722Kviews
180submissions
Finished
181 People Share Their Most Genius Office Pranks And Some Of Them Are Beyond Evil
722Kviews
Working 9 hours a day, each day, in the same cubicle, for the same boss, with the same colleagues years in a row doesn't sound like much fun, does it? Entering the same data, replying to the same e-mails, and answering the same calls can become quite repetitive really fast. And when bored, office workers might surrender to the urge for some good old office pranks. Every office has a designated prankster, walking the line between lovable rogue and annoying nuisance, but someone has to do it, right? Because at the end of the day, these good pranks are what keeps the spirits of co-workers up.
Bored Panda has compiled a list of devilishly clever best pranks that get dangerously close to crossing the line. You won't find any of the usual computer-mouse-in-jello or voice-activated coffee machine office jokes; the ones that we have selected are really the most ingenious and clever.
But before executing the best office pranks, remember a quote from the most famous office worker Dwight Schrute 'Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, "Would an idiot do that?" And if they would, I do not do that thing,' to make sure your joke will not hurt anybody.
Happy pranking!
This post may include affiliate links.
Funny Office Pranks
One of my Co-Worker has a ton of family pictures all over his desk and walls. I was slowly changing them all to pictures of me. I worked really hard to find similar pictures to replace them. I even traveled to some of the places to replicate them. I just about had them all when another guy we worked with asked him why he had so many pictures of me. He thought this married guy had a crush on me or something.
Funny Office Pranks
This is only to my bosses, but when I know I'm due for a raise/promotion and they tell me they don't have budget/I need to wait a while, I start wearing suits to work. Not everyday, but maybe once a week, maybe twice, skip a few, repeat.
Looks like you're going to interviews during lunch or after work.
Funny Office Pranks
Made a new folder on his desktop called Russian Dwarf Porn and then took a screenshot. Set the screenshot as his desktop background.
For an engineer it took him a ridiculous amount of time before he realised why he couldn't delete the folder.
Funny Office Pranks
Everyday I would get into the locker room before him and place one penny in his right boot. This went on for 2 months. After about a week and a half I could see him getting frustrated. After a while it just became the norm for him to shake the penny out of his right boot everyday. He wasn't frustrated anymore, he was defeated, and just accepted it now. So, one day I decided to put it in his left boot. He came in shook his right boot out like usual, but nothing fell out. He looked so relieved, like a huge weight had been lifted. Then he put on his left boot on, and just f*ckin lost it. He slung that boot across the locker room with all his might, cussing and calling out whoever did this to him. I stopped f*cking with him after that. I plan on putting a penny in his boot once a year from now on just to remind him. Nobody knows it was me placing the penny and I plan on keeping it that way.
Funny Office Pranks
I have hidden a tiny speaker in an adjacent cubicle wall that emits a soft cat meow every 2 hours.
Funny Office Pranks
There's a guy in my office who often comes to work in jeans and a t-shirt and changes into his work clothes in his office. He's taken over half of a closet next to my cubicle with his dress clothes.
A few years ago, on March 31, I came into the office around midnight and swapped his clothes for some Hawaiian shirts, checked pants, basically a whole wardrobe of the loudest clothes I could find at a thrift store.
When I got there the next morning, he was closed up in his office. His secretary told me that he'd been having a pretty rotten week in terms of workload and was in a foul mood. Finally, he emerged wearing his jeans and t-shirt. He sort of grunted a hello at me, opened the closet door, and just stood there for probably 10-15 seconds trying to wrap his brain around what was in front of him. Finally he just started cracking up laughing, and put on one of the more "understated" outfits. He spent the rest of the day trying to figure out who had done it; meanwhile, people from all around the office came to behold my handiwork. I finally fessed up at the end of the day. He swore revenge although he still hasn't made his move.
Best April Fool's prank I'll probably ever play.
Funny Office Pranks
I teach elementary music. Once, I had a rivalry with the gym/PE teacher. She would send the kindergarten class to mine and tell them it was my birthday and I loved birthday hugs. She would do this about twice a month. I sent them back to her and told them she loved it when people would step on her foot. They rushed her and started stomping. She also told the kids to go into my class, say nothing, and just stare at me. It was the creepiest damn thing. She won.
Funny Office Pranks
I installed "cloud to butt" on my coworker's pc.
It's a Chrome addon that changes all instances of the word "cloud" being displayed to "butt".
He didn't notice for months. Last week he finally asked me what that customer could possibly mean by "uploading files to my butt".
Funny Office Pranks
You know how you can fray Duct tape and pull off long little sticky threads of it?
So I pulled off a single long piece of it, and put it down the side of my manager's brand new car. Looks like a deep, horrifying scratch on the paintwork.
The look on his face when we went out for a smoke. He threw his hands onto his head, his knees went weak and he basically crawled over to it, and pulled the thread of sticky duct tape off easily.
Harmless and fun, that one.
Funny Office Pranks
I sit beside a guy who is a good friend of mine and our desks are separated by a moveable divider. Since I moved beside him 2 weeks ago I've been moving the divider a centimetre towards him each day. We're at 13cm and he hasn't noticed yet.
I have to shift his monitors soon though so that will be interesting.
Funny Office Pranks
I worked on the seventh floor of an office building. Everyone in the building would try and leave on the elevators at 5 pm, every single day. The elevator would stop at EVERY single floor and when the doors would open, we would see a line up of people looking disappointed, the doors would close and we would move on. This happened even on the second floor.
when the door would open, everyone in the situation would stare at each other and be paralyzed with social anxiety about the right thing to do.
