Good pranks?

In My Humble Opinion
1

In honor of the quickly approaching April Fools Day, what are some good pranks you have pulled (or had pulled on you) in the past, present, or soon-to-be future? Preferably non-malicious pranks, but with this crowd, who knows what we’ll get, especially if they’re good-n-juicy pranks.

Greased door knobs, cellophane wrapped toilets need not apply.

The most creative thing an associate of mine did was to spill a little sugar on a parked car & ground right under the gas filler cap (I swear he DID NOT actually open any filler caps, I witnessed the whole event).

The best thing I did personally is re-write all of the AutoCAD pull-down menus to be mirror-image of the default setup (i.e. “File” is on the right side, “Edit” is 2nd to right, “View” is 3rd, “Insert” is 4th, “Format” is 5th, etc.),reversed the orders in which all commands are placed (i.e. what is normally at the top of the pull-down menu is at the bottom) - and install them on all the computers here at work (I made sure I made backups of the users’ original menu files).

2

Back in the day when I worked retail I had a manager who dorve a brand new Corvette. Custom paint job, vanity plates…major over compensation for the fact he was a 98 pound doofus with a mullet. He used to call us in the front end about every 2 hours to ask us to look out the window and check the car.

After about a week of this I hatched a plan.

While the people working kept creating distractions about ten people on their day off completely saran wrapped the car. The finishing touch? I was best friends with one of the pharmacists and he gave me a whole roll of bright pink stickers that read “FOR VAGINAL USE ONLY”. They used the whole roll up:).

Doofus boy came up to me the day after and said " I know you had something to do with this."

My response? “Isn’t that all you use the car for anyways?”

3

When I was young, my brothers and I put salt in the sugar bowl. Mom caught us but let the joke play out anyway.
Dad put a spoonful in his coffee and spit the coffee into the sink. He was getting mad, which we hadn’t counted on, so we were mum. He got another cup and did it again, this time complaining it must be a bad batch of grounds and was throwing out the whole potfull when we broke out laughing and Mom explained it. He suddenly melted, and gave us big hugs.

4

I like to go around to co-workers computers on April Fools day and change their screen saver to 72pt text that says something like:

I LOVE BARRY MANILOW!
or
LONG LIVE N’SYNC!

Then make sure you put a password on it. They either have to find the culprit to get the password or restart the machine. Please make sure your victim is not in the middle of a big spreadsheet or something. If you are really nice, leave your name so they can at least call you for the password.

Have fun, you crazy kids!
Suzette

5

Some time ago, I used to work the late night shift at various convenience stores, as has been related in a couple of other threads. Good source of paltry income for an occasional itinerant, as well as a great source of amusing anecdotes.

Anyhow, it was April Fools’ Day, nineteen-ninety-something. I was at a Turkey Hill (which is what they call their local brand of 7-11s) in Pennsylvania. And I’d hit the joke store that afternoon.

I’d gotten a couple of neat little items. Automatic dollar bill retractor. Garlic gum. And a six-foot, black springy-snake, like the ones found in fake-looking cans of nuts, but bigger. And a menacing shade of black.

There was a guy who kept insisting on frequenting the store at 11:30 or so, despite the fact that he never bought anything. Instead, he seemed to think that eventually, if I was pestered enough, I would relent and give him free food. He’d plead his case by wandering around the store, pointing out the inadequacies of various foodstuffs, and implying that I should be grateful to let him take them off my hands. “Man, how long have those dogs been on that grill? Nobody would eat those. You can let me have just one or two, right?” …all delivered in a delightfully slurred speech pattern, accented with 80-proof spittle-drops.

So, that fateful April 1st, he wanders in. The store is pretty full for that time of the night, and the free food guy is in fine form. Loud. After his usual scathing critique of the nachos and the hotdog, he turned his attention to the coffee machines.

“Man, how long has that coffee been up there? That’s some nasty-looking coffee.”

“I just put that on ten minutes ago.” Says I.

“That’s disgusting. Nobody should drink that. Can I have a cup of coffee?”

I draw close to him, stage-whispering conspiratorially, “You don’t want the coffee.”

By this time, we had drawn as much of a crowd as the store could offer, about half a dozen people browsing about, looking like they weren’t paying attention.

