Best Technical Prank

I am not sure how technical this is but.....

I was shop lead for the machine shop, and the other 2 division leads and myself had a long running series of "one-ups" at a shop I worked in. I fell victim to a bohemian redneck wedding prank.

My coworker halved a watermelon and de-fleshed the innards. Then he jacked up my truck and placed it under the right rear (drive) wheel.He placed a barely noticeable stone under the front as a chock for good measure.

He then offered to buy me lunch if I drove. Always one for free food, we loaded up. I started the truck, put it in reverse and watched the RPM's scream upward. 1st gear. RPM's scream upward. I looked at Mike who had a devilish smile, and then saw all my co-workers peering out and pointing and laughing.

When I got out and inspected the prank I burst into laughter. It was absolutely hilarious!

I got him back - and that prank certainly was not 'technical'. A tale for another forum.

cr3

On the same lines as your watermelon anti-traction device, when we were teens we had a typical hamburger stand hangout.

One of our friends had his established parking place. So one night while he was inside we jacked up the rear end of his 1950 Chevy and placed blocks under the rear axle so rear wheels were just barely off the ground. The fun began and we all had many laughs about it.

Unfortunately, he didn't have the required sense of humor and held it against us for awhile (he got over it though).

My Dad told me about the 'Little Gem Fuse Tester' Nicely built in a diecast box, big glowing Neon... Biased toggle switch 'Standby' and 'TEST'

They'd leave it plugged in with the neon glowing away cheerilly...of course some poor sap would flip the switch.. POW the whole lab would go out as the main fuse was blown...

Mate of mine used to work in a smallish test chamber that had it's own Air Con unit...he'd take the condensate drain tube and carefully route it into a colleague's jacket pocket (those were the days when everyone wore jackets).

We sent a coop student to the tool room to fetch a metric Cresent wrench. The tool room guys got a big kick out of that...

I always liked when some apprentice came up asking "Hey, what's a Henway?"

You knew some journeyman had him on the snipe.

That and the 100 count box of 1/2" predrilled holes.

Well, In shop class we would turn off the breakers that powered the outlet strips along the wall. We then plugged in electrolytic caps in each one. When the teacher came in and asked why we were not working we told him there was no power......BANG!

Puffs of smoking paper all over the place.

I also worked for a company that made emergency lights. We had an old lady that would power up the circiut boards for test. To brighten up our day we would put a couple of caps in backwards. Fun to see all that paper hanging off of her. Good thing she had a strong heart.

An axe when packed in a rectangular box can be the source of great amusement...
Because the centre of gravity is right at one end you can 'accidently' put the pckage down overhanging the edge of a table and watch someone jump to stop it falling ....but it just sits there apparently defying gravity

Oh! I almost forgot a great one... We would also send new guys to human resources so they could fill out their ID TEN TANGO forms (ID10T a.k.a. IDIOT). HR didn't always like us

Also not very technical compared to modern standards.

In 1957-59 I got a portable radio. (4 or 5 of these small valves)

A traveling theater group also had problems with their wire recorder and left it behind. I repaired it (fuse). This recorder also transmitted when recording.

I tuned the radio and put it in a box and left it next to a street. When somebody then passes the box I talked to them via the recorder and asked them to put me in the shade because it is too hot in the sun. The next person was then asked to put me in the sun because I am freezing. Miles of fun.

I later ran a radio request program and everybody knew I was the Jack in the box. I had to stop (I did not realize that some of the teachers were also listening) and the authorities were driving around the town with a directional aerial.

I worked in a shop where there were various assignment give to new 'green' apprentices such as sending them to the tool crib for their monthly rags.

Or the structural steel layout supervisor would send to the outdoor steel yard in the dead of winter and a foot or two of snow to fine the "English" channel stock pile.

After graduating from tech school I landed a P/T at a local pharmaceutical company. My first assignment was freeing a frozen impeller. The Head Mech said that the only way to free it was by using a can of compressed steam. Off I went, never found one. I came back and he said "...then get a bucket and fill it to the top, and don't come back' til it's full.." It was a long day.

Oh, and the one where you're sent to fetch the "Knock-out punch for glass windows"!

This one's been around for a while, but I've used it more than one on newbies. Sent them to fetch me the wire stretcher. After a while one can do it with a straight face.