One particularly busy Friday, the doors open on the sixth floor, and I announced to the usual line up: ‘we have enough room for one of you’. One person got on, the doors closed, someone behind me chuckled, and we went on to the 5th floor. When the doors opened, I said ‘we can only take two of you’. People in the elevator moved back and squished, two people got on, and we picked up one more person per floor. By the time we got to the 2nd floor, the elevator was shoulder to shoulder, bodies touching, but for some reason, people were still listening to me. A lady next to me looked worried that I would invite more people on. The doors opened on the second floor and the people waiting looked at an extremely packed elevator. To them I said ‘take the stairs, you’re on the second f*cking floor.’
That got a good laugh.
Funny Office Pranks
Change their auto-correct settings in Outlook so when they type their name it adds a ridiculous title.
Example:
Tom Smith = His eloquence, master of ceremonial duck herding, and debater of microwave etiquette, Thomas "The Velvet Hammer" Smith, Esq.
Reason number 39 for why you should always lock your computer when you walk away from it.
Funny Office Pranks
Grabbed a roll of stickers from the pharmacy that say "For rectal use only" and randomly attach them to pens, phones, staplers, the water cooler.
It's all good till our director comes in and loses his shit and can't help but laugh.
Funny Office Pranks
I think I've mentioned this before, but I have a few co-workers (myself included) that run on post-it notes. Seriously, some of our desks look like that Pepe Silva scene in Always Sunny.
That said, I take advantage of this. I do fairly well at copying other's handwriting. I'll do my best facsimile of something innocuous or mildly ominous and place it among their other post-its.
My notable favorites were: "Ask Linda about the bees." and "Knife Parade?"
Funny Office Pranks
Every time this one girl mentions something her kids did, I mention something my dog did.
Funny Office Pranks
I whistle Christmas songs in months other than December. Just the first few lines once or twice an hour. Give it a few hours and they're questioning why jingle bells is stuck in their head mid June.
We had an NCO that did that. Middle of spring and summer... very faintly, just the first line... just enough to make you look around and question your sanity.
Funny Office Pranks
Not me, but a guy I know. He stole a coworker's novelty giant pencil, then started emailing said coworker in-character as the pencil, with photos of the pencil in different locations around Europe.
He even got another coworker in on the act to deflect suspicion away from himself, and used proxies to ensure the emails couldn't be traced back to him.
The original owner of the pencil got so pissed off, it initiated a company-wide hunt for the perpetrator. So far as I know, it was never resolved, and Pencil McPencilface roams the world to this day.
Funny Office Pranks
My coworkers think I have a cat. I've named him Winston.
I've pleasantly avoided many after-work happy hours and other work events with "I have to get home and feed the cat".
I even have a photo of some random cat on my phone in case anyone inquires further.
I don't have a cat, of course. But I do chuckle to myself at the thought of Winston, My Imaginary Cat.
Funny Office Pranks
The former big boss of my oil plant works in the office with me. I noticed anytime I would mention an interesting storey he would immidiatly fact check it and point out how wrong I was. So, If I wanted to know something , rather than look it up myself, I would just throw out a claim. Me- xyz stock is $4.40 today Him- NO ITS NOT - its $2.17
Me - Thank you
Me- Chicago is a 8 hour drive from here. Him- NO ITS NOT - its 12 if you do Route A, and 10.5 if you go Route B ect,
Funny Office Pranks
I made 20 copies of a paperclip and put them in the paper tray of copier. A woman in my office made a copy and got the paperclip in the pictures and thought there was a paperclip in the copy machine somewhere. She was searching and searching and even went and got a flashlight and started looking everywhere in the machine. She was opening up drawers and panels for 20 minutes. It was pretty fun to watch.
Funny Office Pranks
My coworker has many allergies, most of which are made up in her mind. If she hears of a new allergy she instantly has that allergy too. She is "allergic" to all cleaning supplies. We are not allowed to use any cleaners in our cubicles because it will make her sick. When she's really annoying me I will spray a bottle of water in my cube. She will hear the sound of the spray bottle and within half an hour she will go home "sick" because someone was spraying "cleaners" in the office.
Funny Office Pranks
Slowly add new post it notes to their desk, among their real ones, that say “Urgent! Call _put another co-workers number here_”. Sometimes a word like “evaluation” or “meeting” or upcoming dates and times causes hilarious interactions. If you plant three different notes that cause three people to go into a meeting at the same time it’s fun to see how long they stay before realizing there is no meeting.
Funny Office Pranks
Our old HR director was notorious for having a messy desk. My manager and I made it our mission to add an additional 1,000 random sheets of paper to his desk over the course of a few weeks without him noticing. Every morning he'd come in and 10-15 more sheets would be added to the mess. It took a long time for him to suspect something was up.
Funny Office Pranks
Not me, but my husband's story. They had a candy dispenser in their work area that made a particular noise when it dispensed candy. Well, he noticed that a particular employee would, whenever he heard the somone else getting candy, would get up and get himself some candy. Like a Pavlovian response to the sound.
So he did what anyone would do, recorded the sound and rigged a speaker up. Randomly throughout the day he would make the sound go off and sure enough, his coworker would get up and go get himself candy.
Wow, these office workers have quite an assortment of accurate microphones and speakers.
Funny Office Pranks
Once I plugged in a wireless mouse into their computer without them knowing. And a few times a day I would just jiggle the mouse. Just enough to hear them slamming down the mouse and muttering under their breath and I'd stop. This went on for several days. Sometimes I'd stop by to chat, and I would bring the mouse. When they we go to click on something I would just move the mouse just slightly so they couldn't actually hover over what they wanted to click. It was brilliant!
We kept it doing this about 2 months until we told him and stopped. So much fun. Even the coworker himself loved it after he finally understood.
