I was checking my email one day at work and ran across one of those !ncre se y0ur manhoo d : in a b0ttle.
Just as I was getting ready to hit delete a coworker asked if I had sent him the email about such-and-such.
Instead of delete, I hit forward and said “I’m sending it right now”.
His reaction when it arrived was perfect deadpan “Yup, that’s the one. Thanks Seven”
I now make it a point to foward one spam email to him a day. It’s such a dumb thing to do we both crack up about it.
I’m now adding comments like “I got this and thought of you” or “this is my new business,… want in at the ground level?”
We also spend about 20 minutes a day trying to crack each other up. Today he mentioned his superstitions in launching websites and how he needed a pointy hat, a weed eater and a jar of peaches. Without it, the launch will flop. Of course I replied and said “I have a weedeater at my desk. I use it on the keyboard when I need to assign random passwords.”
What dorky things do you do at work to break up the day?
When I volunteer at my buddy’s private school, I always ask the little fascists and hippies if I can read their essays on anything political. They’re not allowed to watch because I always end up laughing hysterically.
Yesterday I kidnapped one of my bosses christmas decorations. An inflatable Santa Claus. I left a ransom note and “photos” (xerox copies of Santa’s face). After the drop was made (three candy bars), I placed the Santa in the drop location, just roughed up a little. Blindfolded and covered with band-aids. Everyone got a good laugh, and Santa is back at “home” recovering from the trauma.
Hmm. There is not much scope for fun at my work (hospital).
Sometimes we will call one another on our wireless phones and pretend to be an administrator/pissed off medical staff/family member.
One time we made “voodoo” dolls out of left over sterile filters–some of us got quite creative and attached, sad to say.
Practical jokes are always good, but a bit tricky since we deal with people all day long.
I like the kidnapped Santa bit, but that would probably get us fired (not much of a sense of humor in the higher ups–and no Christmas decorations, admin is too cheap!).
Nonsense! My dad works at a hospital (ER to be specific) at a 7th day adventist hospital and he is a real cut-up. He makes fake dodo out of the plaster & gauze used to make plaster casts and dyes it with iodine and leaves them in the doctors lounge. He pages ficticious humorously named doctors over the PA system. He tells all the cops dirty jokes. Work is only as much fun as you make it.
On one of my projects (on client site!) we had some pet goldfish. You know, the ones swimming in a little tiny bowl with a plant growing above them? No?
Anyway, one time several people on the project kidnapped the lot of them. They left ransom notes with cut-out letters from newspapers demanding candy and whatnot. When we didn’t move fast enough, they left a McDonald’s Fish Fillet sandwich and a note stating that “this is how the fish will end up!” There were even anonymous emails to the whole team from a throwaway webmail account. We were going crazy trying to figure it out.
I have a Halloween tree at my cube that’s slowly turning into an all season decoration. Right now it’s some sort of spooky Christmas tree - black cobweb covered thing (imagine the tree from The Legend of Spooky Hallow) festively decorated with tiny snowmen. Definately freaky.
MadMax:
Well, let us say that there is limited scope to my sharing what passes for fun at my place of employment on a public bb and as a new member of same…
I could tell stories, but won’t. But most of all, my hospital does not encourage “hijinks” of any kind, sadly enough…
Your guys’ are much better than mine. I just do handstands when nobody is looking, and sprint up and down the hallways, stopping at every open door to casually walk by, before continuing my run. There is a bit of downtime here, yes.
I drop obscure geek references into my lectures and exams, to see if I can get one or two students to crack up.
Also, I take revenge on the IT people and their irritating policies by using insults as my passwords. You know, !tRtehSuX0r, and the like. It’s the petty, but it makes me I smile every time I log in.
I always love it (for no explicable reason) when a poster that’s been around for 2 years has a post count of 8, and posts one of them in a thread like this one. I always find that fascinating.
A few years ago I worked with a team of about 8 researchers and graduate students and our facility decided to have a Christmas decoration competition. For some reason, we decided we must win this at all costs. So we spent the better part of two whole days turning our office hallway into “Christmas under the sea,” complete with blue Saran wrap lining the walls, Clipart fish, blue and green flashing lights, and a life-sized stuffed Santa in a wetsuit, riding a surfboard down the hall to the tunes of the Beach Boys Christmas album.
Needless to say, we won. Unfortunately, the magnitude of our efforts took the contest sponsors by surprise, and all they had to give us was a pound of See’s candy to share.
You are in inspiration I read this, ran over to my boss’s desk where he keeps a Beanie Babie Flamingo on his monitor (I think his daughter got it for him). I made a color copy of the birdy squished to the glass, then wrote:
The new guy here (including myself, only 4 people work at the office) thinks I’m positively nuts.
My old job was in a call center. One time, the call center Supervisor (not my boss) was out for two days with a sick kid. while she was gone, I bought about 100 balloons and streamers and most of the call center spent the better part of the day blowing up balloons in between calls. We taped the steamers wall-to-wall in her office, then filled the room with balloons. she came back, opened her door, and just stood there with her mouth hanging open. Yeah, she was amazed and dumbfounded.
Another time, I was seeing the AA of the call center, and his desk area was outside of the Supervisor’s office (and mine). He tried really hard to be somewhat serious at work, and not let the call center people get to him (as hard as they all tried). One morning, I littered his desk with helium balloons (Happy Birthday, Get Well Soon, Congraduations!, whatever the store had at the time), a Barbie doll, a pair of toy handcuffs, silk stockings, a toy motorcycle, glitter and candy. He walked into the room, saw his desk, and immediately headed for my office. (No, I wasn’t his supervisor.) He was so embarrassed, but thrilled that I had done it. Even now, he’ll still bring it up…“Remember when you put all that stuff on my desk?”
Long hours on the night shift can make you do some crazy things. We created Taki-Tiki, the Polynesion god of mids (name lifted from a Simpsons episode) out of an orange coffee can. He had an elaborate mythological backstory, and a paper crown made out of photocopies of foreign currency. Large amounts of food had to be brought in daily as a “sacrifice,” which was naturally shared by the High Priests.
People who brought in pictures of themselves and their loved ones would often return the next day to have pictures of Putin and other world leaders (taken from Reuters) pasted over their faces.
Last Xmas our local grocery sold rosemary trees; rosemary being a member of the pine family. I bought one, knitted a dozen little black stockings, and put it on my desk at work, explaining that it was my holiday tribute to Rosemary’s Baby.
We like to make implied sexual references by pulling random words out of something someone is saying and repeating this phrase in Beavis and Butthead voices:
“Huh huh, dude, you said (insert random words)”
This is always directly proportional to the seriousness of the information the person is trying to convey to the group.
We are an engineering/manufacturing company, so words like shaft, balls, bearings, pole, column, load, joint, etc…, come up in conversation alot, makes for alot of material.
I read this, ran over to my boss’s desk where he keeps a Beanie Babie Flamingo on his monitor (I think his daughter got it for him). I made a color copy of the birdy squished to the glass, then wrote: