Practical jokes

[SKY]

I love reading over this thread from time to time. It's good for a laugh, plus it helps me think of new way to be mischievous .

[paulie jay]

Here is a very simple gag that, when I was younger, I used to play on my sisters and brother, who are all smokers.

When they had lit up a cigarette and then left it burning in an ashtray (a pet peeve of mine) I would wait until they weren't looking and then make a couple of holes in the cigarette with a pin, replace the cigarette "holes down" then watch their puzzled expresison as they tried to take their next puff.

[W.F. Tomba]

Here is a very simple gag that, when I was younger, I used to play on my sisters and brother, who are all smokers.

When they had lit up a cigarette and then left it burning in an ashtray (a pet peeve of mine) I would wait until they weren't looking and then make a couple of holes in the cigarette with a pin, replace the cigarette "holes down" then watch their puzzled expresison as they tried to take their next puff.

What does that do?

[paulie jay]

Just makes it harder for them to suck the smoke down. It's not the hardest hitting gag in the world, but the confused look on their face is worth the two seconds it takes to pierce their cancer sticks!

[Candy]

Just makes it harder for them to suck the smoke down. It's not the hardest hitting gag in the world, but the confused look on their face is worth the two seconds it takes to pierce their cancer sticks!

This guy at work used to turn one cigarette around in a pack. It might've taken a while, but when it would finally get lit, it would be a flame blaring. Smoker's don't usually look if the cigarette is right side or wrong side before taking a puff.

[Enzp]

Fun

One place I worked had a fellow we all loved to pick on, Dave. We all liked Dave, but he was such a great target. We got a cat for the shop and named it Dave. We told human Dave it was because the cat laid around all day and did nothing, just like him.

So we did things to Dave.

Ran a wire from the brake light switch over to the horn wires on his car. Every time he hit the brakes, the horn would blare. The unexpected bonus was when he turned on the emergency flashers. honk honk honk...

ANother time we took the tube from the windshield wiper squirter and ran it up under the steering wheel. He never knew for about a week, because it never rained. But he loaned his car to his sister the next weekend and she came back, "Dave, every time I use the wipers, my lap gets wet. You better check it out."

Yep, we did the potato in the exhaust pipe trick. And we also froze his keys in a block of ice. Those are fun pranks.

Dave's car was pretty rusty, and there was a hole on top of the left front fender. We planted flowers in it.

Keeping a straight face, we like to ask for ketchup at the sushi bar.

We used to have an electronics tech who was always "looking for shorts" in his work. One day I went to the toy store and got a pair of bermudas for Barbie dolls, and put them in the thing he was fixing. We thought it was funny at the time.

At Easter in our family we put out Easter baskets and use the plastic eggs. We fill them with jelly beans or other candy things. One year when our kid was little, we did the same, but in one egg we put in some small colorful erasers that looked like candy. Eventually the kid bit into the hunk of rubber. "Hey, that Easter Bunny is trying to fool me."

One year I gave him a basket full of nothing but plastic grass and one large rutabaga. I told him Easter Bunny ran out of candy. The baffled, not sure what to think look on his face was priceless. I gave him a real basket shortly thereafter. But I have been sneaking rutabagas into his presents and things ever since. He's 20 now, but it has become sort of a tradition.

[Enzp]

One other joke. I did this at bowling league. Hey, I'm middle aged, middle class, middle west - we do bowling.

One team each game put up a quarter each on the score table - five quarters - $1.25. WHoever bested his average the most took the small pot. WHen they were not looking, I used to sneak an extra quarter into the pile now and then. They would get all confused and get into great discussions over who anted up twice or how otherwise there came to be an extra quarter. I did this for years and they never caught on that it was a gag. I certainly got my money's worth watching them.

[Candy]

This isn't much of a practical joke, but I'll spill the beans anyway.

I work the midnight shift, and I often walk around World Head Quarters. It's all middle to upper management. I see some cubicles or offices that the person is a collector of one thing or another. I start remembering the names of strangers.

For example, downstairs, there is a man who collects Mickey Mouse's.

