Office Humor Blog

Looking for a last minute prank idea that’s quick and easy to pull off? If so, perhaps this Google language settings prank is what you need.

Requirements:

• Time (low) - takes little to no time changing your vitcim’s Google language settings.
• Cost (low) - no cost at all.
• Risk (low) - you’re really not risking anything except messing up your coworker’s Google page, but it’s easy to reverse so you should be fine.

Steps:

1. When your coworker leave’s their computer for a moment, hop onto it and head to the Google search page.
2. Click on the “preferences” link next to the Google search box.
3. Change the interface language at the top to something fun (such as Elmer Fudd or Hacker)

Result:

When your coworker gets back to their desk, the next time they pull up a Google search they will be greeted with the results of your prank. Depending on the language you set, the effect will range from obvious and over-the-top to subtle and perhaps not even noticeable for awhile.

Keep in mind that this only changes the Google interface language, not the actual search results. This may lead them to believe that it’s Google pulling the prank, thus making them think they have to deal with it for awhile.

Tags: office prank, April Fool’s prank, Google prank

It’s almost that time of year again as April Fool’s day quickly approaches. If you’re looking to pull off an awesome office prank for April Fool’s, you may want to check out my list of 5 important office prank tips for the coming pranking holiday.

1. People know it’s April Fool’s Day
   Let’s face it, most people are going to be overly cautious during April Fool’s Day - making your job that much more difficult. You can use this to your advantage though. Pulling off your pranks a day or two before or after April 1st may be enough to catch some people off guard. For those potential victims who are extra tough to prank, why not do a small, simple prank on the 1st (such as Bugged or Creamed) and then follow it up with a much bigger prank the next day or two (like Packed In). They may think your initial prank was the whole kit-and-kaboodle, thus letting their guard down for the real prank.
2. Get as many people in on your pranks as possible
   The great thing about pranking coworkers is that you’ve got a large supply of helpers and witnesses to enjoy the outcome with. Bring in as many coworkers as possible to help you out to make it a group effort and you will all enjoy it that much more (not to mention have that many more people to laugh at your victim).
3. Take pictures or video
   You don’t want your prank to be forgotten any time soon, so be sure to take pictures and video if at all possible. This means recording the preparation as well as the outcome. Once the prank is over, you can probably find some good use for your photos by placing them on bulletin boards in the break room, on your desktop wallpaper, and maybe even put them on your company website for an office morale boost.
4. Remember that you are still an employee!
   Probably the most imporant tip that I can give is to remind you that you are still an employee of a company and that whatever prank (or pranks) you decide to pull off must be done so delicately. Make sure your pranks don’t overly hurt anybody’s feelings or do much property damage. The best thing you can do is to get approval by a higher up before doing anything. If you do your pranks in good fun and choose victims with a great sense of humor, you can limit your risk for repercussions.

Tags: office pranks, april fool’s day, prank tips, pranking coworkers

Halloween is almost here! If you haven’t had a chance to pull off some pranks in your office, perhaps a simple scary prank is just what you need. All you need is a box and you can scare your coworkers all day long.

Requirements:

• Time (low) - takes next to no time at all to hide in a box.
• Cost (low) - if you have a big enough box already it’ll cost you nothing, but even if you find yourself boxless, you can find them cheap at all sorts of stores.
• Risk (low) - as long as you don’t give any coworkers heart attacks you should be fine.

Steps:

1. Get a box that’s big enough for you to fit in.
2. Put the box in a strategic location for scaring your victim. Some key places include near the elevator, near a coworker’s cubicle, or in the break room.
3. Get in the box and wait for your victim to come.
4. Jump out and scare your victim using whatever means necessary (screams, arm movements, etc.)

Result:

You should be able to give a good scare even with some people being prepared for such pranks near Halloween. You can probably pull off the prank multiple times on different coworkers as long as word of your pranking doesn’t spread. You can target specific coworkers by putting the box near their work stations and putting a letter on the top saying the box is a delivery (though it could be a little obvious) or you can position the box in a highly trafficked area and just scare as many people as you can as often as you can. You can choose to decorate yourself and add to the contents of the box for added effect - such as wearing a scary costume and/or mask and holding props such as rubber snakes.

Below is a video demonstrating the prank being pulled off in an office environment.

Tags: office prank, Halloween prank, scary prank

Alright ladies and gentlemen… for those of you with an incredibly relaxed office whose managers and coworkers all have a great sense of humor, the following office prank may be the perfect thing for a Monday morning. Let me stress that this prank should only be attempted if you know that you won’t get in trouble - meaning you had better get approval by some higher ups first.