Also, back in mechanicing days I would charge up an ignition condenser (back when points and condenser were the norm) then place it on floor. I would then ask an innocent passerby to please hand it to me. Never failed!

April fools day parties etc. I like to make ice in a tray and when it is froze over but liquid in the center use a hypodermic syringe to remove a quarter of the volume. Put some of the water back on top to seal them. Then freeze them hard.

The created ice with air bubble floats thin side up in their drink, and when the ice cube warms enough it blows the thin face out with a pop. The first gets their attention and if they don't figure it out (most don't) the second catches them looking in their drink. Can get most of a party that way.

Dry a small drop of food coloring in the party cups and the beer etc. goes in and slowly turns (green for St. Patties day) the drink to your choice of color.

The first is my design the second I learned from my Dad.

Brad

I feel slightly ashamed of this contribution due to the unforeseen consequences.

While still working at my company in the UK, we operated a design office of about seven people in an open plan layout. One of the electrical engineers came in one day with a little utility program (on a floppy) that could be loaded on any computer as a TSR.

We both had a scathing disregard for our Technical Director so we thought that he would be the best target.

I loaded this TSR onto his computer early one morning and tested it to see that it worked ok. In essence, the TSR would, on an entirely random basis completely reverse (mirror) text on a computer screen for about two seconds before reverting back to normal.

Jim, nice but dim (the technical director aka JNBD) arrived and started typing away as per normal and then it happened..........he tapped the screen and off he went again! Some time later, it happened again....... "hey fellas! my screens reversed" ....we all pause for 1.5 seconds before turning around......... "looks ok to us" we corus!

Well this continued for weeks with us always just missing 'the event' and JNBD becoming ever more stressed!

We subsequently found out that he was having to make visits to a 'head doctor' and removed the TSR. Unfortunately, funny as this was at the time, he eventually found the stress of the job too much and resigned!

It was a shame really as he was a reasonable guy and did all the paper work stuff us engineers don't like so much. I think, on reflection, that we were the loosers and still feel a bit bad that I played a part in his demise!

In an electronic design and manufacturing shop the workers listened to a hideous radio station so we would turn on the RF signal generator and tune it to the frequency of the station silencing it. Bewildered they would try another station. We would repeat the noise suppression until they put it on the station we wanted. It took weeks before the realized what was going on. I later used the same technique with a secretary that listened to loud obnoxious music on the other side of a door from my office.

I am not ashamed to say I was the butt of some of these myself.

Once asked to build a test rig for all the different types of DC motors on the machines we built, I made this nice bench on wheels with test leads hanging of it on a rack, nice table top with all the outlets at the back. I was well proud until.....there was smoke coming out!!!

Shit and double shit as I ran towards it to switch it off and to see what was going on. Ever been had by the smouldering shoe lace? Well I was, bastards.

The other one was not done to me and I am pleased about that as I would have been more than just angry.

They poured some oil on the vee belt in this machine on the build bench. The belt starts to slip and rumble so the guy pokes his head in the machine to see where it comes from. Somebody else hits the electrical box with a soft face hammer....not nice.

One that is funny was the apprentice who had to file a piece of metal down to fit. The file got all clogged up and it starts to skim across the top not taking off that much so he asks the foreman what he was doing wrong. Well he says, did you put filing grease on first? What, filing grease the apprentice asks, what is that? That is some special grease you put on first but we might have run out. Why don't you pop to the tool shop around the corner to fetch us some, here is a fiver.

Very funny to hear him coming back after the tool shop bloke really didn't know what the heck he was on about.

We used to drop pre charged caps into the pockets of our Physics teachers lab coats....a loud snap and his hand would come flying out of the pocket!!

Also a friend of mine who learnt TV repairing in Germany about 50 years ago, the students added a couple of mercury switches to reverse the picture (upside down), no matter which way the TV was put, upside down or the right way up!!! The picture was always upside down!! teacher was not amused.....

I nearly forgot, nasty one this:- we used to have bottles of silver chloride (I think that was the name or something similar name wise, definitely silver something) to check boiler feed water for impurities on RN steam ships (we had electrical meters, but the rule was I think a chemical test at least once an hour as well).

This is a nasty poison, but one drop in someones tea or coffee, would give them almost instant diarrhoea!!! If they took too long to start drinking though, as it curdled the milk eventually and the trick was then seen....how nobody never died I cannot imagine now!!!

one drop in someones tea or coffee, would give them almost instant diarrhoea!!!

