In the USN we pranked a new guy as we showed him how to launch an XBT- eXpendable BathyThermograph. It's a temperature probe that looks like a giant shell with a projectile in it. The lever just makes electrical contact and the sensor drops out the front.

We set him up with everything- Gloves, helmet with a face shield, hearing protection, life jacket etc. He pulled the lever down and nothing happened. We all yelled misfire and ran away.

I worked K9 for a Georgia chain gang prison and a sheriffs dept at the same time. They were across the street from each other. We played some pretty wild pranks on fellow officers. On one occasion, I called one of the officers on my shift who liked to play the harshest pranks from a cell phone. Told him I was one of the deputies from the sheriffs dept and had a warrant for his arrest. Asked if he’d like to come across the street and turn himself in to save himself any embarrassment and as a professional courtesy. I gave him an hour (all with a different voice). He was assigned to the control room alone and our Sgt was in on the gag. He started calling us to come relieve him and one by one we told him we were doing tasks that would take about an hour and a half. He called more and more frequently and with more urgency in his voice trying to get each of us to relieve him and he began to make all sorts of offers to pay us to take his assignment so he could take care of some business. We started pressing him for details on what could be so urgent. At the last minute our sgt went to relieve him and he walked quickly out across the parking lot to the sheriffs dept in uniform. When he walked into the lobby of the S.O./jail, he announced he was there to surrender and had a warrant. The officer asked him to follow him to the intake area. Once he arrived they took his cuff, belt, keys, radio, and told him to strip. According to the intake/processing deputies he got a look of horror on his face when they told him to strip the second time. They could no longer keep the laughter back and it took him a minute to know he’d been had. He was furious when he got back to the prison. As he got into the office, we could only say one thing when the laughter slowed, “strip”.

^^^^^
Wow. we never did anything that bad. Trucks have two airlines for your brakes.
Red to red, blue to blue. Switch them and you can't release your brakes.
We would watch a guy walking around his truck trying to figure out what was wrong.
eventually he would see several of us off in the distance laughing.
We switch his air lines back. All in good fun.

Us railroaders would prank our coworkers from time to time…my favorite was leaving “fart spray”out for the supervisors to find with an add saying “a new mens cologne”…it was epic…each one took it in stride…them being railroaders and all

10X-Shooter:
A Jackass from another jurisdiction that shared our jail was in the booking room and had a great deal of insulting fun with me because I got pepper sprayed while making an arrest. Including taking a polaroid photo I did not look my best in. On my way out of the sally port, I got in his car and hosed it down with pepper spray.
Sweet revenge, right? Word of my deed spread all over the county and I got many compliments for fixing the guy up.
Until:
I was going home after work a few days later and stopped at a convenience store where the local cops hung out. Two of them took me aside and very seriously told me that the Jackass had told his chief what happened to his car and the Chief made a complaint and the locals were holding a warrant for my arrest. They told me they would give me 1 hour to get home, change out of uniform and then turn myself in at the jail. They then used the hour to spread the news on the cop grapevine that I was about to surrender myself. I thought it was odd when I got to the jail that there was a patrol car from every jurisdiction in the county, including Park Rangers in the jail parking lot. I told the jailer I was here to turn myself in and I was brought into the booking room. Where about 15 cops were in hysterics over my "surrender"! Took me a looooong time to live the whole episode down. My own department particularly enjoyed the whole thing. I also worked with a couple of agencies in an adjoining county and when I would have dealings with them, they always asked if I was out on bond.

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
Never outside the locker room. We had one officer that couldn't remember his locker combination, so he put tiny white dots by the combination numbers. Someone noticed the dots. Yes, put put dots by all 70 numbers.

Officer LardAss always came into the locker room at the last second, right before Roll Call to get his stuff. One wire coat hanger wrapped tightly around the lock, then encased in one roll of duct tape.

I didn't keep much in my locker, spare boots, socks, etc, so kept it unlocked. Officer Dave laced my boots together I waited for months to pay him back. One very cold winter night, while he was out on patrol I was working the desk. Every 15 minutes I went out to the parking lot and sprayed water on his windshield and wipers, firmly icing up the windshield and wipers. He wasted a lot of gas thawing that windshield so he could go home.

