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Harmless Pranks During a Downsizing?
Jailbrekr asks: "I am the I/T manager for a large horticultural firm, and will soon be a victim of aggressive downsizing. The downsizing is so aggressive that my position, the only I/T related position, will be eliminated. Being the lone gun has meant that I have held a significant amount of power within this organization, and until now, have refrained from abusing it. Seeing as I will soon be out of work, I have begun my (tongue in cheek) 'reign of terror'. To start, this week is 'Gummi Bear Week', where everyones wallpapers now have a (worksafe) gummi bear theme.What I need are suggestions. What can I possibly do that is work safe, humorous, and not something which will get me fired prematurely? During the dot bust, when downsizing was all the rage, what did the tech geeks do to abuse their power, and keep the workforce entertained during those especially stressful periods?"
Windows DrunkenMouse.exe and ChristmasLights.exe were always quite amusing to run on remote computers. :-)
accidentally redirect the top secret executive salaries e-mails/spreadsheets/etc to the public mailing list. This is especially a good idea just before a downsizing. Make it look like a simple computer error. Being the head of IT, that should be fairly simple.
Read up young grasshopper.
Shouldn't you start sending our your resume and start figuring out who won't be fired so you can ask them to provide a reference for you?
Just don't do something stupid like running magnets over all of the backup tapes, that would be wrong and terribly illegal, especially if someone were to hollow out the inner workings of all of the servers.
[o]_O
Have you considered installing the BSOD screen saver on every PC? Nothing bad happens unless someone panics and hits CTL-ALT-DEL. And since the three finger salute is user initiated, any problems because of this are user error, and thus beneath the concern of a short timer.
- doug
It's handy that your .sig is tied directly to what you said:
/"
"Run this and win a free pony: sudo rm -rf
Gave me a laugh!
Karnal
14 words: badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
Some of us have spent most of our lives in school, and when we went out in the workforce, all we could find after 6 months of hardcore job seeking was a 6.75$ an hour job part time at Burger King.
Haha you suck
You claim to be at a large company, that you are the only IT staff, and you are about to be downsized. You don't say whether or not the company will continue operations, will it?
If this company is going to continue operating it will need support for its IT infrastructure. Where will this support be coming from? There is no one better to support them, right now, than you so, use this as an opportunity. Set yourself up as a consultant or the one they outsource their support to. This lets them keep operating smoothly and offers you a chance at a pay rise.
It happens like this all the time. The full-time IT staff is downsized, only to return the next day as contractors getting paid much more than they were the day before.
If however, you play pranks and are generally unprofessional about the job then you lose your job and a good opportunity.
After all, since the IT person is being eliminated it is EVERYONES responsibility to keep things up and running.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Maybe that's why they're letting you go...
As the survivor of a number of layoffs, and the victim of one myself, I don't agree. Anything that lightens the mood will do the group good, otherwise you dwell on the negative and use terms like "walking dead" (those given pink slips), "angel of death" (the person who hands out the pink slips), "near miss" (being in the cube next to a visitation of the Angel of Death) and so on. This isn't a healthy state of mind. As long as the pranks are harmless, most people understand the situation, and you might even get a smile or two.
Obviously there will be a handful of people that won't get it, but they are usually well known as difficult. Admins are used to this sort of person because they have to deal with them all the time. (Note: "used to" and "like" can be miles apart.)
One thing that I do agree with is "stressed out as my livelyhood" bit. He shouldn't do things like deactivate everyone's accounts. That would get people thinking that they had been axed and hadn't been told. That would cross the line.
- doug
Be professional, and don't mess with their systems. In this day and age, it's not a good idea to be labelled as a "[cr|h]acker". Best case scenario: you get let go early. Worst case: they blame all of their problems on you (now and in the future), and/or The Law comes knocking at your door. That level of liability is not good.
Having said that... enjoy your "paid vacation". Don't put in overtime or give the extra effort unless you know the rank-and-file workers (not management) will be harmed by it.
Turn the pager and cellphone off when you're not at work.
Take time every day to look at the newspaper's job section -- even if you've already got something lined up.
This is place-specific, but... if your company has an informal dress code, show up in a suit and tie. And make sure that you are adamant about your hours that day -- or cut back a few hours. If you're in a suit-and-tie office, tweak the dress code as far as possible within the letter of the rules.
Take the time to correspond with friends and contacts, giving them all your new email address.
Catch up on your reading. Put your name in ink on your computer books, or if you want to be bold, pick up just about anything else. You know what will be least (or most) upsetting to your coworkers.
If at all possible, try not to write any kind of scripts to automate your job. This sounds petty on the surface, but if/when something breaks you don't want to be getting any phone calls -- or having it look like you got in to break something. Unless you're getting a nice stay-bonus or severance package, what happens after you're gone is not your problem.
If you do the opposite ("do good to those who harm you, etc."), you have the opportunity to demonstrate that you are a worthwhile source for the consulting work they will surely need, and a good reference.
Horticulture is a good model for your preparation:
First, prepare the ground. Make an extra effort to make sure that things will run as smoothly as possible, put together a plan for them that includes what you, in your professional opinion, consider the minimum admin support - perhaps a visit once per month.
Fertilize. If you do this, you may develop the first valued customer in your consulting business, which might continue after you take another job ==> extra $$. They already trust you enough to employ you; now they will know they can trust you enough to retain you.
Plant the seed. Ask them for a letter of recommendation. Ask the boss to send it to his friends, citing the reasons he is forced to let you go. He may well find you your new job, or several good consulting prospects.
Water and nurture. This may be the opportunity for you to establish your new life at the next level.
Have faith. Watch as God (or whoever you prefer to consider) gives rain and sun to your new life.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
That's not really a response to what he asked, is it?
... but that would just be wrong.
He already knows it's not professional.
At any rate, a really fun thing to do is rename/reroute all the printers. It's great fun to see someone try to print out their document five times with no response, then have a coworker track them down hours later with a huge stack of duplicates.
If you're phone system is programmable, (and your phones have LCD displays) you can setup specific messages when specific extensions ring.
Remap keyboards, and then log out of the machine. This works great if the user of that specific workstation's name is automatically filled in (or in the case of XP, you only have to click on it).
Ultimately, I wish you could do something like rewrite the local routing tables, or 'corrupt' the backups, or infect the network with a benign virus, then miraculously come to the rescue, thus proving your worth to the company
Good luck, mate.
The IT peon and myself (the non-IT peon) set up a local server that thought it was www.google.com, and looked like google.com -- until you tried to search (or click any other link) at which point it delivered a page in googlesque legalese suggesting that searches "from your IP address" are not allowed, and that google was "cooperating fully with the authorities in an ongoing investigation".
Then we changed 1/3 of the office machines' hosts file to point google.com domain requests to it.
In mid-may, a few people still had it on their machines, and had NOT sought assistance in removing it because they didn't want to call attention to it. Heh.
I mean, it's not like there are links to follow or anything?
How come everybody is all "Don't be 'that' guy", rather than attempting to understand the intent of the post? He even states, IN THE TEXT that he's looking for harmless things to do that will KEEP EVERYBODY AMUSED. I mean, it takes like, what, 5 minutes to do stuff like change the wallpaper for well administered workplaces?
Seriously, he's not doing damage, and he doesn't seem to be interested in malicious behavior, just some fun for dark times.
here's one:
Set up a message broadcast system and play a game of simon says with everybody in the office.
hmmmm?
Staff live in fear of the power of the IT people. Anything you do that reminds them of this will be taken badly. Even the most light-hearted of practical jokes will get your arse handed to you.