Can we all agree that an office job at an omnivorous, faceless corporation is pure evil that’s dangerous to anyone’s health? We can? Good. Then, we can probably also agree that most of the time, it isn’t the foosball table or the one-pizza-for-whole-team Fridays that make it bearable, but rather the shared moments of humorous outbursts with and from your coworkers. Even better, though, if it’s a harmless office prank they’ve pulled on you, or you’ve pulled on them! And, since you’re probably reading this instead of working, you might as well make it a productive time and choose a funny office prank to liven up the atmosphere.
Of course, the best office pranks are the ones that do not require an elaborate plan of execution and those that have been tested at least a couple of times before. Enter this gorgeous Reddit thread where people shared easy office pranks they’ve already pulled or been the ones to test. Yup, we’ve read it all, rounded up the most awesome office prank ideas, and now it’s only for you to choose which one to surprise your coworkers with! From harmless pranks involving printouts to classic ones involving Jell-O and office appliances, you’re sure to find one that tickles your fancy.
Okay, since you’re probably at work right now and time is of the essence, we should probably end this introduction and allow you to finally read the submissions. Once you do, give your vote to the best pranks, and never ever dare to share this article with any of your peers! They might get a whiff of what’s to come!
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"Plugged in a spare USB keyboard into my co-worker’s desktop. Would randomly hold down the shift key when he was entering his password, lock his terminal when he turned around to talk to someone, or tap the windows key while he was typing.
I’m not good at not laughing. I managed to hold it in for 4 days until he finally lost it and started smashing his keyboard and unplugging all the USB cables. He got to the one for the extra keyboard, looked around, then yanked on the cable HARD, and the spare keyboard skipped across my desk and slammed into my cube wall.
I laughed so hard I cried for almost 15 minutes."
“If they have Chrome, put the ‘nCage’ extension on their browser. It changes every picture that shows up into a picture of Nicolas Cage.”
heythisisbrandon said:
"Not sure if this will apply, but I was working for a telemarketing company at the time. I was the new guy and they gave me a "lead" to call that was a funeral home.
The name... Myra Maines... my remains... I called a funeral home and asked for my remains. They got me."
bella_morte replied:
"I'm a funeral director - I'd have loved to get a call like this."
"I bought a box of 1000 googly eyes and slowly started putting them on things in my coworker's cubicles and around the office. It took a few weeks before they realized that they were being watched by their stapler."
"Slowly, incrementally dilute the office coffee with decaf for a few weeks until there is no caffeine left, then suddenly switch to espresso."
“Put a cake in the office fridge saying ‘-person-’s birthday cake do not eat’ and watch as people from all over the building say happy birthday to an increasingly confused and irritate coworker.”
"I worked as a secretary, and there was this motivational poster of an eagle in the office with an American flag behind it that said "FREEDOM." It was really annoying to stare at all day, so I put googly eyes on it. No one noticed for months, and it brought me joy every day."
"I have a coworker who folds up a blanket and sits on it. When it gets cold, she shakes it out and puts it over her shoulders. So after she left for work, I unfolded it and filled the inside with hole punch dots. It took three weeks until she finally made it snow inside"
"Someone took the ball out of my mouse once, late at night when I had a deadline. I just took someone else's ball, used it, then returned it. The next morning when I came in, I very loudly announced that someone castrated my mouse and I needed a new mouse."
“Any time we get a new person, we hand them a plastic bag and tell them that we need an air sample to send to corporate. We tell them to go around the store with the bag open to get air from all parts of the store. Watching the new person walk around the store while flailing a plastic bag is classic.”
i worked as a bartender at an upscale dinner/jazz club. I would get the new cocktail waitress who was trying close out for the night, that she needed to get a bucket of steam from the kitchen in order to clean up her station. the kitchen would play along and send her to the prep area, who would send her to dishwasher. Cruel, but funny when they would finally catch on.
"I once hid $1 in pennies in my coworker's cubicle with a note letting her know they were there. I put them in every little crack, crevice, file, book, whatever I could find. I hid them, behind stuff on her corkboard, in her calendar, etc. I made a few of them really easy to find, so she basically got hooked and couldn't stop looking for them. She found 97."
"Did a screenshot of my co-worker's desktop and then made it his background image and moved all of his real icons off the screen."
I want to see the look on the IT guys face when he shows up for this ticket!!!
“Change the mouse movement speed to the lowest, takes like 30 seconds to fix and it’s hilarious.”
KeimaKatsuragi said:
"Change the Screensaver to Blue Screen."
Megatron_McLargeHuge replied:
"I used that screensaver myself until my coworker helpfully rebooted my desktop for me."
Best one I've ever heard like this was take a screen capture of their desktop, set it as the desktop background, then remove all the real icons and watch as they try to click on things.
