As troubleshooters for the workplace, facility managers need to deal with serious issues on a daily basis. When April 1st rolls around each year, serious can turn silly, especially for facility managers who need to clean up after classic office pranks. Here are a few that will crop up across offices around the world after this weekend (some of these come courtesy of Australia’s Pepsi Max site).
Chia desk (see photo above)
When your boss or colleague goes away on vacation, pour water and scatter cress seeds or lettuce onto the carpeted area in their office. With decent light, the seeds should germinate on the damp carpet and the person should find a growing carpet upon their return.
Switch Telephone Cords
When two (or more) people are working at desks that are put next to each other, switch their telephone cords. With all those cables lying around it will take some time before they find that one out!
Smelly Mouthpiece
Put a piece of onion or a clove of garlic inside the mouthpiece of a phone. Give it some time for it to fester and build up a strong odor. Then call them and keep them on the phone for as long as possible.
Frozen Shaving Cream
Take a can of non gel shaving cream, and put it in a freezer. When it is frozen remove the bottom of the can and put it in co worker’s drawer. When it melts it expands and explodes all over everything.
“LOSER!” Auto Correct
Go into MS Word or similar program on co-worker’s computer, and add an entry to the AutoCorrect feature. This is a very simple prank that will send the novice user into a frenzy. Configure the AutoCorrect option to replace the word “the” with the phrase “loser!”. They will usually panic and start scanning for viruses.
Full Blast
Try to find a very obnoxious CD laying around. Preferably a reggae or rap CD. Pop it in their CD ROM. Put up the sound full blast by double clicking on the volume control on the bottom right. On normal configurations the audio CD will auto play when windows first starts up. The person starting up there PC in the morning will definitely be embarrassed.
Sticky Mouse
Take clear tape and tape the underside of the mouse. Make sure you take the sticky end of the tape and apply it to the bottom of the mouse so it locks the ball in place. The victim will most likely check the connections in the back, reinstall drivers, reboot, etc., before they realize what has happened.
“M” not “N”
Simply pop out the ‘m’ and ‘n’ key on someone’s keyboard and reverse the two. Any flat tool will work. Just pry it with little pressure and they will easily come right off. Then just sit back and watch the confusion.
Who used all of my staples?
On a daily basis, after work, go in and empty someone’s stapler so that it has 2 or 3 staples in it. The owner will be pissed that they have to refill the stapler every day or so.
Uh-oh umbrella
Take any umbrella and fill it with any amount of small objects and place back in its original position. Ping pong balls work great.
Too hot, too cold
If you work in an office where the temperature fluctuates dramatically during the day, then you probably have more that one colleague that has a sweater for such times. When this person is not around use small binder clips, or similar items, to clip the end of the sleeve to the hem or bind the inside of the sleeve shut.
Sticky drawer
Use some duct tape to secure a colleagues top center desk drawer shut. Leave the drawer is slightly open so that it’s obvious the drawer isn’t locked, but not so much that they would be able to see or feel what could be holding the drawer shut. Now, tape the edges of the two sides and the back.
Faulty pens
Take ink pens from the desk of a co-worker, remove all the ink cartridges and put them back.
(In no way does FacilityBlog and its editors sanction this behavior. This is all just meant to be humorous.)