Funny Office Pranks
I’m a 28 year old dude and I used to put up one new kitten photograph in my cubicle per week to see if any of my managers would say anything. After putting up enough pictures to cover my whole cube wall, and no one commenting, I started to feel like I was going crazy. I guess the joke was on me, or else all my managers were just super accepting.
Funny Office Pranks
Found a little script a while back that would randomly open and close the disc drive on my coworker's computer. Not incredibly often, but enough to the point where it was annoying. He requested a new computer, I reinstalled the .scr as soon as he left that day.
Funny Office Pranks
Long time ago I worked the late night/closing shift at a convenience store/gas station. Another co-worker and I closed up around 11 each night.
I amused myself by taking a little white ziploc type baggie... or sometimes a piece of plastic wrap... and would put sugar or a sugar substitute in it, then wander out just before closing and drop it by the pumps. Looked like a customer had their nose candy fall out of their pocket when they'd pulled out their keys or wallet or whatever.
Then I'd watch as whomever I was working with would go out to shut down and lock up the pumps. I'd look distracted but would watch as they'd spot it, look around, look at me, then subtly reach down and pick it up as they "tied their shoe" or "picked up change" something. Then of course they'd volunteer to clean the bathrooms so they could privately check out their new coke stash. Good times.
Of course, sometimes a customer would find it first, then come in and get the bathroom key. Even better times.
Funny Office Pranks
I sent a co-worker I loathed a manila envelope full of glitter. She prompted tore it open.
That was two years ago, and she still finds glitter everywhere. Our lil office fairy.
Funny Office Pranks
Back in the day, our office IT was.....less than modern day standards shall we say. Basically every single PC had admin rights. It was chaos for our poor IT admin guy, but he was semi-retired so didn't give too much of a shit.
Right click on desktop, create new shortcut, type shutdown.exe -I and you have created one of the best chaos creation tools I've ever employed. Double-click on this, and you can select any computer on the network and have it re-start or shutdown, with an optional countdown timer and pop-up message. You just need your victim's IP address and admin rights.
This was commonly deployed against the fresh-faced work experience kids as hardened office veterans would smell a rat quickly. My favourite was to wait until they were an hour or so into work, then send a shutdown command with the warning pop-up, "Windows has detected a ridiculous hair-cut, and will shutdown in 10 seconds."
The panicked look of desperation was priceless. They rarely said anything, as how do you tell all these grown-ups that the PC shut down because of.....their hair cut.
Yes I'm going to hell. I've made my peace with that.
I worked in HR and everyone was to the book. I was always the first to arrive to open and I took a perfectly cut piece of shiny shipping tape and put it on my colleague's phone receiver. When she arrived and settled I called her desk. She went absolutely ape shit that her phone wasn't working. I called the help desk for her and they located a new phone...after they replaced the phone I unplugged it. This went on all morning. I finally fest up to IT...they kept replacing her phone with the same phones. I never laughed so hard in my life. Also, she had stuff animals on her ledge... I would put them in precarious positions and I had "conversations" with her telling her it's not appropriate to pose her things that way. She thought the cleaning people were doing it to her. After 3 years and I was leaving the company, at my going away party I fest up. I couldn't even breathe, I was laughing so hard. Over three years I did other shit to her and she never suspected I was doing it to her.
Funny Office Pranks
Coworker. I have very tiny printouts of just his head. I sneak them all over the office in inconspicuous places. This has been going on for 2 years. He still doesn't know it's me.
Our CEO is vain little man who spray tans to a mahogany shade and has had a lot of plastic surgery. He looks very odd. I found a bunch of color flyers and cut out his photo and started taping them in inconspicuous areas of 2 coworker's desks, where they wouldn't be found unless they were rummaging for a piece of gum, hand lotion, etc. It took a while for them to find him, but I was there to see each jump at the discovery! Hahahaha!
Funny Office Pranks
Leaving stickie notes on their desk that says "Come see me" but no sign as to who its from.
Funny Office Pranks
It actually got pulled on me.
Working as a new EMT and I'm put on a truck for training with these two guys who loved f*cking with rookies.
Most ambulance bays have a keypad to type in the code to get in. We were pulling into a hospital I hadn't been to yet and I preemptively ask him what the code would be so I dont look like an idiot. My partner tells me " They have a retinal scanner here, just put your eye in front of it".
Im f*cking stupid and believed him.
I don't know why, I was just so worried about doing anything wrong that I was trying to do everything right so I didn't even question it. We take the patient over to the doors, I see the lil camera and pop a squat and stare at it for about twenty seconds. Meanwhile, my partners and patient are dying of laughter behind me and grabbed a picture of it. I ended up famous on an EMS Facebook page, but I was pretty cool with it. Cant say I wont do the same now when I get a trainee.
This is the pure kind of pranks I LOVE. Even the patient was laughing!
Funny Office Pranks
My department is pretty small, so when we f*ck with someone, everyone is involved.
We have a tradition to set up elaborate pranks for one of us returns from vacation, with the crown jewel being an office poltergeist we staged.
We threw in a bait-and-switch and adorably made the desk a beach scene, complete with a cardboard cutout of Justin Bieber in scuba gear, a kiddie pool with sand, and a crafty palm tree. About a few hours into her shift, shit got real.
See, the rest of her desk was seemingly normal. However, behind the scenes, there was fishing wire connected to different objects on her desk, with the other ends spread across the rest of our desks attached to pens, activating an ‘event’ with a tug of a pen. There was an instant messaging group where we planned on real time behind the scenes.
For the next few hours, in intervals of about 20 minutes, things on her desk started to move. A rose we had bought for her flew at her, a tack holding up a corner of a calendar loosened, her mouse moved, drawers opened, etc.