"Put a small RC car in a nearby office trashcan, under the bag so you can't see it. Just twitch the remote once in a while to make noise."
“Two of my co-workers sat across from each other. One day they were both out and our boss says ‘Hey let’s switch their cubes while they’re gone’ so we did exactly that. We literally moved everything so their desks were exactly the same but on opposite sides.”
"One of my Tech Supervisors won the leadership award for the quarter which includes a lovely headshot for the slideshow. He hated this photo, which made me contact the company photographer and get a copy.
I proceeded to make ~200 copies of various sizes to plaster around his office. No surface was safe. I took apart his fan and taped little ones on each blade. One on the phone receiver, under the chair, inside the lamp, and basically wallpapered his desk with photos of himself.
My favorite was the three-foot poster size cut out I made to take his place at meetings.
It was three years ago and he’s still finding photos."
I did something similar when I left my old job. Our office manager had been out with Covid for almost a month and had no idea I had put in my 2 weeks. I was sad I wasn't going to be able to say my goodbye. So, I decided to do something that would keep her thinking of me long after I was gone. I printed out 50 tiny pics of myself and me and another coworker spent my last 2 days taping them to any and everything we could in her office. I got texts for 6 months after I left telling me she found another one! She was so much fun to work with. I truly miss her.
"I work at a grocery store and I love The Office. Inspired by Jim Halpert, I got all of my coworkers to call someone by the wrong name all day. His name is Darren and everyone called him Darrell. He was so mad about it."
This reminds me of the time that my classmates and I convinced this other kid that a girl (who's named Sofia) was called 'Nicole.' It took him three weeks.
"Finally a thread I can contribute to. One of my colleagues is a very funny guy and often pranks some coworkers by changing wallpapers, etc.
Once he wrote a little note to one of his colleagues:
'Dear Ms. XY, Mr. Bear (actually a last name in Germany) called you when you were away, can you please call him back? Here is his number: 1234567890'
He gave her the number of the local zoo. She was so confused that she asked for Mr. Bear several times before she realized that it was a prank."
Now I’m wondering if “Duck-billed Platypus” is a last name in Germany. 🤔
“I had a coworker who hung a model plane by a small paperclip chain from the ceiling over his desk. I lowered it by adding a single paperclip to the chain every Friday night. It took months but eventually, the airplane was so low he hit his head on it and just stared at it confused.”
"Drop the height of their office chair and monitor slightly, but the same so their view has the same angle, but the desk seems like it was raised up."
"At a previous job, we took turns with an on-call phone. I got it one week and found the previous coworker (D) hadn't signed out of Hangouts (which we used company-wide for IM). We worked in a cubical farm sort of environment, and D sat next to C, though sort of back to back. They were pretty good to work bros, but not especially close.
I waited until both D and C were on phone calls, and messaged C (but it looked like it was coming from D) 'Hey, my neck is hurting. Would you mind coming over here and rubbing on my shoulders?'
I was about 5 rows over when I hit send, but we all clearly heard C say 'Excuse me?!?'"
"Get a duplicate of a coworker's favorite drink or coffee mug, and when they get up to use the bathroom, switch their drink for the frozen one.
I did that to a coworker who didn't have much of a sense of humor. I thought he might get mad at me, but he didn't even realize it was a prank. He just turned up the thermostat."
"One of my favorite harmless pranks is to print out pictures of whatever you want (I like to choose pop culture icons like George Costanza or something) and cut out the heads and tape them to your co-worker's pictures of their family and friends around their desk. Most people get a laugh out of it.
Bonus if you pick someone that the co-worker is always being told they look like. Double points if they hate it when people say that."
I think what Jessica is missing here is that you shouldn’t tape it directly TO the treasured photo but on top of the glass frame
“I’ve discovered that there is no such thing as a ‘harmless’ office prank. All it takes is one middle manager to take offense or say something about wasting company time, and boom, official reprimand.”
Amen! I once worked at a corporation and we often did TINY harmless things to keep up morale- but it only takes one meaningless manager throwing a fit (probably cause they weren't included) to ruin it all and kill morale.
"I wrote 'You're Welcome' on a tiny piece of paper and taped it over the sensor on the bottom of my co-worker's computer mouse. It was hard not to bust out laughing as he plugged/unplugged, rebooted, and checked the Windows settings before finally looking at the bottom of it."
User №1 said:
"Poison the coffee."
User №2 replied:
"Classic."
"Put a paper clip on the glass of the copier. Make about six copies. Then load the paper back into the machine."
“Every day my coworker eats a Nutella sandwich. One day I switched it for marmite. His face was priceless.”
"Wait for one of them to go on vacation then put a framed photo of them, a candle, a sympathy card and some flowers on their desk."