I saw a Mickey Mouse Bobblehead that was so cute. I bought it, and placed it on the man's desk without a note.

I just get a kick out of thinking what the man thinks when he comes to work to find his surprise. I can just imagine he is asking everyone and their brother, "Did you leave me the Bobblehead?"

I've been randomly doing this for years. It's the little things in life that entertain me.

[zebo-the-fat]

This guy at work used to turn one cigarette around in a pack. It might've taken a while, but when it would finally get lit, it would be a flame blaring. Smoker's don't usually look if the cigarette is right side or wrong side before taking a puff.

I didn't know there was a difference between the two ends!

[Candy]

This guy at work used to turn one cigarette around in a pack. It might've taken a while, but when it would finally get lit, it would be a flame blaring. Smoker's don't usually look if the cigarette is right side or wrong side before taking a puff.

I didn't know there was a difference between the two ends!

Oops, I forgot some people only know non-filtered cigarettes.

Here in the states, most "fag's" have a filter on one end. That's why they're called "butt's".

[zebo-the-fat]

This guy at work used to turn one cigarette around in a pack. It might've taken a while, but when it would finally get lit, it would be a flame blaring. Smoker's don't usually look if the cigarette is right side or wrong side before taking a puff.

I didn't know there was a difference between the two ends!

Oops, I forgot some people only know non-filtered cigarettes.

Here in the states, most "fag's" have a filter on one end. That's why they're called "butt's".

Never thought about it, but then I never smoked in my life, (steamed a bit - but never smoked!)

[Enzp]

Candy, those are the best practical jokes. Non destructive yet it drives them nuts.

My sister has a good friend who went on vacation. Sis recruited me to play the prank, since the friend doesn't know me. Sis gave me the friend's phone number. SO while they were away I left various bogus messages on the answering machine. We even got my wife and son in on it.

Friend lives in North Carolina and we are in Michigan by the way

The son did a great one, he called and said, "Hi, just called to say 'it's a boy.' Gotta go." Friend went nuts calling everyone she knew trying to find out who had the baby.

I left a series of calls from "Phillip from Blockbuster Video." I even found out the number and address of the local one down there. I was telling her we needed her to return the Adam Sandler movies she had out. Phillip is sort of simpering and unappealing. Phillip told her to call right away at the number.

The poor woman bit hard. She called the store to ream them out about calling her over tapes she never rented and to complain about Phillip. Of course they had no Phillip and no record of her having rented anything.

She also gat a message assuring her we would be out first thing inthe morning to cut down the trees in the way of the new driveway we would be installing the next day.

Apparently a machine full of two dozen bizarre phone messages did not tip her off that something was fishy when she got home, and my Sis never let on. She was baffled.

Two weeks later, the friend visits Sis in Washington DC - hundreds of miles away - and Sis tips me off they would be arriving at 11PM. SO Phillip calls friend at Sis's house at 11PM and asks for friend. Sis hands her the phone, "It's for you." Phillip then starts peading with friend to return the videos. "Why are you calling me here?" "I'm dedicated to my job." SHe STILL doesn't get that she is being hoaxed, while Sis is rolling in the aisles in the background. We had to carefully explain it to her. "OK, how would Phillip know where you were, let alone the number?"

I did get a mysterious postcard a month or so later, unsigned other than "Thinking of you" with the message "I hate you, really" Postmarked Hawaii. I am pretty sure....


ANother fun thing is when yuo get a friend's machine, at the beep assume your best "announcer" voice and say, "...the ten thousand dollars, so better luck next time on Dialing for Dollars." And hang up.

I used to call a friend at work, and if someone offered to take a message I would reply, "Tell him his attorney called about his failure to appear in court today."

[SKY]

I used to call a friend at work, and if someone offered to take a message I would reply, "Tell him his attorney called about his failure to appear in court today."

I may have to steal that one. That's funny.

[Candy]

I think it is Hertz that has a cow as a mascot, and we do promotions with them. I noticed this life size cow in the main office of our department while strolling one night. I brought in my digital camera to work the next night.

I had to drag that big old huge thing just to move it. I put it in our Director's office sitting propped up with it's feet on the desk. I took about 10 photos. I then put it back where I found it.

