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 ...

Comments

No wonder...

[Da Fokka]

NOW I see why outsourcing to India is so much cheaper...

First Post-It!

[LooseChanj]

'Nuff said.

Re:First Post-It!

[Steamhead]

I do balieve this man had the first post-it

Peanuts are better!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.do-not-sleep.com/images/priceless.jpg

The boss....

[api_syurga]

Boss : Uhh Dave, what was the quotation from India
again..?

Dave: ....uhh I got it on a postit somewhere..

Boss : ........

The Third and Final Prank

[cybermace5]

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

Re:The Third and Final Prank

[cybermace5]

I take it back, after an initial hiccup, the site seems to have stepped up to the plate!

Is there a big red button in the server room, labeled "BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF SLASHDOT" or something?

I remember someone like that

[91degrees]

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.

Re:Time on your hands

[lewp]

I find that the ol' gun to the head makes my employees much more productive than any amount of "fun".

New business plan?

[nacturation]

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!)

Friends wrap Chris Kirk's apartment in foil

[alanxyzzy]

Everything in his apartment is wrapped in alumium foil, except for a copy of Penn and Teller's book "Cruel tricks for Dear Friends".

A great tradition continues.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the office prank. Best one I ever saw is still the glitter trap.

Example: joke subject sits at a desk, pulls out a drawer. A string runs from the back of the drawer, up the wall, into the false ceiling, over to a spot directly over the subject's head, where it triggers the trap: a mousetrap whose action snaps a card away from its position covering a funnel, releasing a handful of glitter, which flows down the funnel, through its spout, through a hole in the ceiling acoustic tile, onto the subject.

It was wonderful to watch: a muffled snapping noise, a quiet "chuff", and the slow, glittery descent of a cloud of brightly colored dust, to settle over the head and shoulders of a club member who by now has assumed an expression of appreciative resignation.

The REAL storyline:

[Big Nothing]

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?

Call me Cynical

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

BSOD screensaver

[DigiShaman]

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.

Re:BSOD screensaver

[AndroidCat]

If you want a simple way to mess someone up, take a screen shot of the desktop (with a window or two open). Then set it as the desktop background. "Why won't those #$%@ windows close?!"

Re:Sweet Revenge

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the `preview` Button has been changed to a `post with wrong spelling` button, Taco you prankster!!!!!!

Engineering pranks

[tttonyyy]

My favourite trick is to wake people up with this cap I've got. It's 450VDC, 1000uF (that's 100J of energy). I charge it with some liberated PP3s (50 plugged end-on-end in series) and then sneak up behind a colleague half-dozing at his desk, carefully apply a screwdriver across the terminals and *CRACK!*. Watching the adrenaline rush combined with fight/flight reactions is very interesting and highly amusing. (Doesn't do the screwdriver much good though.)

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).

Re:Time on your hands

[iworm]

...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.

Phone Forwarding

[DeanFox]

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.