The Prank Thread

[Robert Coats]

Pretty sure all of us have been pranked...so share your best one (pranker or prankee).

For me, it was when I was working at Honda (lawn mower division) and caught the motorcycling bug kinda late in life (32). The motorcycle division would often sell-off slightly used press/photo/demo bikes to associates, and I manged to snag one. I was pumped when it was unloaded into our shop, but had to wait until after work to break it out of the crate. Did I mention it sat in our shop for a few hours? With a couple of guys back there eager to nail me in a prank?

Come 5 or so, I dashed backed to the shop and broke the crate loose; it was a stunning fire-engine red and looked clean and in top shape. Less than 100 miles on the clock. I rolled it onto the floor and lifted up on the centerstand, and started going over it carefully. Then I saw it. A yellow tag wired to the right side of the engine. I fished it out and written on the side were the words "Low compression on #4---M/C Engineering" I was heartbroken! How the f could a bike with such low miles have "low compression?" I stood back with my arms folded and shook my head. Then, I heard some gunts and giggles behind me, and turned around to see the two shop guys and one of our engineers all holding up yellow tags and they busted out in laughter. I had to smile myself; they knew I was a newbie to motorcycles, and couldn't resist a plumb chance like this.

[Bill Douglas]

I nearly, nearly, pranked my GF with a good one.

She said that she didn't think much of the shower cleaning product that I had. And I said "Have you seen the ad's on TV for Golden Products. They're meant to be really good." "There is Golden Floor, Golden Bath, and Golden Shower. If you go to the supermarket and ask for Golden Shower I'm sure they can help you." LOL she was just about to go to the shops when she figured it out.

[LWJ]

Oh just a few...

Co-worker liked to drink at lunch. He would brush teeth on return. A different co-worker filled his toothpaste with dental adhesive. Holy kraaaap. That was epic.

[ZOO]

I used to have a Lotus Elise that attracted a lot of attention at autocross and other events. One time a younger guy and his very attractive girlfriend were looking at it, and I invited him to sit in the driver's seat (mostly because he was really interested, and a little bit because I was enjoying flirting with his companion). Once he was firmly in the Elise, door closed, and all, I said:

"Crap, here comes the owner . . ."

If you know anything about an Elise, you know you don't get out quickly. Especially if you've never done it before. The look on his face as he began to scramble was priceless. I let him struggle for a few seconds before I reassured him it was indeed my car.

[Geronimo '74]

Originally Posted by ZOO

I used to have a Lotus Elise that attracted a lot of attention at autocross and other events. One time a younger guy and his very attractive girlfriend were looking at it, and I invited him to sit in the driver's seat (mostly because he was really interested, and a little bit because I was enjoying flirting with his companion). Once he was firmly in the Elise, door closed, and all, I said:

"Crap, here comes the owner . . ."

If you know anything about an Elise, you know you don't get out quickly. Especially if you've never done it before. The look on his face as he began to scramble was priceless. I let him struggle for a few seconds before I reassured him it was indeed my car.

good one

[fastfredracing]

How about coming into work in the morning to find a grease nipple threaded into one of your tool box drawers . We had a 30 gallon pneumatic grease gun, so you can only imagine what was found inside the tool box .( the boxes and tools were owned by the company )

[Rusty Heap]

Prank a co-worker by taping a post-it note to the bottom of their computer mouse so it doesn't work. Leave your favorite message written on it.

[peppy]

I recently informed our school aged staff that the state of Virginia was going to require an extra year of school to earn a diploma. This was to make up for the lost instruction with Covid.

[oldE]

Last day in residence after putting up with the party guys in the next room. The doors in that residence swung outward because the rooms were so small. My neighbors were known for their loud music, limited vocabulary relying heavily upon profanity and slamming doors. On the last day, while they were writing exams, I removed the hinge pins from their doors and hid them in the bathroom cabinets. It didn't really make up for 8 months of their annoying ways, but brought smiles to several other faces on the floor when they returned to their rooms and yanked their doors open.

Best
Les

[Zeke]

I changed the electrical outlets in a house for a lady friend. Good friend or I wouldn't have done what I did. After turning all the breakers back on I saw one I had missed. I said I'll just do it hot, which I did. After making the connection, folding the wires and stuffing it back in the box, I had a short 1/2" piece of copper wire on the floor along with some other trash from stripping back to new wire.

I swept up the debris and picked out the short wire and said hold out your hand. I started to drop the wire in her hand while saying. "Wanna see how just a little shock feels?"

She jumped back. Mean, I know, but I thought it was hilarious. That kind of joke takes advantage of most people's lack of understanding of electricity and their well founded fear.

Yeah, that's mean but we had a laugh. Only a good friend would stay a good friend after something like that. Electricity should not be part of a joke. It was spur of the moment. I'm not good at thinking up and planning a good prank.

I was just talking about people and their sense of humor yesterday. When I made a mistake or fell down, anything a little embarrassing, my ex wife would howl laughing.

That and a few other things made her the ex. She was nasty to the end. She died 8 years ago. No joke. Just fell over dead alone. Must have been a reason for that.