I had to print the photos from home. I laid them on the Director's desk the next night with a note. Note read: I just wanted you to know what happens in your office at night when you leave. Unsigned.

I was then on Vacation for 7 days. I came back, and asked a co-worker if the Director had found any photos on his desk. The co-worker said, "Yes... did you leave those?" Co-worker said Director kept accusing everyone of doing it. Co-worker said everyone thought it was so funny.

I love doing these kind of things.

[Candy]

Again, not a practical joke (thanks to Grendl for reminding me).

For Christmas last year, I bought bottles of Boone's Farm for all my co-workers. I wrapped them in very expensive casings. I didn't put a card on the gifts. For some reason, everyone knew they were from me. :-?

[Enzp]

Wow, that brings back college. Regular apple or strawberry blush?

[SKY]

I read a good one that I forgot to add here (hopefully I didn't read it here in this thread, because I don't remember where I read it). It's a good computer prank to pull on someone preferably with little computer knowledge.

Take a photo copy of the desktop (press Print Screen) then past it to your "Paint" program. From there you should be able to "save as" a JPEG file. Save the file and exit the program. Take all the icons on the subjects desktop and remove them (place them in a folder or such) then change the desktop wallpaper to the picture you saved. Last, drop the task bar so only the fake one is showing.

The desktop will look exactly as they left it, but if they try to click on any of the icons or the task bar they will get nothing. I haven't found that unsuspecting person yet, but I'll tell you when I do .

[Nicolas]

Small problems with this ^^^^^^ joke:

-you still see your mouse becoming a stretch arrow when you hit the bottom of the screen.
-pressing the windows key opens the task bar.
-you can't delete "my computer" from your desktop if I'm correct.


I haven't read the thread, so it might be in here already:

*create a new file on the desktop.
*rename it to "these 18967753 files" (no extension).
select the file, press delete.
*On your screen, you get the message "are you sure you want to delete these 18967753 files?"
*drag this dialog box over the file to make the file invisible.

When the owner of the PC returns, he'll be VERY quick to press "no" .

[MassAstro]

One of my favorite things to do is to 'short straw' an unsuspecting victim by cutting a straw really, really short and just barely sticking it into a frozen beverage, where it appears to be the normal length. Great fun.

Also, at work, I like to give my boss heartburn by carrying empty boxes around acting like they are very heavy... "please take this from me... I can't hold it any longer".... LOL he is so gullible 8)

[jfribrg]

I read a good one that I forgot to add here (hopefully I didn't read it here in this thread, because I don't remember where I read it). It's a good computer prank to pull on someone preferably with little computer knowledge.

Take a photo copy of the desktop (press Print Screen) then past it to your "Paint" program. From there you should be able to "save as" a JPEG file. Save the file and exit the program. Take all the icons on the subjects desktop and remove them (place them in a folder or such) then change the desktop wallpaper to the picture you saved. Last, drop the task bar so only the fake one is showing.

The desktop will look exactly as they left it, but if they try to click on any of the icons or the task bar they will get nothing. I haven't found that unsuspecting person yet, but I'll tell you when I do .

Nice joke. Next time I feel like getting fired, I will try it.

[Nicolas]

On office islands, just linking your monitor to your neighbour's pc and vice versa is nice as well

Welcome MassAstro!!

[farmerjumperdon]

Sometimes when I get off an elevator, as the doors are opening I'll act like I'm prying them open (I've got it down to where it's pretty convincing). As I walk away I'll just casually mention to those waiting for the car to be careful. Most don't get on.

When I worked as an auto mechanic, and most cars still had condensors as part of their ignition, we would charge them up then casually hand it to somebody. When they touched the lead they would get a nice little zap. Kind of a high-tech joy buzzer.

As a pizza cook, I occasssionally de-stocked the pizza assembly area if the next folks on were jerks.

As a bartender I once had this really drunk guy sucking down too many vodka sours. I made the last couple with almost no vodka. We were all amused that every once in a while he'd pick up his head, take a sip, then crash on the bar again. Finally. he finished off one of the weak drinks, raises up with great effort and blurts out drunkenly - "Gimme anudder drink, and put some vodka in it this time." We all had a riotous laugh.

