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Need A Few Post-Its Around The Office?
An anonymous reader writes "Like every company, we have an office prankster. So, whenever anything goes wrong -- say, your chair starts making unusual noises or your CD tray starts popping out for no reason, invariably you'll look up and see Dave, our esteemed leader, grinning foolishly at his handywork. So really, Damon shouldn't have been surprised when he came into the office one otherwise-normal Monday morning to find this. Nor should James have been surprised when he showed up early one morning to this birthday surprise. It certainly keeps us on our toes." Ah, the joys of not telecommuting ...
NOW I see why outsourcing to India is so much cheaper...
'Nuff said.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
http://www.do-not-sleep.com/images/priceless.jpg
Boss : Uhh Dave, what was the quotation from India
....uhh I got it on a postit somewhere..
........
again..?
Dave:
Boss :
Yup, Bill*, the network guy, is sure going to be surprised when he comes in this morning and finds that he's been thoroughly slashdotted! Post-It notes, balloons, HTTP GET....
*Simulated employee name
...
Now try finding the one he stuck under his desk that has his admin password on.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
He was a great sport about it and is currently planning his pay back... :)
/.ing the server :) The admin won't like this ;)
Seems like he chose
We attached bungee ropes to his swivel chair, and arranged it so that when he sat down, he'd go whizzing across the floor.
It was really funny when he went through the window, landed, and went whizzing down the road.
Wonder if he's also planning payback for having his email inbox full of spam after having it posted on the website?
I find that the ol' gun to the head makes my employees much more productive than any amount of "fun".
Game... blouses.
Update: Sunday, March 21nd, 2004
We shared our story with 3M, the makers of post-its, and they must have got a kick out of it because they sent us 3 cases of post-its "for future decorating".
Aha! The missing step revealed:
1. Decorate office with products from Corporation X
2. Take pictures of said decorations
3. ??? = Send story and pictures to Corporation X
4. Profit! (as Corporation X sends you free product)
I suspect in a few months we'll hear a new story. Damon gets revenge on Dave by stapling a yoga mattress to every surface of his office. They share the story and ACME Yoga Mattress Co. responds by sending three trucks filled with yoga mattresses. Dave quits his job, sells all of them, and becomes the newest dot-calm millionaire. (Oh, you knew the punchline would be bad!)
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Everything in his apartment is wrapped in alumium foil, except for a copy of Penn and Teller's book "Cruel tricks for Dear Friends".
The REAL storyline goes something like this:
Boss: Hey, Dave, what's the capacity of our website software?
Dave: What do you mean?
Boss: Well, a client asked me how much traffic load it can handle.
Dave: I dunnow, we never REALLY stress-tested the thing. Want me to find out?
Boss: Yes, please do!
Dave: OK, I'll need 400 post-it note pads, 650 balloons and a digital camera.
Boss: Huh?
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I'm a natural cynic and the deliberate nod to 3M at the end of the article makes me think this is a viral marketing campaign.
On the other hand, I've mentioned 3M twice in this short reply so perhaps *I'm* the viral marketer.
I hada guy next to me playing small tricks on me all the time. One day I got him back by turning over everyhing on his desk - from computer and monitor to all his files.
Another time is was unintentional. I emailed him one of those stupid little flash games where you shoot up your desktop with a noisy uzi. Right in the middle of shredding his desktop, in walks the VP of the company. At the time we were seated with our backs to the entrance so it took my friend a minute that the room had gone pretty much silent. What really added to this was the fact that he was the most paranoid about using his computer only for company business - and the one time he decides to screw off....
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
That reminds me of something that happened when I was at college. I got back one day to find that some other maths students had filled my room with screwed up balls of newspaper. And I mean filled. I couldn't even open the door more than a crack. It took a couple of hours and lots of black bags to clear that one up.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
Back in the mid 1980s, I was working for a division of a large multinational. Some of the employees had quite a creative sense of humour (including, fortunately as will soon become apparent, the department manager).
At the time, there was a lot of hiring going on. On the manager's birthday, he was conducting job interviews most of the morning. His last applicant of the morning was a plant! You need to understand that, while blessed with a good sense of humour, he was happily married and quite conservative. The "applicant" was an attractive 24 year old redhead, very well endowed, and as sexually dressed as was consistent with a possible job applicant. The interview started normally, but gradually the young lady started making more and more pointed hints that she really wanted the job and would be willing to be very grateful if hired. Eventually, she was draping herself all over our leader who was desperately trying to ease her out of his office and looking as if he was about to suffer a coronary. [We had arranged to catch everything on video tape for checking out later.] When he finally managed to get the young lady across his office and open the door, the whole department was outside ready to wish him Happy Birthday. That was his first intimation that it was a setup!
I work in a camera store as the manager. Including me, there are six people who work at that location.
We received about one hundred Russ brand stuffed bears, to be sold "as a deal" with film processing. As you can imagine, it didn't really take off, and in April I still have 70 odd bears lying around my store.
We had been playing games with each other involving the bears but for several months it was fairly quiet.
Until I took several days off following Easter.
I walked in on Thursday to start my week, and upon opening the door to the back room, discovered a curtain of bears in my way. The two girls at work used kite string to bind the bears about the neck and waist to suspend them, and tied all of their paws together so that they all faced the door. There was a sign in the center that said "Supplies!" (Referencing UHF)
On the white board on the door, there was this note:
"
24 Russ bears: $599.76
Kite String: $4.99
The look on your face right now: Priceless (We hope)
******* Camera, it's everywhere you want to be.
"
Somedays my job isn't so bad...
