31 Great Office Pranks
Good nature office pranks, can turn a ho-hum business into a corporation with a powerful culture. And even if that doesn’t happen, it can just be funny as all hell. I think my favorite is the bluefish heads…
1. Where’d My Office Go?!?
One Of The Best Office Pranks: One of my favorite office pranks was when some folks had professional contractors come into their office, and put up a finished wall on each end of a corridor that led to a bunch of peoples’ offices. The confused reaction of each person as they rounded the corner expecting to walk down the hall to their office (only to be greeted by a new wall complete with faux fire extinguisher box) was priceless! Thanks To: Frank Carnevale of Fourward LLC
2. Naked Birthday Wishes!
One Of The Best Office Pranks: The employees at my father’s factory hired a woman to dress like lady godiva. She rode a white horse into the factory and wished him a happy birthday. Because she basically appeared naked, she received so much attention riding the streets surrounding the factory that the story made it onto the local news. Thanks To: Jacqui Rosshandler of Jacquean Products/ Eatwhater
3. Stripper Posed As Applicant
One Of The Best Office Pranks: I hired a stripper to pose as an art director for a job interview. My boss was a strip club fan, so who better than a stripper to apply for a job on his birthday? We prepped her about design lingo and gave her a portfolio to present. As he turned the pages in the book, she said, "I’d do anything for this job!" Then, she began to strip. He said, "No, no, that’s okay!" But, she continued undressing. When she was practically in his lap, we all started laughing. He finally realized it was a pr Thanks To: Margo Berman of Creative Catalyst Unlock The Block
4. Auto Text Torment
One Of The Best Office Pranks: Getting into your co-workers computer and changing his Auto Text in Microsoft Word. Replace his name with something silly ex. John Doe becomes His Highness. Every time he types his name, the auto correct feature automatically changes it. This is done by going into Word/Insert/auto text/auto correct. It’s really fun! Thanks To: Katrina Poole of Binksy & Bobo
5. Chip(endale) On My Shoulder
One Of The Best Office Pranks: The scene: staff meeting at the corporate office. A contractor (with tool belt) knocked on the door and asked if I was present. My heart sank–I envisioned a crashing elevator in the building I managed. He approached and began gyrating in front of me. There are more graphic details, but, basically, my co-workers had ordered a singing-Chippendale-dancer to celebrate my birthday. Thanks To: Marlene Caroselli of Center for Professional Development
6. Car For Sale-cheap!
One Of The Best Office Pranks: List a coworker’s car for sale on Craigslist or one of the car buyer magazines, using their name and cell phone number. Make sure you know how to run fast when they find out who did it! Thanks To: Wendy Kenney of 23 Kazoos
7. Simple But Great Office Prank
One Of The Best Office Pranks: A quick, simple office prank is changing someones keyboard to Dvorak. At first they think they mistyped but then they have no idea what is going on. Thanks To: Jourdan Wilkerson of lifeBLUE Media
8. Is It Hot In Here???
One Of The Best Office Pranks: If you get to the office earlier than co-workers; turn up the heat in the office to 90 every morning when you get in (works best in winter) and turn it down before they arrive. It might take a few weeks but guaranteed, they will start to wear summer clothing after a while and look completely ridiculousand think they are nuts. Simple prank but hysterical. I’ve done it and I still laugh years later. Thanks To: Kharma Finley-Wallace of hoverFly Media
9. Phone Call From Behind
One Of The Best Office Pranks: The office manager took a call from one of the outside salesman, presumed to be on the road using his cell. After a few lengthy moments into the conversation, the rest of the office saw the salesman enter the doorway (sill on his phone) and approach the manager (still talking) from behind; her back faced the doorway. He is now standing behind the office manager carrying on this conversation as if they were not in the same room. The look on her face when she finally turned around! Thanks To: Carolyn Bartz of LIVNG YOUR PASSION
10. Ship A Cubicle
One Of The Best Office Pranks: A team of tech support folks grabbed plastic wrap (the kind used for wrapping up pallets) to seal up a cubicle and filled it with peanuts all the way to the top. Thanks To: Meryl Evans of meryl.net
11. Copier Caper
One Of The Best Office Pranks: An official-looking letter was placed on each printer, "signed" by our Corporate Facilities Team, on each copier indicating that we had recently upgraded all copier systems in the office–the machines were now completely voice-activated. "Please speak your request using a low, soothing tone." The hilarity ensued. We listened to people using a seductive voice…”ooonnnne. ONE cop-py. ONE PLEASE. Col-late, Staple! Goshdarnit!” For a laugh, try this prank on your newly hired empl Thanks To: Elizabeth Schirmer of PAETEC
