[Humour] Harmless work pranks

[Motogull]

Wrapped the entire phone receiver cord around and around the desk edge/hole for cables, on the desk of the snide who was the lifelong wingman for the wanker who owned the firm.

The snide took a call, only to find he just had an inch of cable to the receiver. So he lay his head on the desk to take the call. All witnessed.

The best was in the 1990’s you could ring an 0800 number called The Angry Line. Where automated replies were along the lines of “Don’t you take that tone with me”, set to rhythm of increasing volume and anger. We called the number then transferred it without giving away we were involved to the wingman. He then spent minutes in an argument with the automated Angry Line.

That 0800 rings bells with me. I think the message kept asking for a name because all we heard for ages was the fella repeating his name.

 

[pasty]

In an old office set up with desks opposite each other, swapping mouse and keyboard cables with the opposite desk always proved good for a giggle.

 

[dazzer6666]

When I worked at Lloyds Private Bank we got the CEO to send a note to the Mayfair Head (on his birthday) saying that the division had decided to open on Saturdays, and he was to hold a meeting with all staff to sell it to them and confirm later back to the CEO that he had buy-in from everyone. Fair play to the guy, he did his best……beauty of it was only two of us knew, so the rest were genuinely annoyed rather than anything false. Three staff stormed out of the meeting.

Unfortunately he had zero sense of humour and me and the other guy that set it up got all sorts of shit from him for weeks,and crap year-end reviews. Still worth it though

 

[GT49er]

It also went on in offices -

"There was a phone call for you while you were in the loo, I took a message though - can you phone them back?"
"OK, what was the number? What was it about, do you know?"
"C & J Lyon bros. Ltd. - something about an order, I think - oh, and it was Mr.C. you want, not Mr.J."
"O.K."
Ring ring
"Hello, can I speak to Mr. C. Lyon, please"
"Ermm.................this is Edinburgh Zoo............."

 

[Weststander]

It also went on in offices -

"There was a phone call for you while you were in the loo, I took a message though - can you phone them back?"
"OK, what was the number? What was it about, do you know?"
"C & J Lyon bros. Ltd. - something about an order, I think - oh, and it was Mr.C. you want, not Mr.J."
"O.K."
Ring ring
"Hello, can I speak to Mr. C. Lyon, please"
"Ermm.................this is Edinburgh Zoo............."

We did that many a time. A paper phone message to call Mr C Lyons, the number, Brighton Sealife Centre. Worked every time, sometimes the same person!

 

[Happy Exile]

I had a job where a small group of us would spend all day, every day, typing names and addresses into a database, all off those postcards you used to have to send in for competitions before the internet.

We were based with the call centre staff who hated us, thinking we had the easier job and they'd often complain about us for the tiniest thing. In the middle of the room was something called the "dropped call board", a digital display that showed what % of callers hung up when they were on hold or before being answered...the call centre had to keep it below a certain % so obviously we'd repeatedly ring and hang up straight away and watch as the %, the stress, and the aggravation got higher and higher...

 

[METALMICKY]

As a youngster working in a music trade wholesalers, we sent another lad into the warehouse for some left handed guitar strings. He was not best pleased, bearing in mind that he was actually a very good guitarist

I'm confused. He was not best pleased as you attempted the piss take?

 

[alanfp]

Apocryphal: "Can you go to the stores and get a bubble for my spirit level please"

In my first Saturday job at a small builders' merchant (visualise the 4 candles sketch) - I thought I was being pranked when a colleague asked me to get him a length of 'birdmouth'. I told him I wasn't falling for that and then he showed me what he meant - a 6ft length of wooden trim that is actually called 'birdmouth'.

 

[Weststander]

I knew folk who’d worked for the huge Brighton employers Allen West, or Kearney & Trecker. As newbies they were stitched up on internal stock-takes, being asked to sketch drawings of lathes, nuts and bolts.

 

[alanfp]

But I did fall for this one...

As an apprentice, walked into mess room in the middle of a conversation about a one-man band. Colleague says he heard an interview on the radio with someone who was a one-man band, but he couldn't understand how one man could play all those instruments. So of course I say "Haven't you ever seen one?" Him: "no" Me: "You must have done - he has cymbals between his knees and a guitar and plays the drum with his foot etc" "But how could he possibly do that on his own?"
Me (thinking he must have led a very sheltered life) : "Like this, of course" Cue me standing up in the middle of the mess room doing all the actions of a one man band (hands, elbows, knees, air-guitar, harmonica, foot-stamping etc.) in front of half a dozen hairy-bottomed electricians who eventually couldn't keep a straight face.

