Eight hours in an office scene often gets monotonous and nerve racking. I’ve worked in a busy, stressful attorney’s office for four years and over that four years my coworkers and I have found many ways to lighten the mood and bring humor into our everyday activities. Below you’ll find ten of the best pranks we have used on one another and our bosses.
1. The optical mouse mystery: Place a mini post-it note over the infrared light on the bottom of your technologically challenged co-worker’s computer mouse. They’ll panic when they think they’re mouse is broken.
2. The old switcheroo: This one’s a classic! Simply switch everything on your co-worker’s desk to the place opposite its original position. Move a lefty’s telephone to the right. Turn the computer monitor backward. Put a tape dispenser under the desk or on the other side. Switch desk drawers around if they’re removable. (only do this if the coworker wouldn’t mind you opening their drawers in the first place) Or better yet, completely switch two coworkers desk items
3. A sticky situation: Tape everything down to the desk by folding tape over to make it stick to both the desk and the item. Use lots of tape. Tape the telephone receiver to the telephone so that it can not be answered.
4. Hello? Hello? Hello? Tape down the plastic button under the telephone receiver so that it will remain hung up when the receiver is removed. Your coworker will not be able to answer their telephone
5. Friday: Italians only: Schedule your clients creatively to give your boss a laugh. If you have room to play with your calendar, schedule all clients with Italian-sounding names for one day and all clients with Hispanic-sounding names for another. The clients will have no idea and when your boss realizes what you’ve done he or she will be in a comedic mood the rest of the day.
6. Have a blast! Turn up the volume on everything on your coworker’s desk including the telephone ringer, speaker phone, computer speakers and anything else that makes noise. The excitement will last until they turn the last volume control.
7. Super-size my paperwork! Turn the size on the copier up as high as it will go to blow up all your coworker’s copies. Or turn it down very low to shrink everything as they make copies. They probably won’t notice the size discrepancy until they get the work back to their desk. Then you can return the settings to normal to make them think they’re hallucinating.
8. Losing control! Make your coworker’s mouse bounce around the screen uncontrollably by turning the mouse speed all the way up! To do this, open the start menu and go to “My Computer” then click on “Control Panel” and then “Mouse.” Drag the tab all the way to the right and save. This one can be a little difficult to fix, but your co-worker will panic as they lose control of their mouse!
9. You must be hearing things. Turn your speaker volume to medium and go to the control panel again and click on “Speech.” To make your computer say anything you want, type anything into the text line and click “Preview Voice” (not enter). Then simply pretend you didn’t hear anything.
10. Technical difficulties: You can make everything on your coworker’s computer screen turn upside down or sideways by right clicking on the desktop and selecting “Graphic Option” and then “Graphic Properties.” Then click on the “rotation” tab and check enable rotation. You can then select your degree of rotation. Just remember, the mouse will be hard to use and this one might take a few minutes to fix.