As a newbie in a machine shop, I got sent on a wild goose chase looking for the Metal Stretcher. I got suspicious after about a dozen stops because some guys were looking in places where something small would be stored, others were looking where something big would be kept. Finally, one of the old farts smiles and tells me to turn around. The entire shop was following my search and broke out in full-blown belly laughter. They said I went further in my search than anybody ever had. What can I say; I'm a diligent worker - and was glad to have amused them.

I mentioned the science experiments in the concession stand in another thread.

I took the red bits out of some variety of dry dog food and pretended they were a snack food; I called them Munchos (before the real thing with that name existed). One of the delivery guys ate several pieces and commented on how good they were. As he's standing there eating them one of the other guys comes by the counter dragging the rest of the freshly opened 50# bag, and you could see the red bits. The delivery guy says "What you got there?" and I say "Munchos!" and we all start laughing. He said it was a good thing we were friends or he would've ripped my arm off and beat me with it.

On April Fools my boss crazy-glued a silver dollar to the tile floor of our gas station lobby. Whenever someone came in we'd pretend to be looking away, they'd bend down to pick it up and find it glued down and we'd all holler April Fools and have a good laugh. Then this very large man comes in and we do the routine. As he finds out it's stuck we all holler and start laughing, but only for a couple seconds. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a good sized locking blade knife, and chips the coin loose. We were all very respectfully quiet as he left.

So many pranks, so little time.

[Moose]

The desktop will look exactly as they left it, but if they try to click on any of the icons or the task bar they will get nothing. I haven't found that unsuspecting person yet, but I'll tell you when I do .

Yeah, that's a good one. A variant on it is to do the same thing to a PC user, except using a screenshot taken from a Mac desktop.

To really make this work, you also need to hide the start menu. Dragging it to the top (or side) of the screen, then adjusting the monitor to nudge the line off the viewable portion of the screen.

----

At a previous job, the IT department absolutely nailed one of the designers, a "power user". Let's call him "Dave".

One of the office policies was that beta software was not to be installed on any development machine, without extensive testing by the IT dept. So of course Dave installs the original beta for IE 6.0.

The IT department came in that night and shrunk his hard drive partition ten percent. Then again the next night.

So finally Dave notices his shrinking hard drive, and he's cringing about bringing this up with IT, and likely getting his wrists smacked in the process.

IT turns up the pressure by sending around a cautionary email with two (real) virus warnings and a fake caution about the IE 6.0 beta, describing the symptoms of what Dave was seeing.

He panics at this point and runs for IT. He confesses to having installed the IE beta, and we tell him there's apparently no fix at that time. (The progs aided and abetted by talking about how IE would modify the partition table to create a separate cache, but would fail to detect it's already done so, and do it again. And again. Etc.)

IT keeps shrinking his hard drive over the next day or two, and Dave's hard drive is getting pretty cramped by this point.

We next put up a fake web page about a workaround to disable the "bug", rig up a fake "forwarded" email, then got someone from another department to make sure Dave got it.

The page instructed him to open a (fake) .dll file in notepad (which should have been a dead giveaway, but wasn't). It was a renamed .ini file. He scrolls down the file to the variable he was "supposed" to change.

The variable contained "Dave is a weenie!"

And yeah, the penny dropped at that point. *grin* Oh man, that was fun.

[Nicolas]

The desktop will look exactly as they left it, but if they try to click on any of the icons or the task bar they will get nothing. I haven't found that unsuspecting person yet, but I'll tell you when I do .

Yeah, that's a good one. A variant on it is to do the same thing to a PC user, except using a screenshot taken from a Mac desktop.

To really make this work, you also need to hide the start menu. Dragging it to the top (or side) of the screen, then adjusting the monitor to nudge the line off the viewable portion of the screen.

That would solve the mouse becoming a stretch arrow, but still you'd have My Computer on the desktop.
And when you press the windows kkey, hoppa there's the start menu.

