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

People have tooo much time on their hands..

[theirishman]

I use to work for HP and they were no fun.. :( and any messing and you were out.. - well I live in the EU so it not that easy to fire me. :) but my employer before HP saw that sort of messing good fun as long as the work was done and noboady or anything was dammaged... I think its realy important to have a good laught in work it helps keep the stress levels way down... is that why I am starting my own business.. ?

Re:People have tooo much time on their hands..

[taniwha]

we actually did the fill-the-office-with-baloons to the VP of engineering for a company I worked for (almost 20 years ago now ...) - came in on Sunday, worked all day 'till when we pushed on in through the ceiling tiles another would burst - it was a great team building exercise we had a great time.

Monday morning he came in a foul mood (usually he was a really great guy) - which kind of ruined it for us. Walking into his office with a pin was a lot of fun though :-)

Bruce Almighty

[tantalus]

Those post-its remind me of a scene from the movie "Bruce Almighty" about an hour into the film. Bruce decides to 'hear' all the prayers in post-it note form and the result puts James and Damon to shame. It's interesting how striking a common office/household item can be when displayed in large quantities like that.

Re:Time on your hands

[KlaymenDK]

Some companies actively encourage it.

Where I worked a few years ago, we had something called a 'friday meeting' the 1st friday of every month. A colleague of mine got severely ridiculed because he thought it wise to bring a pen and some paper for his first attendance --- which was about playing hockey in one of the empty studios. On other occasions we've been out go-carting, and even to a grand casino (complete with free pool-side buffet).

Sure this costs the company money, but they do get return value for it.

Times are changing

[DeanFox]

Last year our group moved from a satellite office into the corporate building. Gone are the parking lot BBQs, etc.

Last month our manager turned 40. We spent 3 hours after work decorating her office with black balloons, streamers, static stickers with over the hill slogans, a walker... You know the drill.

The next morning we were all called into human resources and for 45 minutes admonished for what they perceived as "age discrimination".

Yep... Isn't corporate fun?

Re:Competitive culture

[BlueUnderwear]

(2) Creativity is a core value; breaking expected norms is an expected norm.

With a surprising number of these pranks, the "expected norm" seems to be "fill mark's office with a megazillion of some funny object", be it packing peanuts, post-its, balloons, rubber ducks, bouncy balls, chad, you name it. The only thing creative about it seems the particular choice of "funny object" du jour, but apart from that it looks like the same old joke over and over again... Hey pranksters, next time try breaking this "expected norm", and come up with some truly novel prank, hehe ;)

Re:Competitive culture

[b!arg]

Not work related, but this put these balloons and post its to shame.