My inebriated client asked, “Why don’t I want the coffee?”

I looked about furtively. “Coffesnakes.”

“Coffeesnakes?” He replied. “I don’t believe in coffesnakes.”

Yep. He actually said that. Some members of the audience snickered furtively.

Emboldened, he continued. “I’m just gonna get a cup of coffee.”

“You don’t want to do that, really. The coffeesnakes…”

He reached for a cup, saying “Sure I do, there aren’t eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Because, of course, I had put the spring-loaded snake inside the very first cup in the dispenser that my less-than-sober customer had reached for.

As a first test of the snake deployment system, I have to say it went rather well. The snake arched out of the coffee station, looking as if it was going for the kill; my favorite drunkard flung the cup away, and ran flat-out for the door, screaming like a schoolgirl all the way; and the rest of the customers dissolved into fits of the giggles.

The snake made its appearance several more times that night, but never with such dramatic effect. The customer in question, however, never appeared again.

6

Several of us once convinced a co-worker that one of our clients was accusing him of sexual harassment. Months later he got the chapter president of a professional organization to convince me that they had lost my accreditation test, and I could either wait six months to re-test or fly to Dallas where the next round of testing would take place.

7

one of my best was:
A boss of mine was seriously fond of a particular air freshner for the bathroom. Just before an important meeting, I set this up. I took the wrapper off the can of air freshner and fastened it to a can of silly string.

So, we overheard from outside the bathroom “Schhhhhppppptt” “Dammit!!! Where is she?”

What baffles me to this day is how he knew it was me.

We did several other pranks in that office. Another good one was we told Teresa that we were going to plan a joke on Doug, and told her to hide in the basement…where Doug was waiting with a hockey mask on.

of course, I personally own things like “Crime Scene tape” (yes, like the cops use) for important occasions.

8

People from my hallway built an entire wall of styrofoam cups filled with water in front of my doorway one night while I was asleep. They would put down one layer of cups, place a board across the top, add another layer, etc…

Others from my college that I’ve witnessed: grabbing everything in somebody’s room including furniture and posters and moving it down to the main lecture hall, switching the hot and cold water pipes leading to a washing machine (this can ruin a load of clothes unfortunately), switching wire monitors on the computers in the lab so that when you try to start an application it actually runs on a different monitor than the one you’re looking at.

9

Ma Parrot,

I did the exact same thing! Except with my dad it was a big glass of iced tea. Two heaping spoonfuls of salt! :smiley:

I have to say the best one I ever pulled was wiring my mom’s toilet so that when she sat down, a 120 db siren went off. :D:D:D:D:D Scared the…er scared her a lot!

10

David Letterman had a good one tonight, but I’m not sure it would really work. He shook up Paul Schaffer’s peanut butter jar and it gushed out all over him.

11

You could write a computer program that would cause an extremely menacing screen to pop up (like BSOD) at a certain time using task manager. Although you’d have to be very computer literate. I remember reading in the Dilbert Newsletter how this one guy at this one company took a screen shot of SETI (the program from the Search for Extraterrestrial Life) and did it up so that it informed the user that it had found proof. Then when this other guy had left for lunch the first guy put it on his computer. When the second guy came back from lunch he was jumping for joy, till he found out, elol

my sister had a ball about 10 years ago. You know those poppers with the strings coming out both ends, you pull em and bang? Well she did up the entire house. Open the door, bang, open the cupboard, bang, pull down your sheets, bang. And the best or worst of it was, that we were still finding them weeks down the line.

12

One of my coworkers loves Window NT–the guy’s a fanatic. Well, he sneered once too often at my fondness for Linux, so…

I installed litestep on his machine. Litestep is a GUI shell for Windows that makes it look like Linux. I even put a Tux background up for wallpaper (“Welcome to Linux!”)–he gibbered for nearly a minute before he came looking for me. :smiley:

13

litestep
You would think that someone capable of hacking an NT box to look like Linux could get his markups straight, but noooo… :rolleyes:

Sorry, guys. I’m hanging a big sign from my monitor that says “Preview”.