This started subtle, and got more and more ridiculous as the day played out. The end of the poltergeist, however, is when we suckered someone in Accounting to remove a panel in the corner of her cubicle and roll a ball through the cracks with a picture of the victim’s face taped to the ball.
We have yet to top this one.
Funny Office Pranks
When I worked at Burger King we had new employees look for charcoal for the gas grill.
had a similar experience in a café where we used to get newbies to go and ask downstairs for a leg of salmon, or a bucket of steam, or once, tartan paint!
Funny Office Pranks
I like to incorrectly correct people’s pronunciation. Like they’ll say beignet “ben-yay” and I’ll say, “actually, it’s ‘bang-yet’.”
Most of the time it’s obvious I’m just messing with them or they already know the schtick and they laugh it off. But every so often I’ll actually convince someone they’re wrong. And it’s glorious. It’s a pretty low success rate but when you hear someone use the wrong pronunciation in a conversation months later and you know you did that, it makes it all worth it.
Funny Office Pranks
We have this old crotchy hyper religious nut at my job. Very annoying, sits on her butt all day. I put a remote control speaker, loaded a 30kb sound file of demonic voices whispering.
When she starts hearing and looking around, I cut it off with the remote. Ive been doing this shit for years. She keeps adding more bible calandars to ward "it" off. Taking this one to the grave, Cathy, you cunt.
Funny Office Pranks
They sometimes leave their personal spotify accounts on the shared computer that we all use, so in the past, I've added things like Barney the Dinosaur and Teletubbie tracks into their libraries.
Funny Office Pranks
This genuinely just happened.
My company has just moved to a new office, and everybody's internal phone number has changed. I kindly print everyone a little phone extension matrix, about the size of half a page of A4. Everyone says thanks and sticks it to their PC monitor so we can transfer calls / call colleagues etc.
One guy in the office, probably in his 40s, really nice dude but a little bit old school sits a couple of seats away from me is selected as my victim.
After he's gone home one night I print out 10 new versions of the phone extension matrix, each one a font size smaller than the last, cutting the paper size so everything is to scale, just smaller. Every other day I replace his piece of paper stuck to his desk until it's practically unreadable.
Dude didn't even notice for about 2 weeks before we saw his squinting at it when he tried to transfer a call. Still we said nothing, come in the next day to find him printing off a regular size one himself. Lunchtime comes and I replace his new one with a full sheet of A3.
Finally he twigs. Great stuff would recommend.
Funny Office Pranks
Emptied out my boss' largest desk drawer (1 ft x 1.5 ft x 1 ft), used heavy-duty-staples to secure a shower liner to the inside of the drawer, and filled it with water and aquarium rocks. Then I placed 4 live goldfish and a crab in the drawer, and partially closed it.
I also bought him a fish tank and fish food, so after he dismantled his fish tank drawer, he would have new office pets.
It worked out perfectly. No damage to his desk or office. All fish survived the overnight drawer life. And I did not get fired. It was a part of a long and well-fought prank war that lasted several years, but this was definitely my favorite prank.
Funny Office Pranks
I just keep handing them random items. 99% of the time they'll keep accepting.
Or I'll stare at a spot slightly above their eye, like they have a booger on their face or something.
Or I'll slowly back up as we talk, see how far I can get them to follow me before they catch on.
Brilliant and creepy. How long did you need until they started to actively avoid you?
Funny Office Pranks
Gradually increase the pressure required to open the office door by adjusting the automatic door-closer with a screwdriver so they become accustomed to giving it a mighty shove then one day disconnect the arm altogether.
Funny Office Pranks
I screen shot their desktops, put all their shortcuts in one folder, then set that screen shot as their wallpaper. I find it amusing listening to their call to IT.
Funny Office Pranks
I put my co-workers stapler in jell-o and it took me so many tries to get it to work. He didn't really get it because he hadn't seen the office. But it's okay, because I laughed enough to make it worth it.
Funny Office Pranks
I plant evil questions in their lectures and tutorials, seeding them to students we have in common.
I've been doing it for years, and they have no idea it's happening. They're just constantly baffled that the same kids each year keep asking obscure, graduate-level, often borderline unanswerable questions in person, but never quite manage that level of insight in their writing.
Funny Office Pranks
Many years ago I had collected money from the staff for a holiday party and left it on my desk. I went to the bathroom and came back to find the money missing. I was freaking out about the missing money searching with my boss who was disappointed I left it unattended. I was seconds away from accusing these guys working on the lights in the office when my phone rang with a devious laugh on the other end saying "missing something?". It was a coworker from upstairs, she thought it was hilarious, I knew the gauntlet had been thrown. I went online and bought something called the annoyotron. It was a magnetic little device that I stuck under her desk that would make beeps intermittently every 10 to 15 minutes I think (it had various settings). For the next month I would find reasons to go by her desk and say "did you just hear a beep?". She would go wide eyes and say "OMG yes! I can't figure it out! It's driving me crazy". Sometimes I would go by and they would have a maintenance guy checking the fire alarm and I would just keep egging her on "I swear I just heard a beep". So after a month of this torture we were at the annual holiday party and I was seated with her and had knocked a couple back. I spilled the beans and apologized to the person she shared a cubicle with as she was "collateral damage". She never f*cked with me again.
Funny Office Pranks
I have lady co-worker who writes lengthy emails to colleagues when she finds a mistake they made. It is time consuming and pointless. I know where she pulls the report to find the mistakes, so occasionally I pull the report, correct the errors myself and don't tell her.
This sounds quite underwhelming here, but she loves to be a drama queen about all the "idiots" she has to correct but I spoil her fun.
