Simple but deadly. Get some milk and a small brush. Paint the upholstery of his office chair with a few strokes of milk. It dries invisibly. If there is any other fabric or cloth in his own immediate environment, paint a few strokes of milk on those as well. Plus paint a few strokes on the carpeting near where he sits (if it’s a carpet kind of office). That’s all. After 3 days there will be a mild smell. After 10 days it will be very bad. After 20 days it will be so bad that no human being can stand it. It’s more or less untraceable, and unfixable.
You have to be 100% sure that this deed cannot be traced back to you, because otherwise you might be forced to pay for replacement stuff and/or a professional cleaning crew.
As others have stated, messing with the Autocorrect feature in Word can be very useful. However, I would encourage subtlety. Think of just one of two words that are germane to his trade and that he is likely to type in most official correspondence. And use Autocorrect to make sure the letters come out slightly wrong, as if a casual typo e.g. ‘copmuter’ ‘schdeule’. This is actually far more irritating and soul-destroying in the long term than more obvious Autocorrect pranks.
Convince him to subscribe to the Straight Dope. Wait for him to become so addicted he spends long work-hours amongst the Teeming Millions. Wait a little while longer for him to go to a meeting with the Dope on his screen. Then post a message in his name describing his love of fucking sheep.
And Oreoing the guy’s car (vandalism), breaking into his work computer, and some of the other things mentioned in here are not illegal, or at least, firing offences?
This one was great in college, but it might not work so well for this situation.
Go into all their Word and/or Excel documents, and change the font color to white. It’s great for a heart attack, and you haven’t done any serious damage as long as they don’t delete the file thinking it’s dead.
I think it would be even more fun to do this with one or two files a day, just sort of wearing them down.
From experience, though, I think that silenus’ chirpy thing wins. I had an old pager in my desk that I had forgotten about, and its battery started to die. I had the hardest time finding that thing, because it only beeped once every few minutes. Drove me NUTS, and I couldn’t get anything done until I’d found it. This software does the same thing whenever there’s a weather alert, which might be even more annoying because it won’t do it every day.
How about getting his resume (or make one up for him, really overstating his job, title, etc.) and leave copies around on the printers and copy machines in the department?
A couple of my former staff once got a job application for the local adult video store and left it in clear view on my desk. (My favorite question: why do you want to work in an adult video store? A: chronic masturbation?)
If you can get to his e-mail, if someone in the company sends a mailing to everyone do a Reply to All with some stupid response.
More relatively harmless tricks if you have access to his computer
Ctrl + Alt + down arrow inverts the screen image. I discovered this when I dropped a large 3 ring binder on my keyboard. (the fix is Ctrl + Alt + Up Arrow, but if he’s anything like me, he won’t know that without help)
If you have more time you can go through Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/Languages/Details - select US Dvorak to select an alternate keyboard layout. (or once you’ve gone that far select Estonian, or whatever else you’d like)
OK, here are some more fun computer tricks suitable for a network admin to play.
Modify his hosts file so that two common servers have thier IP addresses swapped. That way when he tries to connect to server-1 he connects to server-2 and when trying server-2 he connects to server-1. If you use WINS make sure to also change the LMHOSTS file. This might take a little work to do if he logs into several systems. Will have to add a line to his login script to copy the file, and also add a line to all other users to copy a good hosts/lmhosts file down so it fixes when anyone else logs in.
Randomly go in, and set “User must change password at next login” This has the side affect of locking his account if he changes his password while logged into another machine with his old password. Also make sure the system remembers his last 99999 passwords.
If you use a centralized anti-virus program set the scans for his computer for the middle of the day.
All I will say for this one is “Group Policies” (Suggestion number one might be able to be done this way)
Limit his login to two concurent logins.
Do you have your install media shared on the network? (IE Office CD, etc) If so remove his read access to one file of the install. Make sure he still has access to see the file, just not read it.
On my computer, Ctrl + F5 cuts signal to my monitor (I was going for F4 and missed then freaked out when my screen went black and the power light started blinking.)
Another computer one, but very simple. You’d be amazed how many people can’t figure out what’s going on. Just go to the Mouse controls in the Control Panel and switch the left and right mouse buttons.
Take a fast-food drink cup out to the mark’s car. Cut the bottom of the cup out, so you end up with a hollow tube. Place the cup, rightside up, on top of the mark’s car, right over the driver’s side. Fill the cup with water (if you’re feeling nice), or soda (if you’re not). The cup should seal to the top of the car, so nothing leaks out. Put the lid on the cup.
Mark heads out to his car, sees the drink on top of it. He picks it up, and all the fluid pours out, drenching him and his car.
Download some free software for a printer he doesn’t have, and set it as the default printer. People will send something to the printer 100 times before they’ll check to see if it is the right printer.
I don’t believe this was a prank when it happened to me, but there have been a few times where I’ve had a fax machine try to call my work phone about every five minutes. I’m kind of a fax doofus, but I’m guessing somebody must have dialed the wrong number and the fax machine probably had some sort of auto-redial function. So yeah, having a fax machine repeatedly trying to fax to his phone might be fun.
