December 3, 2004

6:20 PM

Office PrankFilter: it's payback time. I used to be the prankmaster in my office, but I've been had, twice now. It's time for Revenge Claus to visit, but I'm out of ideas. [MI]
posted by moonbird to (40 comments total)

I'm not the biggest fan of Xmas, and I was a little flustered as all the decorations went up this year that no consideration was being given to non-Christians, and I got the Scrooge label. After returning to the office from a home visit (it's social work), I found my desk covered in garland, ribbons, and everyone gathered around to sing carrolls. Actually, it was very nice, but I've lost my prankster crown and I really want to get the ringleader back.

What I'd love to do is come up with a web-app that counts time backwards, as she has to punch in online everyday. But anything to get her goat, in a way that's not too mean. Ideas? Thanks in advance
posted by moonbird at 6:21 PM on December 3, 2004

Office or cube? And what's your budget? Do you have access to the office after-hours when no one will be around?
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:26 PM on December 3, 2004

Office, budget fairly low but willing to pay the price for a good one. And yes, I can get in anytime.
posted by moonbird at 6:27 PM on December 3, 2004

This isn't too bad, but may make freak someone out for a minute or two: Don't Click Here. (Don't worry, it's mostly harmless.)
posted by Doohickie at 6:27 PM on December 3, 2004

Oh, after hours (6pm+) and weekends for general vacancy.
posted by moonbird at 6:28 PM on December 3, 2004

If you could get some black packing peanuts, you could give her a cubicle full of "coal".....
posted by Doohickie at 6:30 PM on December 3, 2004

I had a colleague who tried to get me by turning some things up side down in my office.

Big mistake.

Monday morning she walked in to find her office half-filled with packing peanuts (glass door, so she could see the office without entering). Literally, three and a half or four feet off the ground. I had to climb out her office window, onto the roof of the building, and go in through another window when I was done. It took me about six hours total.

She spent half of Monday sitting in a chair outside of her office, looking in, in total shock. Around noon, she said screw it, turned the handle, and pushed in on her door, only to find that it was all an optical illusion. I had created a false floor in the room using taped-togther plastic bags, the peanuts were only a couple deep, and I had made a pocket around her glass door to make it look like it was completely full.

I documented the entire thing (PDF), taking pictures along the way. How I built it, what materials were involved, and how much time each stage took. If you're interested, I'm more than willing to send you a copy via email. Let me know.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:46 PM on December 3, 2004

Oh that's absolutely brilliant, and I'd love to see it (email is in profile). Unfortunately, the "victim" is our front office person: there's no cube or glass... basically a room in between the lobby and the boss' office. The entire office staff is willing to be complicit in this, including my boss. I tend to like subtle pranks that take a long time to become obvious. But yours takes the cake, I just wish I could adapt it to my situation.
posted by moonbird at 6:57 PM on December 3, 2004

What a Scrooge. If you don't like their decorations put up some of your own. Their rebuke seems pretty tame given your Scroogishness (word?).
posted by caddis at 6:57 PM on December 3, 2004

If you really must, confetti in the files.
posted by caddis at 6:58 PM on December 3, 2004

NotMyselfRightNow, that isn't a prank. That's poetry.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 6:58 PM on December 3, 2004

Moonbird - I'll send it to you in the morning. It's on my other laptop which is powered down right now...

Dirtynumbangelboy - Yes. Yes it is. I greatly dislike basic, simple pranks. If you're gonna do it, make it a piece of art!
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 7:06 PM on December 3, 2004

caddis: like I said, it was actually rather nice and sweet, and I'm doing this just for the fun. We used to prank eachother all the time, and this has got me back in the spirit.
posted by moonbird at 7:07 PM on December 3, 2004

Hey, NotMyselfRightNow--I'd also like to see that, it sounds really great (e-mail in profile).
posted by numble at 7:08 PM on December 3, 2004

I'd love to see that too, NotMyselfRightNow. Email also in profile.
posted by Orrorin at 7:19 PM on December 3, 2004

Easy and in the spirit: wrap her office equipment. Her computer, her monitor, her stapler...