Funny Office Pranks
Nothing epic, but one of my co-workers had a LEGO Kiss set that he never asked for, nor was he a fan of. Somehow it ended up getting passed around the office (there's only 4 of us) with different set ups in random places on that person's desk.
One day my boss left early, so I went to work on setting up an over the top mini-concert experience for him.
Like I said, nothing epic, but it made us laugh, so that works.
Funny Office Pranks
For a while my favourite thing was to unplug their mouse & put a sticky under the mouse sensor.
Was great when people plugged it back it and it still didn't work...
Funny Office Pranks
Putting googly eyes on something and wondering how many days until they notice.
Funny Office Pranks
In my first job out of college I worked at a small tech company. One of the bosses was a very sweet woman. She had borrowed pens a few times and forgot to give them back. At one point one of my coworkers accused her of intentionally hording pens because they knew she would be embarrassed.
Thus began the gas lighting.
I began to steal every pen in office over the course of a month (100+ pens). I targeted the specific people who had made the original joke to make sure that there was good visibility to the prank. I made sure that the nicer pens that people associate as "theirs" were always specifically found in her desk. She would always deny it only to find them right there.
Christmas rolls around and we have the company Christmas party. I package up the pens for the white elephant gift exchange making sure to place my present in the exchange pile without having anyone see who placed it there. When it's opened the room explodes with laughter and accusations.
Funny Office Pranks
I may or may not have convinced several people including our secretary that I lack the ability to read. When asked how I've gotten this far (5 years of undergrad and halfway through a master's program), I confidently state that I memorize the shapes and fake it.
Funny Office Pranks
Helped my friend move an entire cubical up a space. It was difficult because they wanted it to be perfect not like they just switched desks. To achieve it we actually took the cubical apart and moved the walls so none of the decorations moved even an inch, next we took up the 9 carpet squares (why I was brought it) and switched them that way the big coffee stain and whiteout explosion stayed.
Everyone then shuffled so guy in seat one was now in 2, 2 in 3, ... 20 in one's spot. Now the only thing to cue him off was that his cubical was directly under the fan and he hated being cold.
A friend told me he worked for 2 days before starting to claim that they moved the fan. took him almost a month to notice that the "other row shifted because the guy directly next to him before was now one desk back". During this time he started wearing jackets and sweaters because of the fan.
Future presumptive employer calling your present place of work:"What do you mean that you admire him and that he managed to do OK even though he doesn´t know how to read???" Oops...
Funny Office Pranks
Was with some programmers, we would put copies of a desktop sheep pet .exe file on the others' computers and sneak something to run it somewhere in the startup. The sheep would just run around on the top of windows, you could get rid of it by right-clicking and closing the application. I put about 20 copies of it to run on another guy's system, and he didn't know that you could just end the task. He spent half a day constantly throwing sheep out of the way while he tried to do work before he finally asked for help.
Funny Office Pranks
I simply read this!
One day, Einstein has to speak at an important science conference. On the way there, he tells his driver that looks a bit like him:
"I'm sick of all these conferences. I always say the same things over and over!"
The driver agrees: "You're right. As your driver, I attended all of them, and even though I don't know anything about science, I could give the conference in your place."
"That's a great idea!" says Einstein. "Let's switch places then!"
So they switch clothes and as soon as they arrive, the driver dressed as Einstein goes on stage and starts giving the usual speech, while the real Einstein, dressed as the car driver, attends it.
But in the crowd, there is one scientist who wants to impress everyone and thinks of a very difficult question to ask Einstein, hoping he won't be able to respond. So this guy stands up and interrupts the conference by posing his very difficult question. The whole room goes silent, holding their breath, waiting for the response.
The driver looks at him, dead in the eye, and says :
"Sir, your question is so easy to answer that I'm going to let my driver reply to it for me."
Funny Office Pranks
My boss keeps pictures of his kids on his desk, when he's gone, I replace them with photos of Owen Wilson.
Funny Office Pranks
My dad stopped shaving and cutting his hair, just to see how far he could go before his boss said anything. My dad gave in after three years. He looked like a 50 year old Jesus.
Funny Office Pranks
I don't work in an office, but my dad tells me stories frequently of the ways he f*cks with his coworkers. The other day he said that he bought a bunch of car air fresheners and taped them to the bottom of a chair. The victim kept swiveling around trying to figure out the smell, but never checked under the seat. He said he put about 10+ air fresheners under it and the guy still never figured it out.
Funny Office Pranks
During Halloween somebody brought in a bunch of plastic cockroaches and spiders for decoration. I've kept a bunch of them and when my coworker isn't there I hide them around her desk. In her stationary bag, under her laptop, in the pocket of her coat. Many of them she finds and throws my way with a disapproving scoff, but every now and then the office silence is broken by a loud shriek.
Funny Office Pranks
Put a strip of scotch tape on the underside of their computer mouse.
It's transparent enough that the mouse will still function, it will just kind of suck and annoy them slightly for the rest of the day. They likely won't even notice, just be subconsciously frustrated.
Add an additional strip each day until they notice.
Funny Office Pranks
We have network-connected (Polycom) phones. I 'hack into' (translation: they don't know how to set passwords) their phones and change their wallpapers and/or ringtones. One girl is very skittish; I changed her to B-movie horror screams. Changed my supervisor's ringtone to "It's Raining Men", and he's as straight as a rail. To this day, they don't know who keeps changing it.
Funny Office Pranks
Printed out 9 pictures of Nicolas Cage, hid them throughout a coworker’s cubicle, then admitted it was me that hid 10 pictures of Nic Cage.