My brother told me saline eye drops work well but probably not as fast

Don't know but the dishwasher rinse aid like "Jet Dry" will do that, but that is not a prank. If the person was say constipated you could cause painful damage.

Brad

Ok, this one my dad played on my uncle when I was a kid. You used to be able to get this firework called a Whiz Bang (best I can recall). I was about half and inch in diameter and six inches long with two wires coming out of it. You put it on the ignition of an automobile and when the vehicle is started you get about 5 seconds of a high pitched whistling noise, a loud bang and lots of smoke. Absolutely hilarious. Scares the hell out of the victim but when he sees you rolling on the ground laughing he realizes he's been had.

When in HS I had one of the Whiz-Bangs in an overcoat pocket as I came home for Sunday dinner. A very cold day and in removing my coat a static spark set it off.

My mother was scared to death and then was ready to "snatch me bald headed" and probably would have done so if my aunt, her sister, hadn't intervened!

When I worked in aquaculture me and my boss would pull a not very technical prank but funny one none the less. When wiring up say a 3 phase motor often the biologists would stop and ask why there were so many wires. During the explination you would say that firstly you have to make sure the supply is isolated because if you grab the wires when they are live you get a..............

We became very good at buzzing like a nutter on ecstasy. The look on thier faces was priceless. I'm just glad that one never backfired as they probably would just walk away and leave me for dead if I had really cocked up.

Here is an oldie but still funny "Shock" link, just click on it to access a YouTube film:-

Shocking!!

And, I thought of another, though I didn't have anything to do with it. The machinists in the Big Shop at Homestead Steel were fond of mixing the purple layout ink with a little petroleum jelly and putting a dab on the black earpiece of the supervisor's phone. Since it was hot in there, and there were no mirrors, he usually had it well smeared before he noticed.

Yeah. Dyekem or dichem (layout dye) or whatever it's spelled is good for gags.

Our old shop foreman cut a hole in the bottom of an old 3"X3" screw box. The hole was just big enough for his middle finger to fit through. He put a bunch of red dichem in the box and around his finger. It appeared there was a removed finger in the 'bloody' box.

It looked perfect. He then walks up to Tony, the new guy, or FNG, in a fake panic and asks for help, while showing the dismembered finger. So Tony is off in a panic now trying to help. Barely at the shop a couple of days, he is scramblin'.

He comes back with ice and first aid to a bunch of guys standing around laughing. He was PISSED. Without saying a word he holds up his right hand, and proudly displays all FOUR of his fingers. Seems he lost his ring finger himself a short time before. Man we felt bad. But I still snicker about it even as I type!

cr3

At one time I was working for a thermal imaging company. As an inspector I was very, very stringent, these were sights for the Canadian military.

I was using an eye loupe, holding it with my eye.

One guy put some graphite grease on the rim of it.

I took a few hours before someone told me I had a black circle around the eye.

Got any former servicemen working for you? That is a common trick with binoculars in the military.

Black graphite grease or white lithium grease work well too - depending on the color of the handset, of course...or so I've been told...

prank told to me by an old timer. how during the korean war. with the temperature bitterly cold, they would bring in an empty 5 gallon jerry can, heat it up, close it. then call for someone to take it over to maintenance. of course, during the walk to maintanence the jerry can would proceed to collapse.

Glueing the tea/coffee mug to the bench works well ..especially if it's full.

Ditto the toolbox...

You know some of these really are so ridiculously inane - I really miss 'em!

In one print shop I worked we bought a second hand machine which had a pound coin glued to the frame on the top somewhere. The amount of new comers who would try to get it off was hilarious.

When we sold it I got it off using a hammer and chisel. All the original paint of the frame came of with it so we still could not use the coin anyway.

Back in '94 a group of ET were working on a Lumonics Laser and they were always playing pranks. They charged-up the system, did not fire any shots and left. A little while later I noticed the lamp discharge electrode cable had not been connected so I grabbed it with two fingers...45Kvolts from a 5joule/14 Watt Laser; I was in a daze for about 30 minutes, but I learned to jump upwards of 3 feet.

When making mother boards one of the techs would put a nickel on the board before the solder oven. The look on the inspector's face down line when they seen it in the microscope was amusing.