She wants festive? Give her festive.

(to be extra nice, you might hide little treats in the wrapping in spots)
posted by frykitty at 7:24 PM on December 3, 2004

Yikes. OK -- putting it online might be a tad easier.... Enjoy.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 7:34 PM on December 3, 2004

Unscrew mouthpiece from phone. Insert frozen smelt or other bait of your choosing. Screw mouthpiece back on. Let the festivities begin.
posted by TimeFactor at 7:41 PM on December 3, 2004

Coating almost everything in your co-worker's cube in foil. This one was time consuming, but effective. Plus it was perpitrated on a fellow MeFite :) [self link]
posted by falconred at 8:03 PM on December 3, 2004

In keeping with the "telephone" motif ... I've always been partial to the ol' "Shaving Cream on the Ear Piece" bit, then call'em from the across the room.
posted by RavinDave at 8:24 PM on December 3, 2004

NotMyselfRightNow, that's beautiful--thanks for sharing the joy with us. How did Leila react?
posted by equipoise at 8:45 PM on December 3, 2004

Along the lines of the 'wrapping'. We once wrapped a vehicle in shrink wrap, the kind you can buy at a U-Haul and a follow-up was to wrap and hang a bike in a tree. note various self-links

Nicely done, NotMyselfRightNow.
posted by geekyguy at 9:34 PM on December 3, 2004

NotMyselfRightNow, that is great.
posted by Vidiot at 9:50 PM on December 3, 2004

Wrap up a box with a smelly, dead fish in it. Give it as a gift with instructions that it is NOT to be opened before Christmas. Insist that it remain on the desk as proof that it hasn't been opened.
posted by willnot at 10:34 PM on December 3, 2004

Notmyselfrightnow.. I hope you continue to use your powers only for good.
posted by Duck_Lips at 11:09 PM on December 3, 2004

More telephone fun: if the handset happens to be black, a thin layer of shoe polish will have them spending hours or days trying to figure out why their ears are always black.

Or, unscrew the cover and swap the '1 2 3' keys with '7 8 9'. (Hard to detect, since the new layout is the same as on their computer/calculator keypad).
posted by Deepspace at 11:46 PM on December 3, 2004

No, no, nothing destructive or asshatish! No fish! No shoe polish! Sheesh.

I really like the gift-wrapping idea. Wrap everything. Wrap her chair. Wrap her pencils. Wrap her computer. Wrap her phone. Wrap all of the files on her desk.
And pick the worst, cheapest, creepiest christmas wrapping paper you can find.
posted by SpecialK at 12:08 AM on December 4, 2004

I worked with a fellow who had a little rubber ducky on his desk that he was really fond of. We found his ducky's clone in a toy store and bought six of them. We took the original and set it aside, then replaced it with one with a BIG rusty nail pounded through its head. He came in and freaked. After he ran out of his office to get someone, we put the original back and took the nail version. Then we repeated the prank with the others.

We also taped the pickup switch to his phone down, relocated the whole phone into the ceiling and set up call forwarding on all the phones in the department to his. That was a little mean and he just stopped answering the phone.
posted by plinth at 2:42 AM on December 4, 2004

One thing I've done twice with good success is the following, but it only works if the victim has a computer with the speakers turned on. Take a microphone, plug it in the sound card, and tape it tightly under the desk, close to one of the desk's legs. That way, every little sound or vibration close to the desk (from mouse movements to footsteps) is amplified and reverberates through the speakers, turning the desk in a personal echo chamber. If done subtly (no larsen), it can take some time before the victim understands what's going on with his/her surroundings/mind/senses. It's not thigh slapping physical comedy, but a nice bit of weird fun nonetheless.
posted by elgilito at 3:14 AM on December 4, 2004

I always liked to leave memos on office mate's desks that say things like: "Ronald called wondering about lunch (486-xxxx)" ... and they number goes to a local McDonalds.
posted by RavinDave at 4:43 AM on December 4, 2004

equipoise, she actually took it amazingly well. When she walked into her office in the morning, she saw it, paused, and picked up the phone. I had the following voicemail from her:

"It's Leila. We need to get you a girlfriend so you have a better way to spend your time."