That is quite funny, also leave a business card for Myra Maines!!
"Hollow out a pen (felt tip markers work best) and fill it with glitter. Put a tiny dab of glue on the cap before you go home one night."
"I taped a birthday card that plays music when opened to the inside of my colleague's laptop. It plays, 'Baby, Baby, baby ooooh' (Bieber).
I still keep it in the office to annoy everyone with."
"My mom is a software engineer for Southwest Airlines. One of her favorite stories is that her entire team got together and pretended to have this huge error that they couldn't figure out called "ID10T" (read: I D ten T). Their manager spent a while going around asking about the error. When someone finally wrote it out for him, he had a good chuckle about it. Pretty harmless and it got a good laugh from the entire office."
We use this one a lot in the military, sending the new guy to find an ID-10T form
“If someone walks away from their computer pull up their email and message your group announcing you will bring donuts on Friday.”
"One time we shrunk someone's entire desk.
We hid their monitor and computer and everything, and created miniature paper versions of everything."
To me this sounds really dumb and not that funny. Forgive me.
"I worked with a few people that would be 'hunt and peck' typers. Just switch the m and n keys. that can cause headaches for people.
Something I still do, I'll write a time like 3:30 and circle it on a small piece of paper and slip it into a coworker's pocket. that will leave them wondering what they are forgetting.
Both are pretty harmless and you can't really get into much trouble."
If he somehow got the paper into his airway and choked on it, that would be a little harmful.
“I wrote a script that minimizes everything on your screen every 40 seconds. My coworker spent a week trying to find the source, and ended up reimaging his computer so I showed up early and reinstalled it the next morning.”
"Here is one that is great and involves no effort.
Leave a piece of paper on a co-worker's desk. Have it say;
'Hey my chair is uncomfortable so I switched it with yours. Hope you don't mind.
- Signed another co-worker you want to frame'"
"Mid 90’s, cleared a friend/co-worker's cube out while he was on vacation in Europe, and sealed it off with Crime scene tape. When he came back, called him into our manager's office and told him a fairly elaborate, extremely believable story about how the office had been raided, and everything from his cube taken into evidence.
Freaked him out so bad that we had to come clean with him almost immediately."
"Work as a firefighter, one time someone ran a drip set (IV bag) through the drop ceiling into a neighboring bunk room, directly over the head of another firefighter, when everybody fell asleep he barely opened the line up so it would drip one drop of water every 45 seconds or so, directly on to the sleeping firefighter head."
I've read a lot of stories about firefighters and the pranks they do to each other and the city police.
“You wouldn’t believe the countless hours of fun you can have with a spare USB Bluetooth mouse and a co-worker’s computer.”
"My colleague went on holiday for 2 weeks. Giving us enough time to attach all of his paperclips together in a giant ball. Every time he wanted a paper clip he had to untangle each individual one. He would occasionally forget it had happened and would randomly hear a sigh as he had to fight to free his paper clips."
"Paint the tips of their pencils/pens with clear nail polish. When they try to write, nothing will happen. Once the prank is over, dip all of them in polish remover."
“Musical birthday card batteries last up to 3 days. Slip an open one behind a co-worker’s filing cabinet. They’ll hear tinny music for days without being able to pinpoint where it’s coming from.”
my dad once sent my papa a farting ox that never stopped making fart noises (it was a card, don’t worry) and it said “happy birthday…” and on the inside it said “you old FART!!!” and it took WEEKS to stop lol!!! he put it in a drawer because he had guests coming over 😂
“Cover the bottom of a mouse with a piece of a post-it AND unplug the mouse. Once they figure out one of the two tricks, they think they’ve solved the problem and moments later you will see their faces express disappointment and rage.”
poohspiglet said:
"Do that trick that makes you forever 'That guy who got fired for pranking'. That's the trick I want to hear about. You will be gone but never forgotten."
cdc194 replied:
"Worked over the summer back in like 2002 at a car dealership, I heard that an older salesman had just been fired for selling a lady a new Subaru, she kept insisting that the car have 6 cylinders (to be fair Subaru flat 4s were almost as powerful as V6s back then) and after her resisting he finally told her just to buy the car and they will put in the extra 2 cylinders later."
"I worked in an office and would remove all but 3 or 4 staples out of my coworker's stapler every day since he left before me. We often staple a stack of documents so you would hear him at his desk:
staple... staple... staple... click, click "DAMN IT!!"
He thought the janitorial staff that cleaned the office at night was stealing his staples. I never told him it was me."
"Two things we did when people were out for a couple of weeks:
Grew chia seeds in his keyboard so it was a small field when he got back.