In the Army we had two tricks for @## holes, 1) go to the LAWS rocket practice range and get the propellant grains from the practice rockets. Put one in a cigarette and when it went off no more cigarette. 2) Undo the bottom of their bed and sprinkle copier toner/laser printer dry ink in between the sheets. By morning they were carbon black from waist down and it had to wear off.

These were warnings, round two were not pranks

2cents from

Brad

I'm a bit taken back, in that, there were only 2 entries about gluing...

I recall a revenge prank foisted on a manager who felt himself the "King" of pranks... Absolutely everything on his desk, file cabinet, bookcase, even his chair, was "Super-Glued" down... Shut him up for a few weeks...

I used to take red RTV (occasionally other colors), mix it, add some to small plastic beakers or mixing cups, then, shortly before they "went off" lay them on their side on various surfaces to create "spills"... later, I created targets spills such as puddles, or over items such as keyboards, monitors and various office equipment for added effect... A few others began to hire me to create specialized "spills" for them. this was good, harmless fun on a low-tech, nay, a primordial level.

Such as these perhaps?

prank

1. When using colored lubrication to pull cables or wire Put the same colored dye in the lube. Becareful, it will stain what ever you don't want.

It worked very well for us. The lube was blue and so was the electricians arms by the time we were done. Kind of looked like a smurf.

2.@ the end of a conduit or wire feed. stub the correct number of wires out, but only leave an inch or two available for termiantion. then tell some one to hook them up. watch the look on their face.

3. latching peizo buzzer under a box or ???, let them figure out how to turn it off when they lift ???.

I worked in a food plant for many years. I was on afternoons one night, when I got a brain wave.

We received a shipment and I was there when it came in and it gave me an idea for a little fun.

Picture this...

The night sanitary cleaners were about to start the daily sanitation shift. The plant ran two production shifts, days and afternoons, and at nights a sanitation shift.

The supervisor of the cleaners was a buddy and he was in on the prank. The first thing the cleaners do every night at the beginning of their shifts is to grab a huge plastic wash tub, mounted on wheels made by Rubber-Maid, and fill them all with very hot water.

They then drop caustic powdered soap and a mild acid into the hot water and start washing the production lines. Later on they do this over again, only with chlorine. Occasionally if someone mixes the acid with the chlorine we get a gas generated and we would have to leave the area for a few minutes till the ventilation system would clear it out.

Well that night... remember that shipment, well we had received a shipment of frozen cultures. This was a cheese plant. The culture comes in Styrofoam boxes packed in dry ice. I had managed to grab and stash 5 pounds of the dry ice that they normally trash.

While the tub of one co-worker was filling, my buddy the supervisor, called the co-worker over to talk. I then hurried to his tub and I dropped the dry ice into his 3/4 filled tub. Remember that the water is very hot.

Well you should have seen it. The tub exploded into action like a witches cauldron and started boiling up and giving off the most wonderful smoke cloud. My buddy the supervisor pointed at the tub and said to the guy "Holy Shi*, did you mix the acid with the chlorine". The guy turned. saw his wash tub reacting like it was and went running through the production area yelling... "Gas... Gas... Run for your lives". It was priceless.

I liked the story, great.

But please explain your sentence "I was on afternoons one night, when I got a brain wave."

Do you not read your writings before saving?

He is from Nunavut

That far north, and a night can last months..

OK, I'll believe you......

We used to take chips of CO₂ ice and put them in water in a beaker in an acetone bath - acetone mixed with more dry ice makes a VERY cold bath, so the water would be supercooled, but not - quite - frozen. It would freeze into a coating around the dry ice. Then you can slip the "ice cube" into a drink and wait for the water ice to melt off. It starts slow, little puffs of white vapor coming off the drink, then as more ice melts exposing more of the CO₂, more fog comes out of your (or their) glass. Works either way...

Not exactly high tech but:

The Plant Super was a pretty good guy but his secretary thought she was an ice cream factory and a perfect axx too boot. She occupied the last stall and everyone of the rest of the female staff shunned it like it the gate way to hell, (her temper or lack of it).

Some large rolls of something like saran wrap came and some one got the idea and passed it on to one of the other secretaries. She stretched a piece taught across the china bowl.

On the first trip to relieve the results of morning coffee there was quite a floor in the rear of the ladies room. The gals grinned all day when she couldn't see them.