Great stuff.

I've been known to white out a locker dial periodically. There is usually a short period of panic before they realize it just chips off with a car key or a coin.

Depends on what kind of job and environment. Professional office environment where everyone has degrees, etc, no way. 30 years ago when I waited tables, sure. Different time, different type of job.

I remember just a few years ago. It was Ash Wednesday. I go to Mass early then go to work. Get to work at like 9:30am due to it. 2 guys are blocking me from hitting my row and desk at the cubes. One millennial. One elderly. The millennial starts in about how I need to clean my forehead and makes a joke stating “What were you doing this morning?” Snicker snicker “Working on one of your bikes?” Tee hee hee. Elderly dude starts laughing. I just state hey I need to get to my desk I’ve got work to do. I wasn’t in the mood, had a stack of work, drove in traffic to and from mass in bumper to bumper. I wanted to get to my desk and get some coffee in me bad. They stayed blocking. I laughed at both of them and said you’ll be alright gentiles it’s Ash Wednesday. As soon as I log in the millennial is doing mild threats via chat. Stating he is not going to contact my manager or HR over it but how he didn’t appreciate it. Basically he’s the stereotypical “offended” millennial now. Who started this? Weeks later there is a team call (I told my boss all about the entire ordeal) where my boss has a discussion with the entire team about how we have HR policy stating it’s violation to talk about people’s appearance, looks, clothes, whatever and you can be terminated over it. You can contact your boss about it but you do not joke, bring up, etc with another employee. Keep in mind this is junior g man on the team, rookie, I’m tenured, in a senior position. During this meeting I look over at him and he’s blood red in the face, sweating bullets. When he threatened me I played it off as my boss trusted me 100% and he was suspect already via a number of things. If this kid would have went to management, HR, he’d been busted, not me. But it showed me you can’t clown in the office anymore, not even clowning someone back who just made a massive mistake. Everyone is offended by anything today. I played that shit off immediately and went to work. What the F ever type attitude. He started, I flipped his shit back at him, and suddenly this clown thinks I’m in trouble. Uh no. Like many things in life today, turn the other cheek and walk. People will spin any ant hill at work into a got damn mountain.

From way back in the history of college days: there was an experiment conducted, to determine exactly how much strawberry jello it takes to completely fill a bathtub in a rival club's house.

We were having one of those stupid team building meetings with consultants. The snacks on the table were M&M Peanut candies. At one break, all the green ones ended up in the CEO's bowl...

I wasn't involved , but one of the mechanics in our fleet maintenance shop made a bad name for himself by borrowing other peoples tools , not returning them , you name it . The other mechanics taught him a lesson by filling the top tray of his toolbox with expanding foam insulation and latching it shut .

The guys in our group all had office cubicles that had a three drawer unit that fit under the desk . One morning , one of the guys swapped the drawer units from another guy with one from an unused desk . When " Reggie " came in a few minutes later he was unable to unlock his desk . He fought with it for a while and then sent in a maintenance request to have his desk lock fixed . As soon as he left out the other guy swapped the drawer unit back . We told the building maintenance man what was going down so he sent the request back with " No problem found " . Reggie had problems with his desk two more times before he caught on ..

No, I never enjoyed pranks, either playing them or being a recipient of them. Teasing gently is ok, as long as both parties know it’s not malicious, but nothing that might cause a mess, hurt feeling, or any other kind of damage.

No, people aren’t interested in pranking at work.

Probably, because we are very busy and not much downtime to need the entertainment.

Short staffed doesn’t help.

Previous job we did, some was in fun, some were cruel. After one cruel prank that was it… it was going in the wrong direction and all were told to stop.

