Part III: The Pranks

[Johnny Come Lately Name]

I have never worked - before or since - with such a group of pranksters. Most workplace pranks are pretty standard and unimaginative. Oh, no, not these guys… They really forced me to up my game. There were, however, ground rules. You couldn’t do anything that could result in someone getting hurt, nothing that would ruin something (like clothing) and doing something that could result in work getting screwed up was a no-no. Pretty much everything else was fair game. It was clever and varied in scale from subtle to epic…and it was constant. 

I quickly learned not to leave a lunch bag unattended, such as when you were getting ready to go home. Someone would helpfully add something - preferably something you’d have to remember to bring back - such as your calipers. You’d get home, empty the bag and go “….shit…” 

George used to do one that I loved, just for its simplicity: got a bunch of extra keys lying around the house that you don’t know what they’re for? Bring them to work and add them to someone else’s key ring that they left unattended.

Leave a magazine or catalog with your mailing address on it? Bad move. You would soon be on the receiving end of every junk mail outfit out there. Rip the label off or black it out with a marker.

“Kick me” signs were beneath us, we had better stuff to work with. The company got ceramic cores in that were packed in some sort of fluffy cotton stuff. One quick wrap with masking tape, a paper clip bent into an S hook and you had a neat little bunny tail ready to be hooked to an unsuspecting belt loop. On several occasions I saw Stanley Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail… Also in that vein was George’s habit of keeping a case of Butter Lover’s microwave popcorn on his bench. A little judicious work with an Xacto knife and you had yourself a nice bright yellow “Butt Lover” logo. (That only worked once. After I affixed one to Stanley, George thereafter defaced the logos when he brought popcorn in, so as not to wind up on the receiving end. )Timing was paramount, of course. Thursdays at lunch time was Prime Time. That way, everyone waiting at the time clock to go to the bank could appreciate your handiwork.

Some of it involved clever social engineering tactics. One source of amusement was to do something to one guy in such a way that he’d blame one of the other guys and retaliate…and you could just sit back and watch the fun. George did one that left me in awe: Stanley used to eat sardines, on occasion. George would watch, and when Stanley threw the “empty” can in the trash, George would retrieve it and stash it somewhere in the boss’s office. The boss would eventually literally get wind of it, find the can and bitch at Stanley. (The only one who ate sardines). George did this a couple of times and then astutely reasoned that if he did it again, it would be too obvious - so he switched tactics. Stanley ate some sardines, deposited the can into the trash and George said “Watch this…” He went over, took the can out of the trash and set it on the floor, in front of the can. The can was right outside the boss’s office. The boss came out and as he was walking by, saw the can…and started bitching at Stanley. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you even put this thing in the trash???” Stanley sheepishly came over, picked it up and put it in the trash, saying “I think I’m being set up….” I turned to George and did a golf clap.

[JerrySTL ★]

I once pulled a prank that nearly got me beat up. I put a few cigarette loads into a few cigars of a coworker. Cigarette loads explode when the fire gets to them. At night he played in a C&W band, and I happened to go see them at a local bar that night. During a break between songs, he pulls out a cigar. Oh shit! Even worse, he gives one to a bandmate who had recently been in a car accident and had some stitches on his face and elsewhere. Sure enough they started playing the next song and the cigar exploded on the guy who had been in the car wreck. I think that I must have put three loads in that cigar. A few people dived under tables thinking it was a shooting. The guy with tobacco in his stitches looks at my coworker like he was going to kill him. Of course my coworker points the finger at me. Oh shit! About that time people started laughing. I think that might have saved my life.

[Johnny Come Lately Name]

42 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

I once pulled a prank that nearly got me beat up. I put a few cigarette loads into a few cigars of a coworker.

Nah, we never did stuff like that.

Closest I came was when I found my cow-orker’s stash of toothpicks (he always had one in his mouth) and I took a couple and stabbed them through a jalapeño a few times. 

He threw the whole box out.

[Airehead]

I want a key to add to Einstein’s key ring. 

[Johnny Come Lately Name]

1 minute ago, Airehead said:

I want a key to add to Einstein’s key ring. 

I have a bunch in the basement…

[Airehead]

7 minutes ago, F_in Ray Of Sunshine said:

I have a bunch in the basement…

It would drive that husband of mine insane. 