14

Our senior year in HS, Elaine and I swiped school letterhead and sent out notices to our graduated friends that they were missing 2 units of Phys.Ed (or Music Appreciation or some other lame thing)and were required to attend summer school before returning to their colleges in the fall. Only one person disregarded this as a prank. We worked in the office and got to hear some panicked phone calls and witness a furious parental tirade. It was amazing.

15

The bathrooms at my jr. high school had the girls and boys rooms identified with little brown plaques screwed to the walls next to the entrances. April Fool’s Day happened to be the day of the district science fair, which was held at our school. The day before, several members of the track team managed to switch the plaques on the boys and girls rooms. But only half of them.

Students at the school went into the proper bathrooms out of habit, while the visitors paid attention to the signs. After about an hour, someone caught on and switched the signs. All of them. Another couple of hours of co-ed bathrooms.

By the time lunch came, nobody trusted the signs, even though they had been put in their proper places. For the rest of the day and all afternoon, every bathroom had to have a monitor outside notifying visitors that yes, this really is the girls’ bathroom, just like the sign says.

16

I plan on doing this this year for Halloween. It’s been circulating around in my mind.

Have you ever seen a kid’s face, when he takes his very first bite of his very first creamy, delicious, carmel covered onion? :slight_smile:

17

There is a screensaver program that does precisely that, complete with an accurate dump of the programs in memory at the time of launch. Very convincing. The only way to tell the diference from a real BSOD is the ‘Contact your Systems Administrator’ message at the bottom of the screen points you to a website, instead. Unfortunately, the site is dead.

18

picture this:
your victim has a parking spot he ALWAYS parks in. You just happend to have purchased a can of tar that afternoon. You slip into the parking lot in the wee hours of the night (the closer too dawn the better) and paint his spot with the tar. Your victim pulls in the next morning, bleary eyed and sleepy, he doesn’t see the tar (you were very careful not to touch the white lines), pulls into his spot and steps out, but is is too late, he is out a pair shoes and a set of tires.

19

The best pranks are the ones that people either a) won’t notice for a while or b) will confuse the hell out of them.

Prank #1:

Go to local fast food joint and get lots of ketchup packets. obtain a maxi-pad from a woman or the grocery store. Unwrap said pad, but leave the sticky part covered. Open all of your ketchup packets and smear on the pad. Remove wax paper, revealing sticky back of the pad. Place pad on the bumper of a car. Walk away.

Prank #2

If you are living with someone, take their shoes and duct-tape them to the ceiling. Say nothing when they see their shoes taped to the ceiling. Wait 24 hours or a day. Duct tape your shoes to the ceiling. Wait for a reaction.

Prank #3

Go to Sheetz, WaWa, Uni-Mart, 7-11, convenience type store. Buy the biggest fountain drink possible. Drink said fountain drink. When nature calls, answer it, but back into the enpty cup. Place empty cup on a streetcorner, near pedestrians. Cross the street and wait for someone to kick the cup (someone inevitably will). Watch person who kicked the cup get urine all over themselves and possibly other people.

20

Not as good as some of these, but it was funny:

Last August, we got a new Director of our program. He’s a very administration-type guy, very by-the-book. He took a week and a half off for a vacation in the fall. His last day off was his birthday, which he had purposely taken off to avoid such pranks. Each of us left him a message that morning:

My direct supervisor would be out at an all day meeting, and her pager was busted. She’d check in in the afternoon.

One co-worker had a last minute all-day project for a committee she was on. Someone would need to be with her clients for the day.

Another co-worker was not feeling well and would take a comp day that was owed.

Another co-worker had been suspended the day before and would be gone for a few days.

Another one’s car was stalled on the tollway. He was pretty sure the transmission was busted. He’d see if he could get in by early afternoon.

I was deathly ill, and would not be in.

In addition to this, the Senior Manager of Training had left a message stating that all but two of us had ditched our inservice day, we were all out of compliance with state regulations because of this, and the state was coming tomorrow (this part was true). We all needed to report to him for a last-minute training session.

We had also decorated his office. He was surprised to see me as he walked in. Then he saw his office and broke into laughter. He had checked his messages before leaving his house, and was in a panic all the way to work. He thought he had to be with all 30 of our clients all day, and that we’d be raked over the coals for missing training.