Funny Office Pranks
There was this girl sitting next to me in an open plan office and we were always joking with each other. One day, she had a meeting scheduled at her desk with a male coworker I knew she had a crush on. So while she was in the bathroom getting ready, I went on her PC, found the guy's photo on the company website and made it her desktop background. Then I tabbed back to whatever programme she had been using so she wouldn't notice right away. She comes back. Guy arrives for the meeting. They're talking away for about ten minutes before she goes to check something on the computer and just let an enormous shriek out of her and goes bright red when she sees the desktop.
In a way, that prank almost worked too well. Because her shock was so obviously genuine, it was obvious she was the victim of a prank (rather than a crazy stalker, which is what I was aiming for.)
Funny Office Pranks
When I walked in this morning, every computer background in the office had been changed to a picture of me from middle school...
Funny Office Pranks
Screen capture the desktop, rotate image so it's upside down and set as background. Hide desktop icons if there are any and start bar. Reverse mouse direction and then set graphics card to turn desktop upside down.
Funny Office Pranks
Someone in our office was selling candy bars to raise money for her chuch. When she left her cubicle, she'd leave the box of candy there, alongside a box to put money in and a little sign she'd printed reading, "remember: God is watching. :)"
My friend printed up a sign and snuck it under her "God is watching..." sign. It read: "God helps those who help themselves."
Funny Office Pranks
I work on a production line for a car manufacturer. The guy a few spots down, when he doesn’t do his job properly it makes my job harder and I end up having to fix his mistakes anyways.
So when ever I need to fart I just stand in front of the fan that’s pointed directly at him.
Funny Office Pranks
Whenever our ship went on deployment or a long underway, I would try to find the one person in berthing that was using the time to hit it hard at the gym. Everyone hangs their coveralls up at night with their belts still attached...so I'd just snip a tiny bit off the belt every week or so and watch them freak out when it was getting tighter as they ran 20 miles a week.
Funny Office Pranks
I put a simple alarm clock in the ceiling tiles of the server room, so that every 12 hours, it would go off with a simple constant beep that would last about two minutes. I was in the room with my manager one of those times, and she went nuts when it went off. "Every day one of these machines has an alarm and I can't figure out which one it is!!" She was frantically checking wires and buttons trying to find the source.
Very hard to stifle the laughter. This went on for about 4 months until another manager discovered the clock. He just left it on a desk with a post-it note that said "mad props".
I was on location with a co-worker, and we shared a hotel room. About 3 AM, we kept hearing a beeping sound, like an alarm. We couldn't figure out where it was coming from. We ended up calling the front desk to report an alarm. Security came up to try and locate the source. We finally figured out that it was coming from my overnight bag. I had a small battery operated alarm clock. To this day, she probably thinks I did it on purpose.
Funny Office Pranks
Reply all to say "tank you," then reply all again to your previous reply all to say "*thank"
If anybody complains about using reply all, reply all to apologize for using reply all.
Once at my workplace this type of thing kind of went "viral". Almost each day there would be a long email thread, where everyone would be saying "do not reply to all" and ironically replying to all, everyone kept doing it until one day we all on floor got a warning from Director. But it was fun though, something other than your daily mundane work.
Funny Office Pranks
At work, I am responsible for getting certain permits from the state. Once my permit is authorized, it is delivered to me via email in PDF format.
I grab 4 other similarly sized images from the internet which are inoffensive but vaguely, off color (like two lizards spooning).
Then, I email all five pictures to my foreman who needs the permit. He has to preview each PDF in order to find the permit that he needs.
Its a little game I like to call, "Permit Roulette".
Funny Office Pranks
Late to the party, but I'm going to jump in here. Whenever I turn in a company vehicle for the night, I leave the radio on the Mexican polka station. I don't speak Spanish at all.
Funny Office Pranks
I leave haribo sugarfree gummy bears in the break room on days when I need a laugh.
Funny Office Pranks
We moved all items on a friend's desk to the left half an inch each day after lunch. Originally his computer was pointed into the cube's corner. Eventually it was far along one side of the cube and bunching his knees up against the desk cabinets. We even slowly moved all his tacked-up cube wall papers. He didn't figure it out until he was unable to sit comfortably.
Another time I placed blue M&M's in another coworker's French coffee press. When he was away, I'd place them between the top of the filter and the lid of the container. He didn't press down on the filter until the water was already in, so he wouldn't find them until he poured the coffee. It took him a while to figure out how I got them into his cup.
Funny Office Pranks
I have to wear a hard hat for work. Sometimes I’ll scratch it as if I was scratching my head just to see if anybody notices.
Funny Office Pranks
I worked as an Expediter in a restaurant. One week I had a new person training so at the end of the night when we are cleaning I told the new girl to make sure she empties ALL the hot water from the coffee machine and dump it out. Little did she know it was just a hot water line connected to the coffee machine. She filled over 5 pitcher fulls of water before she figures it out! Everyone had a good laugh over it!
Funny Office Pranks
Working on weekends at a fast food place, one of the favorite pranks was to convince a new employee (usually a young teen who doesn't know much about the world) that one of the closing routines was to "exchange the air in the freezer" by using a large garbage bag to draw the air out and let "new" air in.
Successfully pulled it off a number of times at different targets.
Funny Office Pranks
I used to mess with a former co-worker that was always rude to me. She had an earlier shift than I did, so after she would leave for the evening I would go to her desk and rearrange her pen cup so that the moment a pen was taken out the whole thing would fall over. I did this every night for about 2 weeks or so before she gave up and stopped using the pen cup but not before she threw the whole thing across her work area in a fit of rage.