[flatbutt]

Back in my bench chemist days I worked with a guy who was a big pranker. He ran some Tygon tubing from a water tap and taped it underneath the weighing table I used. When I sat down to weigh a sample, he turned on the water and got me right in the crotch!

He was in the habit of wearing a fedora. So I started figuring out how to booby trap his hat. He'd never suspect that. So, I figured how to form some thick azz labfoil into a cup and attach it to the inside of his hat in such a way that whatever I put into the foil would spill onto his head when he put the hat on.

I used dilute methylene blue.

A ceasefire followed.

[craigster59]

We were filming up on Mystery Mesa in Santa Clarita for a film "Charlie Wilson's War". It's the location you see at the end of Spielberg's "Duel" where the tanker goes over the cliff (spoiler alert). The place is notorious for rattlesnakes, we even had a "wrangler" full time on set to catch and release them on an as needed basis.

There was a grip who thought it was real funny to place this rubber snake under rocks, furniture and set dressing so when you'd go to move it for camera, you'd jump 20 feet back while letting out a yell.

So we took one of those big ass zip ties and placed it around the driveshaft of his truck parked in "crew parking". We used packaging tape to hold down the tail end.

He lived out in Lancaster/Palmdale, about an hour's drive on the freeway through the high desert.

Well, we finally wrapped around 11PM and he drove home and as the driveshaft heated up, it let loose the tail of the zip tie and it started whacking the underside of his vehicle. He had it towed to a 24 hour garage and they put it on the lift, noticed the zip tie, snipped it and he was on his way.

Never tried to pull that "snake BS" the rest of the show.

[Dixie]

Nah... That prank would be too cruel.

[lindbhr]

Over 30 years ago, my parents moved to Louisville, KY. and I brought my girlfriend with me to visit at Christmas. We went downtown for the first time to walk around and parked the car on the street. We came back to the car in about 30 minutes, or at least that's what we thought. The car was gone. Did we forget where we parked? Was the car stolen? We were looking all around us and very confused. Then I noticed my two brothers hiding behind a telephone pole laughing big time. They had moved the car down the block. They got us good!

[Amail]

Back when Windows security was pretty lax I edited my division president's Word dictionary to autocorrect his name to Archbishop of Canterbury. Took a few weeks before he got an email from a client asking why he'd signed a document with that title.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Amail

Back when Windows security was pretty lax I edited my division president's Word dictionary to autocorrect his name to Archbishop of Canterbury. Took a few weeks before he got an email from a client asking why he'd signed a document with that title.

LOL!

I worked in a call center. I remember seeing this one a couple of times. Take a screenshot of the windows desktop. Then set that as the background and hide all of the icons. So you see the icons and you click the icons, but nothing happens. Pretty funny when the folks getting pranked weren't that computer savvy (which made it especially funny since we provided computer technical support).

[herr_oberst]

Before OSX, it was a simple matter to change alert sounds and alert messages in the Apple OS.

Without too much effort you could record and replace one of the Apple sounds with your own. I'd prank other workstations with F1 cars at full chat, or Top Fuel dragsters or song snippets. Alert boxes would say things like "Really?" or "You're not very good at this, are you?" or "Go see Betty in HR"

(To be honest, the alert sound prank was usually pretty grating by the end of the day)

[rwest]

I retired at the end of May this year, but before I left, the 10 year capital improvement budget requests where due. I did a very thorough job, I met with all the different departments to see what kind of facility improvements they wanted as well as entering in structural and mechanical items for each building. I updated all the existing entries and even advised the new finance staff on people’s names in the system that should be removed because many hadn’t worked there in many years and one had even died a few years back.

Then... I added an additional request. $500,000 for “public art”. In the software there are several boxes to put in explanations and budget impact information. For the description, I put down that it was for a large bronze statue of me on the grounds. In the next section I explained that it would likely become a tourist destination with people flying in from Sweden and Japan bringing in millions or dollars in revenue to the region as well as hosting festivals etc.

I figured that when they did a first look at the requests, someone would see it right away, have a good laugh and delete it...yeah, not so much, I had to stop into work a couple months later to get some HR help and ran into the Deputy City Manager and the City Manager. So I casually asked how the budget went- “That wasn’t funny” said the Deputy. The City Manager said she thought it was pretty funny, but it ended up going pretty far up the process before it was caught!

I had joked with a few co-workers before I left that with the way things had been going, I would probably get a call from an artist this summer needing me to do a sitting...

[herr_oberst]

Originally Posted by rwest

I had joked with a few co-workers before I left that with the way things had been going, I would probably get a call from an artist this summer needing me to do a sitting...

I immediately thought of the TV show Californication when I read this. There was a scene where a full size statue of Lew Ashby the music producer was unveiled in the cemetery. He's wearing a kilt down to his knees. There's also a surprise. Swhwinggg!

[cjh]

Buried the guts of a smoke detector with a dying battery deep inside of a coworkers desk and camouflaged it so well it took him 2 days to find the periodic beep coming from his work area.