Office Pranks

There's a few rules about pranks. One, don't give the prankee plenty of unfettered access to your cubicle by leaving early on a slow Friday. Two, make sure the prankee can't think of pranks to play. And third, make sure the prankee isn't all about upping the stakes to the point where you can't do anything in return.

Yes, I was pranked in the office. While I was in a meeting, a co-worker thought it would be funny to prank me before he left for the weekend. I came back from the meeting to find a McDonald's hot sauce packet sitting on my desk. Like a dummy, I picked it up… and then realized that the bottom was wet. It was covered in lime green highlighter, and now it was all over my hands.

Oh, he got me pretty good. I thought it was the kind of humor where you leave a random odd object on someone's desk just to see how they react. After giving my hands a good washing, I knew it was time for payback.

The first step? A piece of celophane tape on the bottom of the mouse. You can't feel it, but it works wonders to keep the mouse ball from moving. I followed up by changing the settings on each of his time clocks to communicate using the wrong method. Then I swapped his clock's power supply for the wrong one. The clock will usually work, but it'll reset at random when drawing too much juice. And the finishing touch? Swapping around his keyboard and mouse cables on both of his computers. When he's in the Monday meetings, I may even change his keyboard layout to Dvorak.

Let this be a lesson to all would-be pranksters. Sometime, somewhere, you will find someone that knows that one-upping just isn't enough. Maybe it's a guy thing.