[JerrySTL ★]

I pulled an elaborate joke on my admin troop when I was in the USAF. I ran a school for aircraft maintenance people and could have around 100 students at one time. I had various people call the office looking for Captain Smith. I made sure that we didn't have a Captain Smith in a class. The first time Bob went through all the class rosters looking for Captain Smith. After the second call, he looked again. About the fourth call, he started asking each instructor if they had a Captain Smith in a class. About the 10th call, he was checking with the base locator roster. I hadn't thought of that, but luckily there wasn't a Captain Smith.

Towards the end of the day, and about 20 phone calls, I had someone call Bob and say "This is Captain Smith. Did anyone call for me?" Bob was so apoplectic that he couldn't form any words. That's when the whole office burst out laughing. Bob should have known something was up as almost everyone was crowding around the office at quitting time.

[Ralphie ★]

We were mild. We got big kicks out of having the weather or time call people.

 

[Further]

It was March I believe, a cold wet March. We were at the start of construction on a Cracker Barrel Restaurant. The site was a literal mud hole, a big track excavator got buried to where water was at seat level.

We were a crew of four and normally would start the day with coffee around a burn barrel, usally a few jokes and a bit of discussion about the goals for the day. 

So one morning Lester, the foreman, shows up, ignores the coffee, says anybody touches a vehicle, you're fired, get the fuck to work.

I was totally in the dark, wondering what brought this on. Jessie filled me in later. Ron put a handful of pebbles inside the hubcap of Lester's van, Lester stopped, in the rain, to check the wheel. He was not amused.

Shortly before lunch I was talking to Lester and Ron walked by, shaking a pop can full of pebbles and making engine noises. Lester turned bright red, gritted his teeth, then relaxed and started to laugh. Looked at me and said, that fucker's got balls.

[Johnny Come Lately Name]

11 hours ago, Further said:

Ron put a handful of pebbles inside the hubcap of Lester's van, Lester stopped, in the rain, to check the wheel. He was not amused.

I did the gravel-in-the-hubcap trick to a coworker a long time ago.

We also did kind of a longer version. We kept giving a coworker keys, for about a week or so, with no explanation. Then we took a piece of flat stock, welded a length of chain to it, looped the chain around the rear axle, secured it with a padlock and set the whole works on the leaf spring. A ways down the road, it fell and started dragging on the road. He had to spend more than a few minutes on the side of the road figuring out which key it was.

Stanley told me they’d once done this with a roll of crepe paper and the victim got pulled over and ended up getting a ticket for a bald tire!

Garry was a cheap bastard and always cheaped out as best he could with his vehicles. He bought a Jeep with a mystery ground issue no one could solve. His solution was to disconnect the battery when he got to work and reattach the cable when he got ready to go home. George suggested we get underneath with some zip ties and tie off the cable so that it’d be juuuuust too short. We didn’t, but that just shows the caliber of people I learned from.

[Ralphie ★]

Chair pranks were big. Some people once put a toilet in place of a hated boss’s chair!  

Another time they lowered another unpopular boss’s chair one turn per day until they hit bottom and then raised it all the way!  They say he never noticed or re-adjusted it!  

[Johnny Come Lately Name]

2 minutes ago, Ralphie said:

Chair pranks were big. Some people once put a toilet in place of a hated boss’s chair!

The boss was cool with the pranks…unless he was on the receiving end. While he was on vacation once, I taped plastic wrap across the window on his office door and then filled the space between the glass and the plastic with styrofoam peanuts. He wasn’t amused. 

He had a cassette player in his office and he was listening to some get-rich-quick seminar he’d gotten sucked into. I switched the tape with some Ronald McDonald cassette my kid got in a Happy Meal. He was not amused.

But by far my favorite was when I switched a machinery ad he’d torn out of the paper with a section from the “Men Seeking Men” ads from the local alternative weekly. Fortunately, I wasn’t in the room when he found it. They said he came storming out of the office, threw it, stormed back into the office, came out picked it up and threw it again. I never would have been able to keep a straight face.

2 minutes ago, Ralphie said:

Another time they lowered another unpopular boss’s chair one turn per day until they hit bottom and then raised it all the way!  They say he never noticed or re-adjusted it!  

When I worked in the steal mill (thanks @jsharr!) we’d tighten up one of the day shift guys’ hard hat one notch every night/.

[Further]

A coworkers son in law bought him a subscription to a gay porn magazine. The coworkers wife was amused.

[Ralphie ★]

32 minutes ago, Further said:

A coworkers son in law bought him a subscription to a gay porn magazine. The coworkers wife was amused.

Wait!  Was, or was not?

signed, Yoda

[Further]

9 hours ago, Ralphie said:

Wait!  Was, or was not?

signed, Yoda

She thought it was funnier than hell