Another time (different guy) we just started leaving any trash on his desk (things that wouldn't smell) then say before he came back we got some gift wrap and wrapped up the whole cube. The bonus was we hid a six-pack of Smirnoff ices in the rubble."
"I used to work at Sun Microsystems back in the day. We were renowned for our April Fool's pranks.
One year, I was part of the team that turned a director's office into a farm, complete with livestock. Another year, we wrapped a building in plastic. Another year, we ran a giant arrow through a building."
“A favorite of mine is collect the ‘holes’ out of the bottom of hole punches and pour them into someone’s umbrella. They won’t open it inside, but when they open it outside you treat them to a little snowfall.”
I'd like that it seems nice :) I'd worry about the clean up tho
"Filled the room with balloons, like really filled. Found out after the coworker had a fear of clowns and a dream of one coming up out of balloons."
"Putting someone's stapler in jello."
"My buddy had this hand lotion on his desk that he used every day soon as he got into work. I found the same brand/bottle and bought it, emptied it out, then filled it full of mayonnaise. Made sure it was the same weight as his current lotion before making the switch, just in case.
He came in and used it! I screwed up and started laughing way too hard and had to fess up, who knows how long he would have kept putting mayo on his hands before realizing something was up!"
“Boss thinks he’s clever by randomly running up behind me and shouting, ‘YOU’RE FIRED!’, not because I'm actually fired, but just to mess with me. Maybe it was funny the first time, but definitely not 564 times later.”
"Put a pump bottle of anti-bacterial hand soap out on my desk, people mistook it as hand sanitizer... halfway through a conversation their hands were sudsing instead of drying."
"If they have a drink with a straw, cut off the top of a ketchup packet and place it on the bottom of the straw in the bottom of the drink... and watch as they take a sip."
Don't do that. Never mess with people's food. Always be aware of allergies and the fact that people go to great lengths to hide personal problems like financial problems. That drink could be the only one they can afford. That sandwich could be the only thing they can eat all day. Just don't ever mess with food. It's always a waste and just not funny
“If they have a digital picture frame, put pictures of you in it. Or come in early and disconnect their keyboards.”
"We had rows of identical lockers, so Co-Worker 1 had a few magnets on hers to make it easy to find. Co-Worker 2 took them all and put them in the exact same order three lockers over.
Co-Worker 1 spent two days putting her combination into the wrong lock with no luck. She only caught on after she got facilities to open her "broken" locker."
"I had this prank pulled on me. This was in my first job, about 12 years ago. We weren't allowed to share music files via work email, but my work buddy begged me to anyway. I'd only just sent him some song he asked for, when I got a pop up from an anon sender basically saying: "this is IT, we observed you sent, blah blah, blah and we're locking your account". I flipped out, thinking it was for real, and then I hear him laughing a few cubicles away. He sent me the pop-up. I totally fell for it."
Back in early 2000's I worked as an Office Manager for a large hospital and my BF worked in IT there. I was constantly downloading music on my computer, every day all day. The IT Dept couldn't figure out where the spike in usage was coming from ((my BF knew of course). When I left 2 years later, they couldn't figure out why the usage dropped.....
"If you have chairs that have mesh bottoms, tape wet sponges to the bottom of the chair under where the person sits. They probably will not be able to see it. This has definitely worked in the past for me. The guys legs were very wet."
Some popular but harmless military pranks we pull on newbies: telling them to get an exhaust sample from a vehicle. Asking for a bucket of steam. Telling them to bring you a length of centerline (centerline is the term for the imaginary line running through the middle of the length of a Naval vessel). Telling them they need to find and fill out their ID10T form. Telling them they need to take their barracks mattress down to the quarterdeck to get it stamped. Wrapping someone's belongings in gift wrap while they're away on leave. Drawing on their ID picture with dry erase marker and/or covering the chip with a piece of tape if they leave it unattended in their computer (a no-no). Hiding their cover (uniform hat) in the freezer and letting them search everywhere for it.
I work construction and threw a dummy off a building dressed like one of us hard hat and all. The boss was not amused
Some popular but harmless military pranks we pull on newbies: telling them to get an exhaust sample from a vehicle. Asking for a bucket of steam. Telling them to bring you a length of centerline (centerline is the term for the imaginary line running through the middle of the length of a Naval vessel). Telling them they need to find and fill out their ID10T form. Telling them they need to take their barracks mattress down to the quarterdeck to get it stamped. Wrapping someone's belongings in gift wrap while they're away on leave. Drawing on their ID picture with dry erase marker and/or covering the chip with a piece of tape if they leave it unattended in their computer (a no-no). Hiding their cover (uniform hat) in the freezer and letting them search everywhere for it.
I work construction and threw a dummy off a building dressed like one of us hard hat and all. The boss was not amused
