Working for a living can be rather boring… unless you’ve got funny co-workers who are determined to spice things up.
On this popular Reddit thread, people shared the hilarious ways they subtly prank their office mates. Some of these folks are downright diabolical! We selected 16 of our favorite tales of office trickery below. Enjoy!
1. The sneaky cat
“I have hidden a tiny speaker in an adjacent cubicle wall that emits a soft cat meow every 2 hours.”
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2. Awkward family photos
“One of my Co-Worker has a ton of family pictures all over his desk and walls. I was slowly changing them all to pictures of me. I worked really hard to find similar pictures to replace them. I even traveled to some of the places to replicate them. I just about had them all when another guy we worked with asked him why he had so many pictures of me. He thought this married guy had a crush on me or something.”
3. The inchworm
“I sit beside a guy who is a good friend of mine and our desks are separated by a moveable divider. Since I moved beside him 2 weeks ago I’ve been moving the divider a centimetre towards him each day. We’re at 13cm and he hasn’t noticed yet. I have to shift his monitors soon though so that will be interesting.”
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4. Messy manager
“Our old HR director was notorious for having a messy desk. My manager and I made it our mission to add an additional 1,000 random sheets of paper to his desk over the course of a few weeks without him noticing. Every morning he’d come in and 10-15 more sheets would be added to the mess. It took a long time for him to suspect something was up.”
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5. Possessed disc drive
“Found a little script a while back that would randomly open and close the disc drive on my coworker’s computer. Not incredibly often, but enough to the point where it was annoying. He requested a new computer, I reinstalled the .scr as soon as he left that day.”
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6. Teacher takedown
“I teach elementary music. Once, I had a rivalry with the gym/PE teacher. She would send the kindergarten class to mine and tell them it was my birthday and I loved birthday hugs. She would do this about twice a month. I sent them back to her and told them she loved it when people would step on her foot. They rushed her and started stomping. She also told the kids to go into my class, say nothing, and just stare at me. It was the creepiest damn thing. She won.”
7. Coworker cutouts
“Coworker. I have very tiny printouts of just his head. I sneak them all over the office in inconspicuous places. This has been going on for 2 years. He still doesn’t know it’s me.”
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8. Mystery mouse
“Once I plugged in a wireless mouse into their computer without them knowing. And a few times a day I would just jiggle the mouse. Just enough to hear them slamming down the mouse and muttering under their breath and I’d stop. This went on for several days. Sometimes I’d stop by to chat, and I would bring the mouse. When they we go to click on something I would just move the mouse just slightly so they couldn’t actually hover over what they wanted to click. It was brilliant!”
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9. IT issues
“I screen shot their desktops, put all their shortcuts in one folder, then set that screen shot as their wallpaper. I find it amusing listening to their call to IT.”
10. Glitter gag
“I sent a co-worker I loathed a manila envelope full of glitter. She prompted tore it open.
That was two years ago, and she still finds glitter everywhere. Our lil office fairy.”
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11. Clock captain
“We have two microwaves in the break room that somebody needs the time to be the same on. I used to change the time on one by twenty minutes and wait for them to fix it. Now i change it by one minute everyday until they fix it and i start over.”
12. Playlist update
“They sometimes leave their personal spotify accounts on the shared computer that we all use, so in the past, I’ve added things like Barney the Dinosaur and Teletubbie tracks into their libraries.”
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13. Pencil McPencilface
“Not me, but a guy I know. He stole a coworker’s novelty giant pencil, then started emailing said coworker in-character as the pencil, with photos of the pencil in different locations around Europe.
He even got another coworker in on the act to deflect suspicion away from himself, and used proxies to ensure the emails couldn’t be traced back to him.
The original owner of the pencil got so pissed off, it initiated a company-wide hunt for the perpetrator. So far as I know, it was never resolved, and Pencil McPencilface roams the world to this day.”
14. Whistle while you work
“I whistle Christmas songs in months other than December. Just the first few lines once or twice an hour. Give it a few hours and they’re questioning why jingle bells is stuck in their head mid June.”
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15. Code breaker
“So our men’s bathroom had a code to get in 123. For months whenever I entered or left the bathroom I would enter in a number in the keypad. If anyone went in after me, the code wouldn’t work the first time. They actually had to remove the code after about a year.”
16. Pronunciation police
“I like to incorrectly correct people’s pronunciation. Like they’ll say beignet “ben-yay”and I’ll say, “actually, it’s ‘bang-yet’.â€
Most of the time it’s obvious I’m just messing with them or they already know the schtick and they laugh it off. But every so often I’ll actually convince someone they’re wrong. And it’s glorious. It’s a pretty low success rate but when you hear someone use the wrong pronunciation in a conversation months later and you know you did that, it makes it all worth it.”
These people sure have mastered the art of the subtle prank! Keep these in mind next time you start to notice strange shenanigans in your workplace and be sure to share this list to warn others… and make them laugh!
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