Dont know if it qualifies, but my dad worked on A/C at the Greater Pitt airport years ago. The A/C in the offices for the Control Tower had a coffee pot going 24/7 and the thermostat was located (you guessed it) directly over the coffee potlocation. Needless to say, there were wide swings in the office temps. The office manager (who was always adjusting the thermostat) kept complaining that there was something wrong with the A/C system. My dad rewired the thermostat and hid it elsewhere in the room, and left the original thermostat (with lights/bells.etc) in place allowing the manager to adjust the temperature w/o impacting the real sensor. The probhlem miraculously went away.

Ok, I have a thermostat story and you may be able to use this. Older mechanical thermostats use a coiled bi-metal spring to sense temperature and tilt a mercury switch to regulate temperature. In an office where usually someone wanted the temperature hotter or colder than I did, I simply rotated the thermostat slightly clockwise or counter clockwise on its mounting to offset the actual temperature from what was indicated. The person who needed to see the needle on a certain temperature got what they wanted and I got the actual setting I wanted. When the season changes you just rotate it the other direction.

No-ones mentioned sending the apprentice to the parts department for a long weight.

Or a packet of sparks for the grinder :-)

Fun on site with a Megger tester which applies 500v dc to electrical wiring to test insulation. Also useful for doorknobs, storage lockers, or even just on newly installed cable, which holds the charge remarkably well....

Working in a car breakers, we would get new starts to stack cylinder blocks, which are normally made from cast iron and very heavy. In the middle of a large pile, we would put an aluminium block. It would look identical to iron, but a fraction of the weight! We took bets to see how far it would go when he threw it!

Best of the best - at a Site Safety course, we were waiting for the lecturer to arrive. We had already been fully equiped with safety boots, fluro vests and hard hats. It happened to be April 1st, and while we were standing at the window we saw a group of roadworkers parked across the road, obviously doing nothing but waiting for their foreman. One of our group decided to try his luck, grabbed a clipboard and wandered across to them; kitted out in brand new spotless safety gear he just looked like a foreman. He started shouting at them for doing nothing, and in total control gave them instructions to start digging the road. They had a fair size hole dug, amid traffic chaos, by the time someone responsible arrived.

Waaaay back when I was in the Navy, some wisenheimer sent me to the gear locker for seven fathoms of waterline. I knew quite well what the joke was, so I spent about an hour and a half shooting the breeze at the gear locker, then went back and told him they were fresh out.

He got his snickers, but I got the down-time... Whose prank was that?

I only participated once in a prank back when I was still repairing TVs and stereos. One of our mates had a favorite song that he constantly sings. One day, the rest of the guys decided to pull a prank on him.

One of the guys happened to sing really well but they also needed someone to act as a deejay. Since I spoke English very well, they recruited me.

As soon as our "victim" came in and switched on the radio in the shop (which we had tuned to the wireless mic's frequency), our singer began singing his favorite song. Our victim's eyes took a far off look and he just stopped moving, lost in the notes of the music coming from the radio. At the close of the song, I did my bit...

"And that was 'Yesterday' originally sung by the Beatles ladies and gentlemen. That song is dedicated to Wilson Ng (the victim) of the Electro-Shop, requested by your admirers. Mr. Ng, you are one lucky guy!"

We watched him through a glass window and his body language said it all. He stared at the radio in disbelief. His name had been said over the radio! Admirers! Who?

"Mr. Ng, if you look out your window you'll see your admirers waving to you."

Wave guys!

How about asking the newbies to go to the stock room for a 2x4 stretcher or wood to metal welding rods? When small capacitors are folded back in opposite directions and happily sitting on a work bench, beware upon picking them up.

I recall a prank that was played on me back in 1975. My friend's elder brother was in IBM as a System analyst and he started the first "Computer Programming" teaching institute to teach Cobol & Fortran. My friend joined in & offered me to join classes free just to show other students of attendance. During those days there were only 5-6 Company with Computers IBM 360 only. The PC was unheard of. My first day for programming classes not knowing how a computer looks like, when I entered the institute I was received by my friend's elder brother(IBM guy). I saw just a simple class room with chairs & desk and asked "where is the computer?". I was told to open a small door in the same class room and it is there.

Guess what? When I open the door it was the WASH ROOM!

I was the laughing goon till I passed out as a Computer Programmer in Cobol & Fortran(though I never got any job in this field since the big Companies did their own in house).