Requirements:

• Time (medium) - you’re going to be building a wall, or at least highering somebody to build a wall, this takes time.
• Cost (high) - to make a really convincing wall, you’re going to want to get the right materials and probably higher somebody who knows what they’re doing.
• Risk (high) - as I mentioned earlier, you had better get some approval beforehand because you’ll not only be wasting many people’s time, you’ll also be modifying the layout of your office temorarily.

Steps:

1. Choose a hallway or office you want to block off with a wall.
2. Hire somebody who knows what they are doing (or pick up a “Walling Up an Office Hallway for Dummies” book) and get a new wall built.
3. Put plants, paintings, drinking fountains, and any other objects you can think of around the new wall to make it look more permanent.

Result:

For the best results, you should definitely wall up a hallway that is the route to multiple offices, as you’ll be able to get the reaction of many more victims. If you’re looking for a less distracting and perhaps easier prank, you could just wall up an existing office by turning a door into a fake wall. Hopefully you’ll get some great reactions as your victims first wonder if they’ve made a wrong turn, then try to figure out if they’ve been moved and/or even fired.

Below is the video inspiration for this post that will hopefully give you a better idea of what you can pull off.

Tags: office prank, practical joke

Remember the good ‘ol days of the Clapper? Ahh… such memories. While those wondefully cheesy commercials may be a thing of the past, you can do your part in bringing back the Clapper revolution by using on in your next office prank.

Requirements:

• Time (low) - it takes very little time to install the clapper.
• Cost (medium) - you can pick up the Clapper fairly cheap from Amazon here and that’s actually a fairly fancy version.
• Risk (low) - as long as yu don’t install the Clapper on something critical, the risk here is fairly low.

Steps:

1. Install the Clapper on a coworker’s office device (montior, speakers, light, etc.).
2. Wait for clapping noises.

Result:

This prank is really a very straightforward prank. The success of the prank hinges on how you setup the Clapper. If your coworker listens to music a lot, obviously the speakers are a great target and the monitor is a pretty safe target regardless of your coworker’s daily routine. You could risk putting it on the computer itself (or even a power strip that controls many appliances), but you could potentially ruin your coworker’s work so I’d recommend against that.

Another thing to take into consideration is the noise level of your office. You’ll want to test the noise activation settings before setting it all up since the best effect comes when the victim’s appliances shut up sporadically and not constantly. You may even want to try using a couple different Clappers with different settings on different electronics so that they go off and on at different times.

Tags: office prank, the Clapper, electronics prank

Inspired by the latest ProBlogger writing project, I’ve come up with a list of the 5 best reasons to prank a coworker. If you’ve been wanting a reason to pull off one of the many great office pranks listed here, the following list should be just what you need.

5. They’re a Jerk and Deserve it
Let’s face it, sometimes a coworker is just begging to be pranked. Maybe they’re a thorn in your side, always annoying you at work and making your office life difficult. Give that mean coworker a good pranking and you’ll feel all better… for awhile at least.

4. They’re Cool and Deserve it
Perhaps you’ve got a coworker who’s cool, but who’s just way too stressed out and you’d like to try and lighten things up a bit for them. Sometimes all a person needs is a good prank to get them motivated again. It can help people break out of whatever rut they’re in and can get the creative juices flowing. If the prank is done with good intentions, your coworker may just thank you for it.

3. They’re Your Boss
Pranking your boss once a year should be an office mandate. Your boss gets to reign over you five days a week every week. Pranking your boss let’s you get that one sweet moment of dominance over them that you’ll likely never have otherwise. Most bosses will welcome the act as it makes them feel just like “one of the guy” (or girls). Of course, be wary of those bosses with sticks shoved firmly up their butts, because they may not be so thrilled with your prank.

2. Prank Revenge
Perhaps one of the most common reasons to prank a coworker is because you were already pranked by them. Prank revenge is a great reason to prank somebody since you’re really starting a prank war that can envelope the entire office and escalate in hilarity and fun. Be careful not to take things too far though, since it’s easy to go overboard during a prank war.

1. You’re Bored
Let’s face it, the best reason to do a prank is because you’re bored. Sure, you should care about who you’re pranking and why they may deserve it, but in reality, you’re best reason is to break up your own monotonous work.

Tags: office pranks

Want to really be cruel? How about getting your vict… I mean coworker to think that their job is on the market?

Requirements:

• Time (low) - all you’re going to need to do is write a job ad - shouldn’t take you much time.
• Cost (low) - you can go the cheap route and put the job ad up on all free sites or you could pay some money and put it up on a big job site.
• Risk (low) - there’s really not a big risk for you except for maybe falsely advertising a job that doesn’t exist (which is cruel for the people that’ll call as you are wasting their time).

