Top 10 office pranks

Some of these office pranks were actual office pranks played on me or on others by fellow coworkers. Make sure you know the person really well before you pull anything off. I would not like you to get canned.

Hey! My mouse is not working 

Remove the "roller ball" on the computer mouse of your coworker. This can be done by removing the cover on the bottom of the mouse and taking out the little roller ball. If the mouse is a laser mouse, then tape it up with some non visible tape or just stuff a little tiny piece of paper inside the hole where the laser projects. Be even more discreet: Flick one of your boogars in there and then when the person finally figures out that his mouse is not moving and looks inside, he'll just think one of his boogars landed there.

Cause the chair to sink when the person sits down

Make the lever of the chair used for height control get stuck so that whenever the person sits on the chair, he will sink in and get bewildered. You can do this with some duct tape or anything else that you can think of. The point is to move the lever up so the person sinks into his/her chair.

If the person is a right handed person, change the controls in the computer so that it operates as a left handed person.

On a windows computer this can be done by going to Start Menu --> Settings --> Control Panel --> Mouse. You will see an option there that states "Switch Primary and Secondary Buttons". By selecting that checkbox, the left click button will act as a right click and vice versa. This will have users confused as heck and you will snicker as you see them restart their computer, proceeded by a call to their help desk administrator. There are also lots of other fun options in that screen such as moving the speed of the mouse, disabling the scroll, etc. Lots of fun to explore.

Change the background desktop with any image from the web

By right clicking on any image on the web you have the option that states "set as background". This will change the background on their computer to the image you have selected. I used to work for a company that used to have an intranet with images of all the employees. One of our frequent victims was a guy named Michael. Whenever we wanted to mess with Michael, we would go to his computer when he was not there, navigate to the image of him on the intranet and click on the option "set as background". We would then close all windows so that only his desktop would display with a large portrait of him. It was hilarious to have everyone come by and think how this Michael was so into himself.

It's always fun to do tricks on a newcomer. This is a true story, with just the names changed: John was the new network administrator/help desk assistant for our company. You have to realize it was John's first day at work and he really wanted to make a good impression. Moe a born again prankster (born again because he had been pranked several times himself), called John over and told him he had a problem with his computer. The following is how the conversation went when he came over to help Moe.

John: How can I help you today.

Moe: I am having a problem with my computer today.

John: So what seems to be the problem.

Moe: (Faking frustration) this computer is extremely slow when I want to play solitaire.

You should have seen the look on John's face. It was a truly "priceless" moment the way he stared at Moe with a mouth that looked like he had eaten something bitter. You can do the same trick. If you want to get an even more dramatic effect, I guess you can substitute the word solitaire with something like "porn"

Send an email with a fake from source so it looks like it came from somebody else

If you know a developer, company network administrator, or if your computer has SMTP privileges (which basically allows you to send email via your computer), then you can pull this one off. (Another way to check if you can do this if you have the following folder in your windows computer system: C:\Inetpub\mailroot\Pickup). OK, so what you do is you open up notepad and type in the information as follows:

From: test-sender@testcompanyname.com

To: test-companyname@testcompanyname.com

Subject: Important:NEED TO SEE YOU NOW!

Hey, come here for a second.

Now you save this text file and put this into the "C:\Inetpub\mailroot\Pickup" folder and voila, a fake email will be sent with the impostor "From" and "To" fields that you specified. I always did this to my coworkers, putting the "FROM" field as one of coworkers (I'll call him SUCKER-SENDER) and the "TO" field as another coworker (SUCKER-RECIPIENT). The SUCKER-RECIPIENT of the email would come to the SUCKER-SENDER who thought sent him the email and say "What do you want". The SUCKER-SENDER person would then be like "Huh?"..and both persons would be confused as heck. SUCKER-SENDER will also think that a virus has probably been installed in his system and emailed on his behalf (then he'll get paranoid and start trying to remember what he's been browsing on the web). This is great fun and you can just imagine the possibilities. A word of caution: Network administrators may be able to figure out who the emails come from so don't go too overboard with this one.

This trick will make the user's desktop like it's been disabled. All icons and even the taskbar below will not work!

A windows operating system has an option of capturing a screen. Minimize all windows on the victim's computer. Then press the "print screen" key to take a screen capture of the desktop. Open up Paint and paste the image by pressing Control-V or by right clicking and selecting "paste". Save the image file and then select the go to File --> Set as background (centered) option in Paint program. The background for the desktop will look exactly like the original desktop. Now you can hide all of the icons on the desktop by selecting all of them and moving them to a separate folder. Once this is done, you will see what looks like a desktop but it's just a picture of it. The user won't be able to click on any icons and will seem like the computer is "frozen", even restarting the computer won't help. For added fun, you can hide the taskbar below the victim's computer by right clicking on the taskbar, going to Options and selecting "auto-hide taskbar". This will make the taskbar disappear too.

Unplug the network cable so user does not have an internet connection.

This is a favorite one of many pranksters since it's somewhat harmless. It just involves unplugging the network cable so the person doesn't have any internet connection. Now, a BETTER variation on this to make it more clever is to plug in another network cable that leads to nowhere. This way the person will still think his computer is still connected to the internet. Another slight variation to this is to connect a network cable (connected properly on both ends) that is cut in the middle but to tape it up with the ends not touching. Since most of the times the middle of the network cable is under the desk and out of sight, the person will just check the ends to make sure it's connected. The person may try to pull up on the cable and when it moves on the other end, he will still think the cable is connected.

Antoher variation: If you just want to make it a more obvious practical joke then you can just then you can switch the phone cable and the internet network cable. Variation 3: You can also unplug keyboards and mouse connections as well.

This can only work if you are near the victim. By plugging in another mouse or keyboard into the computer, you can have control of the person's computer. By connecting another mouse to a computer, you can maybe move the person's mouse when they don't want to.

Change the bootup screen in Windows computers

You really have to be careful about this one, many people will get furious if you install something on their system without permission. You can install a program that will change the bootup window on their computers. For this you can go to http://www.stardock.com/products/bootskin/ . This will go and change the bootup interface on the person's computers. You can install something that may make them think they are being spied by the FBI like the image below. You can install this in your own system too if you like.

If you need supplies for your pranks you can always get them at office depot. For additional coupon code savings you can get an office depot coupon code. By the way, this one is not a prank!

Other things to try:

Switching keyboard keys so it looks like person is dyslexic.

Stealing person's supplies daily. It works great with removing staples from the stapler.

Changing the break room's sugar into salt.