cotton balls in chocolate almond bark.
Since April 1 is on a Saturday, does anyone have good ones to play on hubby or kids at home?
Hilarious story, I am laughing out loud! It almost makes me wish I worked so I could do something similar........ I said almost. ha ha ha!
2) Move all desktop icons down to the bottom right corner (barley showing).
3) Set the background image to be the saved print-screen image in step 1.
User tries to click on the icons but they are really part of the background image!!! Drives them crazy.
I've done that to several co-workers that were foolish enough to leave their computers unlocked when they were away from their desk. Except I do the screen shot with their applications that were open at the time, then you minimize applications and shrink the task bar to the bottom of the screen.
They go nuts when they can't get anything to respond and usually end up rebooting to get the computer unfrozen.
My friend always has a "reverse dinner" on April Fools. She sets the table wrong, reverses the chairs, serves dessert first, ends with appetizers.
Last year I took a bunch of screen shots of Heroes of Feminism (Bella Abzug, Hillary!, Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, Cynthia McKinney, etc) and burned them to a CD. I then redirected the target drive of his screen saver to the CDROM drive and inserted the disk.
As a final coups de gras I password protected the screensaver...
change the mouthwash with food colored water, tape under the cap of shampoo, short sheet the kids beds, put thier shoelaces on from top to bottom.
He actually company mailed hard copies of the reading material to my mail code.
He then urged me to claim a schedule conflict and opt out as he supposedly did, and then sent me their response email...where they urged him to rescheudle as the class would "change the way you think".
Those are good! I'm also toying with hiding certain popular video games.
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