[Moose]

The desktop will look exactly as they left it, but if they try to click on any of the icons or the task bar they will get nothing. I haven't found that unsuspecting person yet, but I'll tell you when I do .

Yeah, that's a good one. A variant on it is to do the same thing to a PC user, except using a screenshot taken from a Mac desktop.

To really make this work, you also need to hide the start menu. Dragging it to the top (or side) of the screen, then adjusting the monitor to nudge the line off the viewable portion of the screen.

That would solve the mouse becoming a stretch arrow, but still you'd have My Computer on the desktop.
And when you press the windows kkey, hoppa there's the start menu.

You can drag that icon (along with the folder you've copied all other icons into) to the edge of the screen you'd put the start menu. It vanishes off the edge as well.

There's a substantial subset of users who aren't aware of the windows button (or only vaguely so).

It probably wouldn't do more than surprise and amuse a techie, but my office is full of people who this would string along for a while.

[Nicolas]

The computer challenged are easily pranked

[SKY]

I read a good one that I forgot to add here (hopefully I didn't read it here in this thread, because I don't remember where I read it). It's a good computer prank to pull on someone preferably with little computer knowledge.

Take a photo copy of the desktop (press Print Screen) then past it to your "Paint" program. From there you should be able to "save as" a JPEG file. Save the file and exit the program. Take all the icons on the subjects desktop and remove them (place them in a folder or such) then change the desktop wallpaper to the picture you saved. Last, drop the task bar so only the fake one is showing.

The desktop will look exactly as they left it, but if they try to click on any of the icons or the task bar they will get nothing. I haven't found that unsuspecting person yet, but I'll tell you when I do .

Nice joke. Next time I feel like getting fired, I will try it.

:roll:

[SKY]

To really make this work, you also need to hide the start menu.

That's what I meant by dropping the "Task Bar" so only the pictured one is shown.

At a previous job, the IT department absolutely nailed one of the designers, a "power user". Let's call him "Dave".

One of the office policies was that beta software was not to be installed on any development machine, without extensive testing by the IT dept. So of course Dave installs the original beta for IE 6.0.

The IT department came in that night and shrunk his hard drive partition ten percent. Then again the next night.

So finally Dave notices his shrinking hard drive, and he's cringing about bringing this up with IT, and likely getting his wrists smacked in the process.

IT turns up the pressure by sending around a cautionary email with two (real) virus warnings and a fake caution about the IE 6.0 beta, describing the symptoms of what Dave was seeing.

He panics at this point and runs for IT. He confesses to having installed the IE beta, and we tell him there's apparently no fix at that time. (The progs aided and abetted by talking about how IE would modify the partition table to create a separate cache, but would fail to detect it's already done so, and do it again. And again. Etc.)

IT keeps shrinking his hard drive over the next day or two, and Dave's hard drive is getting pretty cramped by this point.

We next put up a fake web page about a workaround to disable the "bug", rig up a fake "forwarded" email, then got someone from another department to make sure Dave got it.

The page instructed him to open a (fake) .dll file in notepad (which should have been a dead giveaway, but wasn't). It was a renamed .ini file. He scrolls down the file to the variable he was "supposed" to change.

The variable contained "Dave is a weenie!"

And yeah, the penny dropped at that point. *grin* Oh man, that was fun.

That is funny.

[mickal555]

Sometimes when I get off an elevator, as the doors are opening I'll act like I'm prying them open (I've got it down to where it's pretty convincing). As I walk away I'll just casually mention to those waiting for the car to be careful. Most don't get on.

I stand really close nose to nose with the door, so when it opeans it give people a real fright.

It's good fun to do that to someone as they wake up too.

[Nicolas]

I once was running through the station with a banana box filled with (let me think, what was inside) audio equipment, maybe books. I can't remember. To get to my platform, I had to get passed a group of 65+ men who had a fine day in Antwerp and some drinks. They saw me (young guy) coming with that large banana box (which clearly held something else) and you could just almost hear them thinking up smart lines in their head.

So when I approached them, I sped up a little bit to ruin their timing and loudly said "'Excuse me, bananas" like I was some servant. Not really a practical joke, but at least I left them with nothing to say . And I could easily pass .