Funny Office Pranks
I worked at a tech company. The guy beside me had a habit of accidentally collecting safety glasses on his desk... So whenever I had safety glasses I was done with I'd put them on his desk. This went on for months and he'd always be shocked by how many he'd collected when he did a desk clean.
Hahaha! Simple, not harmful to anyone and not embarrassing. I love it!
Funny Office Pranks
There's one guy who wears fedoras and claims to know EVERYTHING. So anytime somebody comes into my work with a hat on, no matter what kind, I comment on what a cool fedora it is. He then corrects me and gives the entire history of said hat.
Funny Office Pranks
Bought a coworker a 2 year membership to a political party he really hates. He kept getting donation sollicitations and phone calls. Even got him a printed mug with the party leader's face on it.
Often changed his name plate on the door to reflect that too.
-John Doe
-Senior Project Manager
-High knight of the crustacian federal party
-Champion of her majesty the prime minister
HAHAHA!! I think you shouldn't have signed up for 2 years though. Still hilarious!
Funny Office Pranks
I make up turns-of-phrase and wait for really good moments to use them in a group setting, then wait to see if I can make them catch-on, then watch them propagate through my company.
In the last 18 months, I've done:
Ham-Scanned (for briefly reviewing something and BSing your way through a meeting pretending you read it)
Licked-it (for when a manager changes one little thing on a piece of work someone else did, and pretends they made major contributions)
I would work out the most embarrassing way to phrase something, say it with a straight face whilst someone was drinking, and watch coffee come out of their nose (if it worked). Had someone cut a hole in the wooden bulkhead in my van, so the longest exhaust we delivered would fit." Sammy fitted my hole just right". Why do I always ask X to reach things for me? "He has the extra inches that I need" I worked in a mostly male environment and needed to make them blush
Funny Office Pranks
My colleague left his screen unlocked, I went in to his email settings and changed the word 'regards' in his email signature to 'retards'.
Sounds funny, but then you realise that the colleague could get into serious trouble for using that word
Funny Office Pranks
Both Excel and Word have a feature that reads text out loud in a computerized voice. If someone asked for my help with an error and then had to step away, I'd quickly build a document with white text against a white background, so that as they were returning their computer could be declaring a "Cascading system-wide malfunction initiating from this workstation. Reformatting network hard drives in 10....9... 8...."
How did office types ever manage to prank each other before computers came along?
Funny Office Pranks
I move everything on their desks slightly to the left everyday. After a few days they notice "something" off but can't tell what it is and it drives them nuts.
Funny Office Pranks
We used to have a competition in our department for this one guy who never learned to lock his computer. He was a project manager and was constantly projecting in meetings and would leave his laptop for hours on his desk with no lock screen.
A lot of people messed with him, but the on that got him really angry was I hopped on while he was in the bathroom and set up task scheduler to open a browser window with an image search of Cookie Monster (which was his nickname for various reasons) at random intervals between 30 seconds and 15 mins.
He was not a techy guy and had no idea how to stop it from happening and he'd get so frustrated when he'd present for an hour meeting and he'd have 6-8 browser windows pop up during the meeting, sometimes with customers.
His frustration was like manna from heaven. . .
Funny Office Pranks
I’ve been changing the middle initial in my email signature every few weeks. I’m up to “E” now.
Funny Office Pranks
I worked in a plasma center for a while where all the clocks were timed perfectly to each other, by the second (they were a specific brand and they were supposed to sync up). So the receptionists would all pick a time to simultaneously drop a chart. It started off as a way to screw with the donors, but then they started doing it to the new employees. The sound was pretty surreal, because there were about 20 employees there at any given time and no carpet, so you got a stereo effect of 20 charts hitting the tile at the same time. The center was about 50 yards long, too.
Funny Office Pranks
The lady at my dealership that sets up the Christmas decorations is a Christmas Nazi, everything needs to be perfect, the tree looks like one you'd see at a department store. It's a fake tree with built in lights one set is color and one is white. We all said the colored ones are more fun and Christmasey, but she said that it had to be the white ones because she likes it better and if we change it to the milticolor she will change it back to white. So obviously I change it to muliticolor when I come in every day.
Funny Office Pranks
I have been putting tiny toy dinosaurs everywhere on the toliet paper, random desks, and etc.
Funny Office Pranks
on the stapler, I reverse the metal part that usually shapes the staple inward when you staple through the paper and make it face outward.
yeeeaaaaaa take that.
Funny Office Pranks
Way back when i used to work at a safeway gas station. A lot of our tasks made us make the long walk to the actual store( we were a gas station at the end of the safeway parking lot). I told my manager that my co worker wanted all the instore duties because he had a huge crush on one of the cashiers. I got out of doing garbage, sending daily reports, and other in store trips for a month before my coworker caught on.
Funny Office Pranks
So our mens bathroom had a code to get in 123. For months whenever I entered or left the bathroom I would enter in a number in the keypad. If anyone went in after me, the code wouldn't work the first time.
They actually had to remove the code after about a year.
why would a bathroom will have a code? What if someone is in real hurry, or a medical issue. I would fry any such mechanism first day if they something like this in our workplace.
Funny Office Pranks
Our company has a cafeteria with a sandwich vending machine. It has doors that can only be opened after paying whatever amount. We had an annoying coworker who would throw his personal keys down into the middle of a community work table every morning while we were currently working on it. We had to move his keys out of the way to get our work done. After several weeks of frustration we all chipped in and bought the most expensive sandwich in the vending machine. Of course we replaced the sandwich with his keys. It took him several hours of looking and $7.50 to find his keys.
Haha! This is a little mean though. What if he needed to get home quickly for an emergency or didn't have the money on him? Just a thought.