Steps:

1. Fill out an ad for the job your coworker does. Put their phone number and email as the contact info and make sure to put in some interesting job requirements.
2. Put the ad up on your favorite job listing sites. Some cost money (CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com), others are cheap or free(CraigsList).

Result:

Depending on what you put on your ad, you’ll get different results. If you went the obvious and easy route, like putting down a high amount of pay with low requirements, your victim should get a lot of phone calls and emails, which will either scare him a bit that his job might actually be open, or just give him a good laugh as he realizes what you did.

However, you could also go a more creative route by putting down some interesting requirements. Perhaps the applicants all must speak a certain language that isn’t English, or must all send in essays on why most people (like your victim) don’t do their job well. You could really have some fun with it, but do keep in mind that you are going ot be wasting the time of some actuall job applicants, so only do so if you’re truly cruel and have no heart

Tags: office prank, keyboard prank, April Fool’s prank

Reader Jon sent in an article of his where he talks about how to use a macro application to wreak some havoc on fellow coworkers. That article can be found right here.

He doesn’t go into many specifics, but the program he talks about basically allows you to setup various applications to run when certain conditions are met (such as a key being press or a mouse click). So basically, once you get the application on your victim’s computer, you’ll be able to setup whatever kind of craziness you want.

For instance:

• You could have it open some NSFW websites.
• Like Jon mentions in the article, you could just have it open an incredibly large amount of programs - forcing your coworker to find a way to close them all.
• You could get the application to run some embarassing sounds when certain words are typed.
• Make the macro application add funny words after the victim types predifined characters or words (such as adding “boob” every time the victim types “my”).
• You can make it open NSFW or other embarassing/funny photos every ten minutes.

As you can see, once you get the program installed on your victim’s computer, you can really do a lot of damage. Most companies probably aren’t going to be too keen on you installing such an application, but if you think you can brave it and won’t get into too much trouble, then you may just be able to pull off some incredibly funny office pranks.

Tags: office pranks, macro pranks

It’s been awhile since I’ve detailed an office prank for you all, so hopefully this will be the start of me getting back into doing it more often. Anyway, this prank has a bit of St. Patrick’s Day flavor to it since you’ll be adding a full blown green lawn to your coworker’s keyboard.

Requirements:

• Time (medium) - you won’t be spending much time doing it, but the process takes a long time to complete.
• Cost (low) - you’ll just need some dirt, some grass seeds, and water so it doesn’t cost too much.
• Risk (low) - you will be ruining a keyboard so if your coworker’s keyboard is nice you better buy a cheapo to ruin for the prank.

Steps:

1. The first thing you’ll need to do is fill your coworker’s keyboard with some soil. Youll want to rub the soil down into the keys and try to fill it up as much as possible.
2. After the soil is in place, spread some bermuda turf builder grass onto the soil. You want to cover the soil with the grass mixture as much as possible.
3. Spread some water over the soil and grass to get the whole thing fairly moist. You are trying to grow some grass so you don’t want to drown it in water, but it should be fairly damp.
4. Put a thin layer of soil on top of the grass and ad a little more water.
5. Put the keyboard outside or at least near sunlight and water it a couple times a day.
6. Once you’re happy with the results, put the connect the keyboard to your coworker’s computer.

Result:

After a couple weeks you should have some nice growth on the keyboard. If you’ve been good about keeping the whole operation a secret from your victim, you should be able to swap in the keyboard when they’re not looking and give them quite a nice surprise.

If you want to see the prank in action, check out the following video (not made by me):

Tags: office prank, keyboard prank, St. Patrick’s Day prank

Wednesday is Valentine’s Day. While many think of the holiday as a time for lovey dovey gifts and sentiments, you can be out there taking advantage of them letting their guards down by pulling off some office pranks. Below is a list of pranks that are well suited for an office’s Valentine’s Day.

The Stalker
Valentine’s Day is perfect for this prank. If you want to scare your coworker, use Valentine’s Day as the day to start the stalker prank where you’ll convince your victim that a stalker is obsessed with him/her.

The Shrine
This prank can be retrofit for Valentine’s Day, thus having you turn their work area into a love obsessed shrine to something they hate or that’s embarassing. To be even more cruel, you could make it a shrine to a coworker you know your victim has a crush on.

Not So Sweet Candy
Valentine’s Day is all about the candy right? Well, take advantage of this by putting out some bad tasting candy for the entire office to try.

Getting Married
This prank has you posting up a photo of your victim on a website where people guess how long marriages will last. Find the funniest and most embarassing photo of your victim and put it up for the whole world to see.

Tags: Valentine’s Day pranks, office pranks