Since we do a lot of corporate team building events here, I figured I would send out a list of some of my favorite office pranks. Most of these I have done myself, I can't take credit for coming up with some of them myself, but others came to me in a moment of boredom while at work.
Here are some of the office pranks that I have pulled in the past in order of how easy they are to pull off.
Broken Mouse - [easy] materials: tape, post-it note Time: 1 minute All you have to do is put a piece of tape (for track balls) or tape part of a post it note (for a fiber-optic mouse) to the bottom of someone's mouse. It will basically prevent the track ball from rolling or the fiber-optic lens from registering movement. Most of the time the user will sit there for 5-10 minutes shaking their mouse and checking the cord before they figure it out.
Upside down screen - [easy] materials: victim must use a PC Time: 1 minute Hold down the Control+Alt keys and press the down directional arrow this will flip the victims screen upside down. You can also use the left or right arrows and it will flip the screen other directions. This is what it looks like when you press Ctrl+Alt + right arrow It has been brought to my attention that the user cannot use 2 screens, they have to be on single screen mode. Also, if this doesn't work then you may need to enable screen rotation to do this right click on your desktop then go to Properties > settings > advanced > intel graphics > graphics propterties... > display settings then click on the box that says enable rotation. If it sill doesn't work, then try doing a different joke on your co-worker
Auto Correct! - [easy] materials: none time: 5-10 minutes Here's a simple trick that could get people into some trouble so think it out a little before you actually do it. When your victim goes out for lunch or a smoke break, bathroom break, etc. open up their email and under their settings you should be able to find their "auto-correct" settings. an example of how this works in most email clients is if you type a word such as "teh" if your auto-correct settings see that string of characters it will automatically correct the word to "the". Now this is a very helpful feature for most people as occasionally we hit the right keys in the wrong order, but this auto-correct feature can be used for so much more! Here's what I did:
most people sign their emails with "thanks" I choose to go into their auto-correct settings and added a new string of letters to automatically correct, so whenever a person typed "thanks" the computer would change it to "Peace out player!" you can also do this with words like the victims name, so if their name is "Brandon" you can change it to auto-correct to "B-Dawg" or something else just as silly. Or you could always change "the" to "teh" that's just annoying.
Please note that with this one the victim may be sending out professional emails that sound very unprofessional so keep in mind who they actually contact and also what type of auto-corrects you want to add.
Hello? *ring* hello? *ring* - [easy] materials: tape Time: 1 minute Tape down someone's phone receiver so that when they answer the phone the ringer still stays depressed. They will think they answered the phone but it will continue to ring. This only works once but it's so simple to do that it's kind of funny.
Short cord - [easy] materials: Zip Tie Time: 1 minute This is the last phone one, the phone ones are just easy which is why they are all first When the victim is away take a zip tie and tie it around their phone cord so that when the pick up the phone their phone cord is shortened and can only reach about 6 inches. This will make the victim have to bring their head down to the phone to talk to whomever called them. Many times the victim will just tell whomever is on the phone that they need to call them back in a second while they try to sound natural and like nothing wrong is going on on their end of the phone call.
Unclickable desktop items - [easy] materials: none Time: 5 minutes 1. close all of the victims programs so that only the desktop is showing. then press the Print Screen Button (Prnt Scrn). 2.go to Start->Run and type in "mspaint" then press "OK". When MSPaint opens go to the "Edit" menu and select "Paste" 3.go to the "File" menu and select "Save". Save it to any location like C:TempScreenShot1.png remember here that you need to save this as a .png file. other file extensions can lower the quality of the image and make your trick obvious. 4. Close Paint and right click the desktop and select "Arrange Icons By->Show Desktop items" this will make all of their desktop items disappear. 5. right click the desktop again and select "Properties" when the properties window loads click the "Desktop" tab then click the "Browse" button. now you find the picture that we saved earlier and select "Open" then "Apply" Then "ok"
This will make the person think they can click on the items on their desktop but they are actually looking at a background picture. this one will stump people for a while.
M and N - [easy] materials: paperclip Time: 2 minutes IF, and I mean IF here people, your victim has a keyboard where the keys are easily removable, (if you don't know then it might be best not to try this) you can take the keys off of a persons keyboard. if you shape a paperclip right you can get right underneath it and it just pops right up. I like to make this one less obvious, so I would swap the M and N keys so that if your victim looks at the keys when they type they will hit the wrong key and not know what is wrong.
An alternate keyboard prank you can do is this, but I'm not sure how exactly to execute it, my coworker tried growing sprouts in a keyboard unsuccessfully.
Classic Jello - [easy] materials: jello, celophane, dental floss, something that can be put in jello without being ruined Time: overnight Take something of your victims and suspend it in jello or find something that is broken that looks like the victims and use that instead. Staplers, coffee mugs are easy things, a computer mouse is easy, but don't expect it to work when you're done. I'll explain how to make it "float" in the middle of the jello for items such as staplers. first, find a container to make your jello in that can hold the stapler and figure out exactly how much jello you will need. Then once you know that you need 1 packet of jello to completely submerge the item in jello then you need to multiply that number by 4 and then you will have the amount of jello that you really need.
1. line the container with cellophane, this makes it easier to remove the item without harming the mold. 2. using dental floss suspend the stapler in the middle of the container, this will require that you probably tape the dental floss to the outside of the container or something similar. 3. add the jello so that your stapler is submerged but floating in the middle of the mold. 4. Refrigerate. Once it's solid you can cut the dental floss on one side and slip it through the jello without leaving marks that it was once there, your item is now floating in jello. 5. leave it for your victim to find. Keyboards and computer mice will not work after you do this to them. but if you have a broken one already then no harm, no fowl.
Everyone loves post-it's! - [easy] materials: Post-it notes Time: 30-45 minutes Simply put. Label everything with post it notes describing what the post it note is on. Label everything. put post-it's on keyboard, monitor, mouse, desk, pen, chair, left speaker, right speaker, cord, phone, calendar, drawer, report, spare change, wall, floor, etc. Make sure to label EVERYTHING, even the leftover post-it notes. If you can, hang a fishing line from a string above their work space and label the air.
This is time consuming but easy, get a few people to help you and it's done much quicker.
Go Fish! - [easy] materials: fishing line Time: 20-30 minutes Hopefully your victim has an office chair with wheels on it. if so, push the chair in under the desk, like you would if you were normally pushing in a chair, then while the chair is in tie fishing line from the base of the chair over the back of the desk then tie it to various objects on their desk (preferrably non-breakable items) like phones or toys they might have on their desk. This way, when they pull out their chair the next day it will pull everything off of the back of their desk.
Take something hostage - [easy/medium] materials/time: depends on how creative you want to be If someone is out on a business trip this one is a lot of fun. If the person has random toys on their desk sometimes I find it's fun to take them hostage and send threatening letters to the owner to make them bring in brownies or cookies in exchange. At my last job we took "Gerard the Pirate" hostage, the people that took him hostage were army men, so we created an email account armyofmen@gmail.com and had them send the owner emails saying Gerard was hostage and we wanted brownies in exchange for his safe return. we attached the following picture.