(I should note, I wasn't at my desk to answer the phone because I was standing next to a Managing Director for safety...)

That afternoon, I was there when she decided to open the door. When she did, and realized that it was all bullshit, she burst out laughing. I helped her clean it up (it only took about 10 minutes) and then we vacuumed the office to get all the little pieces that were left over.

She was a very good sport about the whole thing...
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:58 AM on December 4, 2004

Turn back the clock - to Spring. Lay her cubicle with fresh sod. Add a couple of daisies and a tape of birds chirping. Hang a calendar with the date (March 21) circled. You won't be striking back at Christmas, you'll be denying it completely (in a fun way).

The sod's a bit more of an investment than wrapping paper, but it'll be unforgettable. Don't forget to lay a tarp first so you don't trash the carpet.
posted by zanni at 4:59 AM on December 4, 2004

If you can get to their peecee, go to Microsoft Word's AutoCorrect to change the word "the" to "goatse.cx".
posted by adampsyche at 5:47 AM on December 4, 2004

One caveat about wrapping or other Christmas themed things: in college we tried to get back at a friend's roommate who had gone Christmas crazy. We plastered bows everywhere, in inconvenient places. We hung ornaments from the ceiling just a little too low. The problem? She loved it and left it all up. I kind of like your original idea of something subtle (though I have no idea what you should do) just in case you end up having to live with it.
posted by wallaby at 6:54 AM on December 4, 2004

You could do this: first mail her a nice, sort of romantic, Christmas card, signed "Someone Who is Thinking of You". Next, have a florist deliver a chrysanthemum, with a card saying "You make the season brighter! Love, Your Friend". Next, some kind of Christmas cake or cookies, etc., with a message: "Just a little something sweet, to thank you for your sweetness!", signed "Yours". Then, something a bit more personal, maybe a heart necklace or something, mailed or delivered, with a note "You are in my heart this Christmas. Am I in yours?".

Finally, the coup de grace: a big, big box wrapped in really nice paper and perfectly beribboned, with a note: "Don't open 'til Christmas!" and signed "The One Who Knows What You Really Want". This box is really, really heavy, and filled with bricks (you could actually paint them black for a "coal" effect, or you could go all-out and fill it with coal on top of bricks) and hidden somewhere inside is a little box with the real present, which would be something like this, maybe - but at least a definite "Scrooge" or "Grinch" reference, at which point she should get the joke (but you could add a note to be sure). You probably need to get a friend (and handtruck) to deliver the heavy box, acting as a "delivery person", and you have to keep anybody else in the office from helping her to get it to her car. Then you should have one or two people egging her on to open it right there, after it's delivered. She should also be encouraged to talk and speculate about these strange gifts, and this whole "Christmas mystery" as much as possible during the build-up.
posted by taz at 8:04 AM on December 4, 2004

Have your coworkers fill her office with manure. To keep her away from the office while they're doing this, take her out to dinner, where she'll confide in you that she has cancer.

Oh, wait. That was just an episode of Andy Richter Controls the Universe.
posted by neckro23 at 9:19 AM on December 4, 2004

Minor stuff, but tape the handset button on the phone down. (As plinth said.)

And if she doesn't touch-type, swap the "N" and "M" keys on her keyboard.
posted by Vidiot at 12:40 PM on December 4, 2004

Move in the cubicle dividers by an inch. Repeat each day. Also saw off an inch from their desk legs.
posted by Kilovolt at 8:58 PM on December 4, 2004

One time a co-worker and I replaced the cassette in a music snob's walkman with a tape of "Christmas With the Smurfs", and turned the volume up to high. This sort of thing would work on anyone who listens to CDs while they work.
posted by orange swan at 4:12 PM on December 5, 2004

Office Poltergeist thread on the blue
posted by Sharcho at 1:23 PM on November 11, 2005