Geek Cube: Office Pranks

Oh, I love a good prank. At my job, a small group of us would play pranks on others in our little group by decorating/booby-trapping the poor victim’s cubicle. I thought today’s topic would be some of the my favorite office pranks and how they went off.

Let’s start with the tape prank. It usually consisted of tape being strung all the way over the cubicle and especially around the seat. If done properly, someone wandering into the office before they’ve had their caffeine will not notice and find themselves captured by an improper use of office materials. It give coworkers a good thirty minutes of smiles before the job takes over again. Yes, a cheap and silly laugh, but when you work a dull job, you grab any laugh you can get.

My job also had a strict policy of locking monitors when someone had to get up from their cubicle. Heaven help whoever forgot! My second to last boss would send emails to senior management from the person’s computer or change their wallpaper to something a little embarrassing. Again, another funny and cheap little laugh to break the monotony.

A lot of pranks tend to consist of little things like filling a cubicle full of paper or packing peanuts, covering it in tape as above, or wallpapering with newspaper or sticky notes. When I was in charge of pranking, however, I loved turning everything in the cubicle upside down, at least, as much as what wouldn’t be damaged if I did so. I also once wallpapered someone’s cubicle with pictures of Tim Curry as Frank N Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which went over very well. And once, during a week when we were decorating our cubicles in British themes (we’d just been purchased by a British company), I put up a TARDIS decoration in front of my cubicle and told everyone I was busy time traveling.

With all the pranking, however, there’s been one that I liked the most. One of my coworkers had this stuffed animal in his cubicle, and we decided to make off with it when he left the office. Since he didn’t know my cell phone number, I took a photo of the “ransom” note and sent him a message with it attached. He called my phone and figured out it was me, of course, but he had to go on a search the next day to find what empty cubicle on the other side of the building that it’d been stashed in. That, at least, kept us amused for a few days before we started getting busy again.

So yes, even the most dull of workplaces can be livened up with the occasional prank. The key to a successful prank is to keep them infrequent and make sure they’re a complete surprise. Don’t even immediately own up to it, but be careful that it’s not going to get you into trouble. We could occasionally get away with those pranks, but it was all a matter of timing and, honestly, having a cool boss who didn’t mind playing along. When everything falls into place, a good prank can go a long way.

 
Geek-Cube is a weekly column about integrating your geek life with your work environment.

About Jamie

Jamie DeVriend is a multi-format geek. She loves video games new and old, pinball, Marvel comics, Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls, obscure things, Doctor Who, Supernatural, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. An Alabama native, she now lives with her equally geeky husband and sizeable cat, and goes to college while doing occasional freelance design work.

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