( In never knew then that you do programming with first flow chart , write on graph paper . The Institute would hires services of any IBM 360 Company to get your programme card-punched, the card punch operator will then run your programme on the computers and give you the printout and you never still see the computer working except when you are taken only once for a round to see inside a glass room how they look like)

No education goes to waste - I still do the flow charting in my job today improving trouble shooting ,instrumentation loops & P & ID drawings.

As apprentices I think we all endured the usual going to the stores for a long weight or asking for left handed spanners or hammers.

One of my favorites was giving the apprentice a plastic cup & sending them to get a cup of trike, they would get about half way back before the cup melted.

I've seen someone in the welding bay sneak under the bench to weld the steel toe caps of his colleagues boots to the cross rail.

A good one I saw recently was on one of the American car customising programmes where the newbie was given a can of spray paint & told to shake it until the rattle stopped, he was still shaking at the end of the programme.

How about taking a desk top calculator apart and re arranging the number buttons to the same pattern as the phone.

How about swopping the keys on the face of a pushbutton telephone? No-one could figure out why the phone nearly always rang the wrong number....

Some incoming stories of old:

• An electrical apprentice, in the days when and companies where elecricians still had to finance their own activities, was sent to the stores to buy a 'short circuit' with a 10/- note [the story is in pre-1971 non-decimal currency : 12d (pence) = 1/- (shilling) ; 20/- (shillings) = £1 (GBPound)]. The storeman looked at the apprentice for a moment, then came back with a short piece of heavy 3-core SWA cable, properly lugged and with the three conductors bolted together. The apprentice took it back to the electrician and proudly offered it, saying, "Here's your short circuit, and here's your 6d (sixpence) change!"
• What mechanical apprentice hasn't been sent to the Stores to fetch a long weight?

That reminds me of the time we moved to another office in the same company. All of the phone lines dropped from the ceiling so when we vacated the old office we left one of the phones hidden in the suspended ceiling. We rang the phone several times a day & it was about 3 weeks before it was found.

The phones had call forwarding options so we set one office so that the phone would ring once then forward the call to the next phone in the office, then the next, round in circles. It was almost impossible to intercept the call.

Oh, another two. Schooldaze this time.

• Upon entering the physics lab a friend offered a handshake. What should have been noticed was the glass-legged stool he was standing on, his hair all sticking up, and the Van der Graaf generator quietly whirling away on the bench alongside him......
• (Same friend ) "Hold this" (two wires connected across the coil of an unsuppressed electromagnetic buzzer - Grrrrrrrrrr!)..........

Oh, another one. The low-flying oil drum.....

Method:

• Obtain a nearly-empty 45-gallon oil drum (must have a small quantity of lube oil remaining).
• Screw in the bung until it is completely air-tight.
• Place drum on top of large bonfire.
• Retire to safe(?) distance and observe.......

Boom - Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ↑ → ↓ Clatter.

Quick, run for it!

I had performed one adhesive prank in the past. I use Tac-Pac, a clear adhesive to glue a friends tool box shut. We both had a good laugh while he worked at opening it. He was not as amused once he finally got his tool box open to find that all of his tools had also been glued to the bottom of the box.

I just thought of another great one!

There was a guy I used to work with who had a really short temper and his tantrums were hilarious to watch, so naturally he got pranked quite a bit. He was also notoriously bad about not locking his pc when he wasn't at his desk. So one day while he was away from his desk, I took a screen shot of his desktop, set that screen shot as his back ground, then I removed all of his icons from his desktop. This made his desktop look like it had before, only it was just a picture lol. This provided me with lots of amusement as he sat there frantically clicking the 'icons' on his screen trying to open programs all the while ranting about how slow his pc is.

Quite a few years ago while working in the semiconductor industry. I came a cross a loose connector sitting on a loose floor tile. It did not take me long to figure out that stepping on the floor tile would reconnect the cable. Whan the error would reoccur I would walk up to the tool show it a hammer and threaten the tool while stepping under the tool with my toes and stepping on the floor tile. I had a whole group of people believing that threatening the tool with a hammer made it work again. This went on for over a month before I decided fixing the tool properly was less work than threatening it. Before I fixed it correctly I brought in a big hammer and showed it to the tool. Some people wil believe just about anything.

I was an evil, evil man in college....

