Office Pranks: Unlocked Computers

“My screen is frozen!” said a co-worker.  Despite abusing his mouse and smacking the PC tower the screen maintained its frozen status.  How frustrating that must be to see your Outlook email in the background and all of your windows consolidated on the bottom yet unable to open them or move your cursor.

What this guy didn’t realize was that someone had taken a screen shot of his screen by holding the control button and pressing the “print screen” button on the keyboard.  This copies your screen as it shows on your monitor and with some saving skills and then posting as wallpaper it can render the appearance of a frozen screen.

It’s really quite a genius prank and can elicit high levels of blood pressure and frustration.  It also can elicit secret laughter and concealed snickering by those administering the prank.

Leaving Your Computer Unlocked

The window of opportunity for pranks increase exponentially when one leaves their computer unlocked and vulnerable to other co-workers.

Another common office prank is to rush over to the unlocked computer and send a mass email out to either the company or team from which the victim is a part.

Some examples of the types of emails that are sent out are messages like ” Tomorrow I will buy lunch for everyone! What kind should I order?” or something generic like “I left my computer unlocked”.

Honestly I have had many opportunities to execute such a prank and it takes a lot of self control to not put something madly embarrassing like “Pee wee Herman is my hero” or “I love boogers”.  Perhaps part of what keeps me from doing it is knowing that most people would suspect me anyways and my ability to keep the zygomaticus (smiling) muscles from contracting is severely limited.

So don’t become a victim, remember to lock your computers when you go away from your desk!

Office Pranks: URMOM

While I was commencing my education in the financial services industry, there were several people in my training class who were anxious to find good stocks and investments to analyze.  So one day, I saw a perfect opportunity with a good friend and co-worker who sat next to me.

We were on a break between lectures when I saw my friend looking up some ticker symbols.  I told him about a stock that was AMAZING, had a lot of upside potential, and was sure to make him a lot of money.  Eager to receive the information, I told him to look up the following ticker, “Alright I’ll spell it, ready?” My friend, “yeah, go ahead!”, I then just spelled URMOM.

Looking at his face contort with confusion, he was baffled why it wasn’t coming up.  No charts, no information to analyze, surely he had done something wrong.  Then I started to laugh, and it was then and only then that he realized what he had spelled~ URMOM.  Muahahahahahaha!

When Pranks Go Wrong

Have there ever been times where pranks have not gone so well or when pranks have gone completely wrong? 

YES!!!  There are 2 things that can happen when pranks go wrong:

1-  Either the unexpected reaction makes the prank funnier    OR

2-  it produces a very undesirable result  (ie. not funny)

On the fly here I can think of 3 personal experiences that come to mind as I think about pranks gone wrong.

Shaving cream and feather

I’ll never forget the time in high school when a few of my friends and my cousin who was in town had a sleep over.  If you know anything about sleep overs with friends (especially prank-prone friends) you never should be the one to fall asleep first.

So there he was~ my cousin, ever so peacefully resting in the land of horizontal slumber.  We had seen the prank administered before but with shaving cream.  Yes the shaving cream and feather prank! Yet in this case we had to modify it slightly (no shaving cream) to a “toothpaste and feather prank”.  We filled his hand full of toothpaste then ever so lightly tickled his nose and… wallla!  Cousin with toothpaste face.

Rather than applying the toothpaste to the tickled area, he  smeared it into his eyes and all over his forehead.  Note to self:  ”Apparently” it hurts when you get toothpaste in your eyes.  I really felt like a Jerk-face that day.  Sorry Garrett 

Spider fuzz

When you’re  young sometimes church isn’t the most exciting place to be at 9 in the morning.  So my brother and I found a way to prank others while sitting in church pews.  We would pluck from our fuzzy black socks little fuzzballs and blow them airborne to watch them land on peoples heads in front of us.  Often our parents would look our way and wonder what in the world we were smiling about.

Then there was that day when a sweet old lady mistook the fuzzball for a slowly descending spider.  She exclaimed, “Ahhh!  A spider!!! A spider!!!”.

Catfish fight

On a summer day at the beach my brother and our friends discovered some small dead catfish laying in the sand.  Let’s see, dead catfish~ bored kids…  why don’t we have a catfish fight?

Only somehow we forgot that catfish have very sharp fins.  Hmmm…  As our friends were tossing catfish I remember the  exchange came to an abrupt halt and ended with tears.   Yep, one of the catfish ended up sticking into the leg of my brother’s friend.  He had this dead catfish hanging from his thigh and for some reason he didn’t think it was so funny…

I’m not going to mention the time I rolled my neighbor’s house and got caught and had to apologize and clean it up…  I know there’s tons more out there which might deserve a second post but please do share if you have any to humor us with