We all like a laugh, don't we? But some people insist on taking it too far…
When I worked in a security role, a firearms expert demonstrated the difference between the fantasy and the reality of explosives. Unbeknown to the trainees, he had randomly fixed small explosive charges under some of their chairs. He then proceeded to let them off without warning. I don’t think he did it again…
We attached a remote controlled fart machine to someone’s chair as revenge. The chair was then given to a new manager. It did not go down well.
Inspired by The Office, we decided to set a co-worker’s belongings in jelly, only to discover she was allergic to gelatine.
There was a real chance of strike action over a pay deal. One morning, the HR director found a stack of internal magazines with our female CEO’s head cut out of each issue. He was frantic, fearing a campaign of intimidation. It turned out one of our customer service team had a crush on the CEO and his mate had cut out 150 heads to arrange around his computer.
We filled a colleague’s desk drawer with cornflakes while he was on holiday. It was funny when he got back. It wasn’t so funny two weeks later when they were starting to smell.
In my old office, we had a co-worker who wasn’t particularly tech-savvy. We would wind him up by jamming the keys on his keyboard with balls of paper. At first, it was funny watching him get increasingly annoyed. Then, suddenly, he got really outraged and threw his keyboard against the wall – while it was still attached to his computer.
A group of sales staff started playing “office golf” with a football, despite being warned it wasn’t a good idea. One day, a stray shot hit a wheelchair-bound member of staff on the head. All five had to write letters of apology.
We did the classic “stick a pound coin to the floor and see how many people stop to pick it up” trick at work. It caused somebody to trip over and break their wrist.
In one of my first jobs, I befriended a manager and we developed a series of inside jokes. While preparing a very boring document, I included one of our cruder jokes, thinking she would review it before it went out. She didn’t, and I had rather a lot of explaining to do to the client who received it.
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