On one april fools day, I put in my instant messenger profile a link that said "Proof I am an evil bastard". I went to an engineering college (RPI), and knowing all my tech savvy friends used instant messenger as a primary means of communication and routinely look at eachothers profiles, I quietly bided my time...

The catch was that if you clicked on the link, a gay porn site would open up on your computer with quite possibly the most disgusting image (unless you're into that,or a proctologist who likes a little elbow room, I'm not one to judge) you could possibly imagine. Ha Ha, Avery got us, we just looked at something disgusting. Well, that wasnt the end of it. You see, clicking on the link also put a Trojan virus on your computer which activated when you closed the web browser with the aforementioned website. When activated, it instantly opened 99 other gay porn websites and caused your computer to announce at full volume "Hey everyone, I'm looking at gay porn!" Mind you this was before windows had the abillity to close all internet explorer pages with one click (pre-xp), you still had to close them one by one or end it in the task manager, all the while your computer kept saying the same thing over and over again. A couple of my buddies openened it in class (RPI had a studio class setup wherein everyone was required to have laptops for classes), and one even opened it in the Air Force ROTC lounge on campus. The beauty of the prank was I essentially had to do nothing but sit back and let peoples curiosity take over.

Avery Montembeault

While working in the Electronics R&D section of a Copper plant circa 1982, we had one guy who was a program "Pack Rat". I believe in backups, but 40 versions of the same or similar program, on 30 disks under 10 different names, is confusing at best.

So one day, we rewired a big electromagnet we had for degaussing CRT's, so that it wouldn't turn on. This guy walks into the shop, we give him about 2 seconds to see his 5.25" floppies (all 300) sitting on top of the coil, then turn the switch on.

Time to rewire twice: 10 minutes. The look of terror on his face: Priceless!

Priceless!!

only a couple of simple ones, steel toecapped boots welded together at the toes and a prized toolbox trolley welded to the steel roof beams

In my undergraduate college one of the leaders, a Navy pilot on the side, was subject to an extraordinary gag. He had a VW bug painted in a manner remeniscent of the jets he flew. He was very proud of it. Returning from a couple weeks vacation he found it not in its parking space and assumed it had been stolen (I suppose) until he got to his office and found it parked in the space normally occupied by his desk. This was all the more extraordinary because his office was on the third floor, there were no elevators (lifts) and the door to his office was much narrower than the car. I suppose it was really an act of admiration (or a labor of love.) It seems his guys had disassembled the vehicle,, carried the parts to his office and reassembled it. Of course, he required them to reverse the process, but I don't know if it ever worked the same again. (It could only be done because it was one of the old VW bugs, which were technologically quite simple.)

The best ones are always the most effort. This is ever so much better than trips for a left-handed monkey wrench or relative bearing grease. Of course there was also the guy who came back from a weekend to find his room filled with ping-pong balls right to the top of the door. I am sure that was a trip. (Not an act of admiration.)

Sam

"Of course there was also the guy who came back from a weekend to find his room filled with ping-pong balls right to the top of the door"

In a similar vein, I've seen someones car filled with polystyrene beads through the sunroof. He was getting married the next day hence the prank. Luckily his car was a Mini so it didn't take too much polystyrene.

Its always exceptionally important to turn OFF the heater blower, that is make sure its switched to off. Then when you fill the heater up with granules, after they have completely cleaned the car, got in, driven off, need air and !!POOOUUUFFF!!, they are almost back in the same position as they were before....!!!

Thats when they really crack up!!!!!!

A Guy from Shell got married many years ago and we filled up most of his car (not quite overflowing, we did not have enough chips or chads as they are called) with Hollerith card chips......we got him with the blower. He said it coughed up more and more every time he went over a bump for some months afterwards. His wife hated us all.....

Another prank:-

The same Guy above, Rick, who should remain otherwise nameless, was married to a woman who always thought he was screwing off and off drinking with his pals (he must have been caught out BIG time at some earlier point).

He rang his wife from the office in front of us all as we ere all working late due to serious problems, I picked up two glass ashtray, clinked them together (it sounded like beer glasses!) said loudly "cheers, hey Rick, mines a double!". The other Guys around all caught on and made the sounds of a very busy London pub suddenly!!! He went from purple to white in a few short seconds!!!

He put the phone down and boy was he furious, he said now he would have to go home early for the next 6 months!!!! No more Pub time for him!!!!