Back in 98, I installed a screensaver on a few file servers (NT 4.0). What was nifty about it was that it showed the total RAM count and was performing a filecheck that actually read the files (RAID activity can be heard) and flagged them as corrupted. Of course, the files were perfectly fine in reality.
Oh man...did I catch hell from my manager when he dropped his coffee mug and ran into the server room and pulled the plug on the RAID. Though I laughed really hard...he obviously didnt.
From that point on, we had to restore the file server because the system wasn't shutdown properly. Fuck...he only needed to move the mouse or press a key to kick the screen saver off.
Life is not for the lazy.
So you're telling me superglue is like perl?
Hell yeah it is. Nobody understands it, everybody screams about how great it is, promises to work forever but in reality only works for about three hours.
Hell yeah superglue is just like perl.
Like what I said? You might like my music
I should point out that my victims always get me back, usually by spraying anti-static cleaner through the back of my desk fan when I'm not expecting it (instant winter wonderland), or by stamping "REFERENCE COPY ONLY" across my forehead with the drawing office stamp (permanent).
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Check this out, some guys in the office built a cage overnight...
http://www.klod.net/stuff/yannis_trap.jpg
It also had a door that could lock, the door closing would be triggered by pulling the chair when the guy got inside the cage.
...birthday presents (a vibrator), taken the wrong way and ...
Indeed. A vibrator taken the wrong way can bring tears to the eyes, I am sure.
Some pranks from an old job:
Seal a vacationing manager's door shut with industrial strength plastic wrap and tape 2x4s across it like you'd see nailed across a broken window.
Fill the company president's office with 1300 balloons, some helium and some regular air, for her 40th birthday. She almost had a heart attack when she opened the door the next morning and a wall of balloons fell out.
TP the comapny founder's office on a day when he wasn't in. Housekeeping cleaned it up before he saw it!
There was a roof leak over the development area so we put up a makeshift roof with 2x4s and tarps to protect the computers. My supervisor asked me to help her take them down after the leak was fixed. We were carrying everything back to the warehouse when I noticed the guy in the next cubicle wasn't around, so I dumped everything in there, rather than carry it the additional twenty feet.
We had foam rubber computer mice with the company logo, url, etc. that were supossed to be given out at trade shows. They usually ended up being used as missiles by the founder. The wars never lasted more than a few minutes, because the company president (also his wife) would hear the noise and confiscate our arsenal, and tell him to get back in his cage.
It's not surprising how often pranks were played at that company. My second interview (with every manager at the same time) degenerated to the founder and I insulting each other within ten minutes. He said I'd fit in well.
And when the office web server crashed from a posting to slashdot, low and behold, there was Dave closing a browser window to slashdot.org
I'm applying for a job at 3M.
I anticipate an increase in demand for Post-Its.
I went on a week vacation and the regional secretary who relied on my technical support made sure that I knew she'd call me at home if there was anything she needed.
I never got personal calls at home during working hours. So, on my first day of vacation, I forwarded my phone to her.
She tried all week to get a hold of me. When she called me her line two would start ringing. Waiting and waiting finally she'd hang up and answer line two but no body was there.
She'd try again and line two would start ringing. She'd try putting me on hold to answer the other line. No one was there, so she'd hang up and come back to me, but because she had answered and disconnected, the line she was calling me on was now a dial tone. She figured I had probably answered and hung up.
Apparently this went on all week. Every time she'd call me her other line would ring and then all the stuff with disconnects and no one on the other line... She never figured it out and by the end of the week was very frustrated.
When I got back she went on and on about how she tried to call me. Then all the stories about how every time she did the other line would ring and then the disconnects.
I fessed up and told her what I did. Everyone in the office was laughing their ass off, except for her. She was stunned. I could see her thinking back and then putting two and two together. She finely got over it, probably after spitting in my coffee for a week or something to get even.
Office pranks are OK. The swapping of telephone and keyboard keys. The taping up of mouse balls. Phantom phone calls... but nothing compares to factory floor pranks. They can be truly evil.
As patternmakers, my colleagues and I had to make...um...patterns. This involved a lot of measuring and marking out with steel rules. One day I guillotined the first 10mm off of my mate's steel rule - it's not the end you look at very often. He marked out half a dozen pieces that would have formed a box shape and proceeded to cut them out... The laughing started when his pieces wouldn't fit together properly as they were all 10mm short. It slowing turned into howling as he marked out the pieces again and proceeded to cut them for a second time. We were all clutching our sides when both sets of pieces were sat side by side - they were identical. He never found out it was me.
We played around with plaster from time to time too. The favourite was to fill a plastic coffee cup with plaster and attach a self-tapping screw to it. When set, we would screw the cup to the floor upsidedown... Everyone who walked passed would kick the cup in their best David Beckham style and fall flat on their faces. Oh the joy. They didn't see that coming.
Rubbing people's pencil down the crack of your arse was a favourite too. Some people, mainly the smokers, could not go for more than a few minutes without having a good chew on the end. The smell hits you second. Hmm tasty.
Filling people's gloves with grease was always good for a laugh too.
Holes for washers, long weights (waits) and left handed screwdrivers were a favourite with the apprentices. Each year September was the best.
It’s a wonder how we ever made any money. Oh wait, we didn't and that's why I now work in an office...
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