12. It`s A Matter Of Prespective
One Of The Best Office Pranks: One year, when a very prominent man was promoted in our office, the female secretarial staff took it upon themselves to have ALL of his new office furniture hidden in the ladies washroom and replace it with Doll furniture! The message they wanted him to get was to always continue to be the wonderful leader he has always been and to not get too big for his "office" It has hilarious! It remains legendary to this day! Even mentioned at his retirement party! Thanks To: Natalie Hjelsvold of Professional Best Friend
13. Bye, Bye, Love
One Of The Best Office Pranks: This prank happened 20 yrs ago. The beauty was my coworkers were all in on it,even my boss. I was working as a bookkeeper at the local library.I loved it! On my last day I waited to be told when my farewell party would be. Not a peep,not a clue!I was scheduled to work to 4 pm & at 12,my boss came to my desk,shook my hand and told me I could take off!I wanted to sob I was so sad-no party! I walked to the car,but a coworker ran out &yelled I had a phone call. Of course,there was my surprise party! Thanks To: Sandy Wheeler of Sandy Wheeler Travel Specialists
14. Dude Where’s My Car Prank
One Of The Best Office Pranks: My good friend (Allen) at our Salt Lake City office kept jerking everyone around and lying about little crap. Roger and I had to fly in to Salt Lake City for meeting with clients. Having a spare key to Allen’s car. At 1AM we drove is car out of his drive way and parked it at the downtown mall then we called the police and reported the car repossessed. Once he found out He didn’t speak to me for a month.BTW Allen straighten out and went to win a sales award. And yes we’re ALL still friends Thanks To: Bert Martinez of Bert Martinez
15. Call Girl Call?
One Of The Best Office Pranks: I used to work for an audit firm 10 years ago and one day, one of the secretaries and I decided to ‘prank’ our boss. The secretary (we’ll call her Sue), called one of the known houses of disrepute and before anyone answered, connected to our boss’ direct line! You should have heard him through his closed office door when the lady on the other line was adamant that HE was the one who called her! All we heard was "Lady..GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT!" It was so funny. Thanks To: Sandra Baptist of SAB Companies International Inc.
16. Mysteriously Frozen Screen
One Of The Best Office Pranks: Take a screen grab of someone’s entire desktop and then open the image full screen. They won’t be able to figure out why nothing’s clickable. Instructions: Mac: Command/Shift/4, then click and drag to select entire screen. The image will be saved to the desktop as a ".png" file. Windows: XP – Press the "print screen" key Vista – Use the new Snipping Tool under Programs Thanks To: Sheldon Perkins of Yes! Marketing Group
17. Business Card Depth Charge
One Of The Best Office Pranks: I intercepted a new box of John’s business cards and wrote mortifying messages on the back of a few. I stuck them back in the deck, then waited for my "depth charge" to explode. A few weeks later, John slid a business card across the table to his prospective client. It flipped over to reveal a enticing new pitch: "Are You Into Other Guys?" Twenty years later, he still compulsively checks the back of every card before it leaves his hand. Thanks To: Dean Chance of Chance Creative
18. Deal Me In, Sailor
One Of The Best Office Pranks: The best office prank I ever witnessed: Buying a deck of playing cards featuring men sans apparel and hiding each of them in a different place around a (straight male) co-worker’s desk. Everywhere from the disk drive to between pages of books. Months later, he was still finding them. The gift just kept giving. Thanks To: Matthew Broyles of the matthew show
19. You Never Know
One Of The Best Office Pranks: My husband’s job requires him and others to drive company trucks. A while back the guys got a plastic snake and rigged it up inside one of the other trucks. So this guy opened the door and the snack was coming right at him. It was hilarious watching him scream and run from the snake. It was a long time before anyone was able to open their door without looking for the snake. Thanks To: Kathy McHenry of Your Virtual Advantage
20. The Mafia Hit
One Of The Best Office Pranks: My old office at the time overlooked Sparks restaurant where Paul Castellano was gunned down. A few months later, the FBI decided to subpoena everybody whose office was above the restaurant, including my boss. My friend and I decided to pull a prank on him. We went to the fish store and bought 3 bluefish heads. I put them in a FedEx envelope and cut out words from the newspaper that spelled out Clam Up Whistleblower Or Else. I put his name on the envelope and put in on somebody’s desk. It was delivered to him shortly later… you can only imagine what happened. Thanks To: Brad Berkowitz of Integrated Resources