So it also depends on the nature of the prank and whether or not it interrupts productivity.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
10X-Shooter:
A Jackass from another jurisdiction that shared our jail was in the booking room and had a great deal of insulting fun with me because I got pepper sprayed while making an arrest. Including taking a polaroid photo I did not look my best in. On my way out of the sally port, I got in his car and hosed it down with pepper spray.
Sweet revenge, right? Word of my deed spread all over the county and I got many compliments for fixing the guy up.
Until:
I was going home after work a few days later and stopped at a convenience store where the local cops hung out. Two of them took me aside and very seriously told me that the Jackass had told his chief what happened to his car and the Chief made a complaint and the locals were holding a warrant for my arrest. They told me they would give me 1 hour to get home, change out of uniform and then turn myself in at the jail. They then used the hour to spread the news on the cop grapevine that I was about to surrender myself. I thought it was odd when I got to the jail that there was a patrol car from every jurisdiction in the county, including Park Rangers in the jail parking lot. I told the jailer I was here to turn myself in and I was brought into the booking room. Where about 15 cops were in hysterics over my "surrender"! Took me a looooong time to live the whole episode down. My own department particularly enjoyed the whole thing. I also worked with a couple of agencies in an adjoining county and when I would have dealings with them, they always asked if I was out on bond.

That's over the top. The biggest scare I got was when they tied a string from my airhorn to my door so when I opened the door at
5am the horn blew, spilled my coffee. I got even..

I do, but generally it’s only my close team of 3-4 folks.

quote:

Originally posted by m1009:
No, I never enjoyed pranks, either playing them or being a recipient of them. Teasing gently is ok, as long as both parties know it’s not malicious, but nothing that might cause a mess, hurt feeling, or any other kind of damage.

I learned a long time ago that the worst thing you could do was get pissed off if somebody " pranked " you . Go along with it and laugh about it . They'll move on to somebody else . Get mad and start threatening people and it'll be like sharks smelling blood in the water .

The worst one done to me was when I returned from Vacation to my job as Test & Calibration Supervisor.

They'd wired 110 volts to the 5 volt bus on one of my test jigs so a bunch of ICs blew when turned it on. Made a small crater in my desk, too.

Pretty creative.

Years ago we had a coworker here in Michigan who took a several month leave for a temporary job in San Jose. Our department was housed in a temporary modular structure and we were relocated while she was gone, the building itself was removed. Several of us talked with her on the phone before she returned but we kept the move a secret.

When she got back to our former location it was an empty lot and we got a call "Okay, were the Hell are you guys?".

When we did internal maintenance on high voltage circuit breakers we would have to open the tank and enter through a manhole . We would use a small blower with a duct to blow air into the breaker tank to make it bearable in the summer . One of the guys was really bad about farting into the blower and having it forced into the breaker tank . When it was his turn to go in the tank it was payback time .

Some years ago my boss' boss was out of town and my boss decided to have a window put in his office wall. He contracted the job and enjoyed his new view to the outdoors.

When boss' boss returned, he claimed to have not approved it, and tore into my boss a little about it. A lot of us got a chuckle out of the event, under the whole "forgiveness vs permission" thing.

So after that heat turned down a little, my team got creative. We took a photo of the wall adjacent to the new window, then made a couple of prints on the big plotter. We nailed it -- the cinder blocks we printed were the same size as the actual blocks. So we took those prints and stuck them to a big sheet of cardboard, cut to the size of the new window.

A couple of days later when my boss was out to lunch, we "patched the hole." It looked darn close to original.

Boss' boss got a big kick out of it, especially when my boss didn't notice it immediately.

All in good fun, no damage, and only some ink and paper (and a man-hour or two) wasted.

I get a good chuckle out of that one still, as that's my office now.

- - - -

One of the former coworkers would pick up match books from strip clubs when he'd travel. There was no telling where those would end up when he returned. Eventually one ended up in my boss' backpack. Some time later on, we asked the boss about it. He turned it around on us quickly saying, "oh yeah, I found that. I took it out and put it in my girlfriend's purse." Then he grinned and walked away.

We weren't exactly sure what to do then....


- - - -

The one my team got in trouble for was the one we didn't do.

We had a few pics of the boss and would use a Photoshop knockoff to paste him into funny scenes. They were obviously quickie jobs -- in no way were we trying to make them super realistic. In one he was holding a beer mug as big as he was. In another we put his face on Mr. Potato Head. Goofy things like that were the norm. Nothing rude or off-base, just goofy fun.

Then later on, our quality manager (RIP, Bill, we miss you) -- who was much better with image editing than us -- put our boss' face on a pic of some studly muscle-bound dude in a Speedo by the pool. That one, we got growled at for, and we weren't the ones who'd done it. We didn't rat out the actual perpetrator, though.