 

[maresfield seagull]

Sky hooks are actually a thing these days
used to hang cables from, on site to prevent trailing leads

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I bought my pride and joy (a 1962 mini which cost me £20 as a used car in the mid-seventies) to work (as a long-haired teenage office junior) in Hastings and the guys from the factory used a sideloader to put it up on the single storey office flat roof. I don't think the rusty old subframe was ever the same after that!
Probably be called bullying today!
I'm sure someone can "you were lucky" trump that in Yorkshireman sketch style......

This reminds me of a guy who I shared a big office with when I worked at the CAA. He owned a Triumph car and kept going on about it. When his car was being serviced we left a note on his desk saying “Please call Triumph on …..”. The number was Triumph Lingerie. The call didn’t last long, but it was funny listening to him talk and then explain he’d got the wrong number.

 

[el punal]

Back in the 1980s I worked as a promotions manager for a major drinks company. We were about to conduct a promotion sales drive on the Isle of Wight with a team of six. This included a lovely girl who, let’s say, was rather naive. I told her prior to departure that she would need her passport. In addition I informed her that when we got to the ferry terminal she would have to go to the ticket office and exchange her money from sterling into Wights. The exchange rate, she was told, was 5 Wights to £1. Off she went to the ticket office to show her passport and collect her Wights. Hook, line and sinker!

 

[Coldeanseagull]

This thread is quite funny...in a wrong sort of way.
We've palletised an apprentice and stacked him three high on the racking, nailed a printers boots to the floor, crucified a machine operator...two brooms for the cross and many rolls of parcel tape...warehouse racking involved again. Also, charged up capacitors and left them on the work bench. Filled up ear defenders with grease and nailed a mackerel to the under side of some ones work bench
There are other instances I may or may not have been involved in.
There's probably a reason health and safety became a 'thing'!

 

[Iggle Piggle]

A colleague of ours is both a) bonkers and b) convinced the supernatural is a thing. He really wants to stay at some ghost hotel in the Cotswolds somewhere but has no one to go with.

We keep telling him that another colleague of ours also really wants to go there and would love to spend a weekend in said hotel when we know he'd rather saw his own leg off. He is also a really nice bloke and can't let the truth slip that the bonkers bloke is being wound up. I've listened to the same excuses for 6 months now about why it can't be booked just now. I might have to poke that bear when I go in tomorrow.

 

[BBassic]

Having spent my working life in various offices most of the pranks I've done / been subjected to involve pissing about with someone's work-station.

Favourite one I've done is to make liberal use of the Windows shortcut that rotates the screen. That shortcut can be stacked so whilst your victim is off making a tea you can spend five minutes mashing away at this shortcut and their screen will spend the next half hour rotating every which way.

 

[jackanada]

Worked with a "chilli wanker" for a while who kept going on about eating nagas and generally made up bullshit.
A small investment in chilli extract and a light coating on some wings in the pub put that to the test. Fair play he wasn't quite as full of shit as I thought though we all enjoyed watching him struggle.
Led to a fortnight of any unattended food hitting 2 million scovilles before someone who was definitely not me had the wheeze of smearing extract on the inside of the car door handle.

 

[WATFORD zero]

Having spent my working life in various offices most of the pranks I've done / been subjected to involve pissing about with someone's work-station.

Favourite one I've done is to make liberal use of the Windows shortcut that rotates the screen. That shortcut can be stacked so whilst your victim is off making a tea you can spend five minutes mashing away at this shortcut and their screen will spend the next half hour rotating every which way.

Working in IT, when Windows NT first came out the 'blue screen of death' was quite common, so we got a screen shot of it and put it on people's machines as a screen saver.

It took a few a while to figure out why their machine 'crashed' and had to be rebooted every time they went for a coffee or left their desk for 5 minutes

 

[Official Old Man]

Skyhooks.
Working at a TV repair shop in London Road, Btn, way way back in the 70's it was a tradition to send the new guy over the road to the DIY shop for sky hooks. I was sent in the first week and the people in the DIY shop knew the routine, sadly I forget now what it was, but the drinks were on the oldies that lunchtime. Few weeks later it was my turn to send another newbie over the road whilst we all hung out the window watching and laughing.

 

[Fignon's Ponytail]

Years ago, the guy I worked with in my office had been looking at some porn on his PC, & had loads of ads appear which he couldn't get rid of (aah, the good ol' days of the internet!), so I went down to the main office and mentioned it - and we hatched a plan (the boss was out).
20 mins later, one of the guys popped his head round the door saying the police were there inquiring about somebody accessing an illegal porn site in our office. I went down to the other office to face "questioning" by the cops, leaving the other chap on his own, panicking big time. I went back 10 mins later and he was white as a sheet and sweating profusely. I followed him down to the other office as he prepared for his questioning - and we all creased up laughing as he walked through the door. He never looked at porn again on the work computer