21. Where Is My Office?
One Of The Best Office Pranks: The best office prank I have ever heard of was the one where some guys come in and build a wall to close off the hallway where the executive staff offices are located. Executive staff come in the next morning, oblivious they go down a different hallway and realize "what the heck, where did my office go?" They keep returning to the original starting point in a futile attempt to find their offices…hilarious! Thanks To: Maureen Campaiola of DARE To Be Phenomenal
22. The
One Of The Best Office Pranks: In front of the stage a rather vocal table of about 10 people. They were there to celebrate a birthday. Fay, a local girl who works on a pig farm, was turning another year older. During my portion of the show, a woman walks of to the table with a huge box. They open it, and there was a birthday cake inside. It was about 2 feet long and a foot wide, covered in a rich white icing. Ohhh it looked great!! I stopped the show and led the crowd in a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday”. Then someone came up with a great idea, Fay should give a piece of cake to everyone in the bar. The owner came out with a huge knife and Fay cut, HACKED, into the cake. As the knife went through the cake, Fay said,” I don’t think it’s quite cooked”. Then it became obvious, this cake was made of “Pig Crap”. Hard stuff around a plastic bag of runny stuff. The cake was running all over the box it came in. The folks are looking up at me and saying stuff like,”Now thats Comedy. Having the worlds lowest gag response, I caught a whiff of this and well almost lost it. I said, “Now thats something you won’t see on the Food Network.” Thanks To: Bryan Cox of Cox Marketing
23. Tin Foilded Again!
One Of The Best Office Pranks: When an associate in a top tier law firm (who was known as a bit of a prankster) took a two week vacation his peers covered EVERYTHING in his office in tin foil. When he opened the door the whole room (chairs, desk, computer, pencils, etc…) were all shining in a silver colored coating. Thanks To: Thom Singer of Author / Professional Speaker
24. Attorney Scare Becomes Party
One Of The Best Office Pranks: I managed a division of a large software company and it spanned two different buildings in the same town. One day, at around lunchtime, I got a call from the other building indicating that an employee that I had just fired a few days earlier had returned to the offices with his attorney and was going through files, etc. I raced over the other side of town, dashed into the conference room that they were supposedly in, only to find that the entire office had arranged for a birthday party for me. Thanks To: JR Rodrigues of JRBM Software
25. Phone Message Fun!
One Of The Best Office Pranks: Easy. 1. Give your "mark" a phone message saying that he or she received an urgent call from Mr. Bass. Include your local fish market’s phone number. 2. When the call is made, your friend is greeted with "Hello. Metropolitan Fish Market," and your "mark" should say "Hello. May I please speak to Mr. Bass." Next: Silence. ALT: Cookie Baker/local bakery #. This worked beautifully many years ago, but with today’s high-tech answering systems, it may just crash and burn Thanks To: Susan Hawkins of Favor Affair
26. Try Something Different!
One Of The Best Office Pranks: The daily ‘coffee break’ snack was Lays, Plain potato chips for a coworker. He got teased all the time. There was no variety. One day, when he left his desk on his way to the break room, several coworkers dumped thousands of Doritos, Cheetos, Funyons and Barbq chips. When he returned, he was less than amused. Especially dealing with the red sticky and powder fingers. Thanks To: Fran Brigtgs of Get Sponsored!
27. Beauty And The Beast
One Of The Best Office Pranks: One year in NY I decided to set the tone at a mtg. I was running because this office had many people not nice to each other. So I had someone dress up as a Beast in a gorilla outfit,and I dressed up as a Angel Beauty in a beautiful green gown with an Angel Hair wig and a crown. I opened my meeting and said to the 50 people in the room "Okay which one are you" it totally took them by surprise and the moral of the story was the environment in that office changed for the better. Thanks To: Robbie Motter of Contacts Unlimited, ASLA and NAFE
28. Glued
One Of The Best Office Pranks: A colleague had everthing in his office guled to the surface where is was kept. I mean everything, phone, fax, paper clips, pens, papers, chairs (you get the idea). His office was then filled with ballons, so when he cleaned up all the ballons he thought he was home free! Thanks To: Tina Wick of Greenpurse
29. No Offense…really!
One Of The Best Office Pranks: As part of an HR training workshop on sexual harassment at a Fortune 500 company it was my job to get ‘snacks’ for the afternoon session. I decided to order a ‘boob’ cake, yes, I mean breasts, and have it delivered to my boss at the office during our workshop, which included about 15 individuals from our ‘creative’ department. Since no one was offended and we all had a good laugh it couldnt qualify as sexual harassment, right?!? Thanks To: Kristi Hughes of Manavista PR
30. Restroom Hemorrhoidal Burst
One Of The Best Office Pranks: Squirt a four inch line of ketchup in the toilet. Don’t flush. Wait for someone to use the bathroom. Hear the shrieks as they wonder who had a hemorrhoidal burst! Thanks To: Dean Wright of Tripware
31. Dog Spelled Forward!
One Of The Best Office Pranks: A few years ago, for April Fool’s day, I popped the key caps off of an colleague’s keyboard and put them back on – in alphabetical order. Thanks To: Eric Goebelbecker of Dog Spelled Forward