Funny Office Pranks
I once got a peek at a coworker typing in his work system. I usually arrive before him to work, and every odd week I startup his system and open a random document, delete something, undo the delete and then put the system to sleep. So he comes in, presses the start button only to find it waking up with a document open. He closes it, and it asks 'Do you want to close before saving changes?' . Fun to see his face go from 'morning blues' to 'what the f*cking f*ck'.
Funny Office Pranks
When they are copying or scanning something, I will secretly print 10 pages of blank paper at the same time. They think they are doing it.
Funny Office Pranks
I pretend I'm a robot on the phone. Like a ship's computer. Super neutral voice. I've been doing this for years. I don't know that anyone's picked up on it.
sometimes i change my voice mail message to make it sound like i am actually answering the phone..."hello? wait, can you hold on a minute?" maybe start talking to 'someone' in the back ground. don't know if it will work as well on cell phones, but on regular answering machines of old, it was great!
Funny Office Pranks
At a bookstore I worked at it was something of a tradition to pull some kind of departure prank when people were on their last day. I've told the story before about the guy whose last day prank was to order fifty copies of Mein Kampf, permanently screwing up our inventory in the process. My own last day prank was to go around on those ladders you see at a lot of bookstores and unscrew every lightbulb in arm's reach just enough so it wouldn't come on and wouldn't fall out either. Apparently it took them days to figure out there was nothing wrong with the wiring in the place.
Funny Office Pranks
I used to work in this restaurant in the downtown area of my city which had several restaurants near by. Whenever we would get a new dishwasher or inexperienced cook we would say something like "Hey, we're out of ice mix, head to restaurant X and grab some." The other restaurants were in on this and the poor kid would be sent restaurant to restaurant until he caught on.
Another good one is to send them for the "long stand". Same kind of thing but they come in and ask for the long stand, then they are basically left to stand there as long as it takes to realize that they are an idiot haha.
Funny Office Pranks
Had an annoying co-worker who said she was "allergic" to hand lotion and that we could not use it while she was in the room, then she would dominate the conversation with her rudeness and loud comments. Whenever I got tired of her mouth I would pull out the small bottle of hand lotion from my bag and quietly rub the lotion on my hands so nobody would notice who did it but everyone could smell it. Of course, she smelled it and would pack up her lunch while yelling at everyone about the lotion. Everyone would look around like "what just happened?". I would sit there with a smile on my face very glad to see her gone.
Funny Office Pranks
I used to print faces of Vladimir Putin and stick about five sheets of it into each brand new pack of paper in the storage room. I figured out how to open and reseal those packagings.
Whenever they print stuff there will sometimes be Putin's face on the other side. They even called the paper supplier to complain.
Funny Office Pranks
On a windows machine, go into the mouse settings and enable "Click Lock".
This changes a primary button click into a toggle on/off instead of the standard press and release for highlighting and click and drag operations.
It's infuriating as hell and obscure enough that most people assume the mouse is broken and will request a new one. The new one will do it too.
Or just microwave some fish.
Funny Office Pranks
We have two microwaves in the break room that somebody needs the time to be the same on. I used to change the time on one by twenty minutes and wait for them to fix it. Now i change it by one minute everyday until they fix it and i start over.
Funny Office Pranks
One guy was notorious for being a couple minutes late every day. So when he showed up almost an hour late one day, everyone in the office took all of his stuff from his desk and put it in a box in his cubicle.
Funny Office Pranks
I wasn’t a Windows programmer, but a guy om my team was. He wrote an innocuously-named program called sndvol32.exe, which we installed on the office verysmart neckbeard’s PC.
It opened up a number of commands that we could run remotely on the target computer. Control the volume, open and close programs, etc.
My favorite simple trick was unlocking his computer while he was away. Back in the day we could do this by just killing the screensaver task. We could also jump the mouse around, and munge files.
We would all know that somone was abusing sndvol32 by the frustrated oinking coming fron the target’s desk.
I created an internal website that would allow people to quickly and conveniently send strings of commands to it.
One of those was kill the screensaver and put up an underwear website fullscreen.
The guy kept a log of his IT issues. I sneaked a peek once. I was the cause of nine out of his top ten.
Funny Office Pranks
I worked with a close friend who went on vacation for a week. I went into his office and wrapped everything in it with aluminum foil. The trick was I left everything exactly as it was. It was as if his office got gift wrapped with aluminum foil. I even wrapped each individual coin he had in his bank, which was an old water cooler bottle. It took me almost 2 days.
On Sunday evening (he was due back to work that Monday) I called him and told him we were having a BBQ and asked for him to bring some aluminum foil to the office. The whole office gathered as he came into work with 4 rolls of aluminum foil under his arm. It was hilarious.
Funny Office Pranks
I used to put butter and salt in the community coffee pot. After a couple weeks of doing it no one said anything so I put a little more each time(got to where i was dumping copious amounts of salt and butter in the coffee). Finally like a month later, the boss speaks up and says there is some "f*cking disgusting film" on his coffee, and everyone chimes in with "my coffee has tasted like ass the last few days" and "my coffee has been super salty tasting" and "ive had diarrhea from the coffee i think" so my boss decides to send the coffee company a mean email. (at this point its gone too far and everyone is pissed so i cant come clean). The coffee company responds with something along the lines of "sorry, some batches are bad and have a lot of oily film on them causing the coffee to taste salty or have a butter like film on it." They apologize and we get free coffee for 6 months. Still to this day I cant be found out and think about it(chuckling to myself) almost daily. This was about 10 years ago.
Funny Office Pranks
I incorporate 80's songs or catchy songs into conversations so the song itself is stuck in their heads all day.