Sunday is April Fools Day. It’s time to scheme. I’ll tell you some of my favorite pranks. You tell me yours. There’s a good chance we’ll all get something new we can use. (Too bad it falls on Sunday this year. Maybe you can get some ideas for next year.)
A classic prank for the workplace involves the fake e-mail notice announcing that the phone company needs to clean the built-up dust out of the phone lines. Your e-mail should tell people to unplug their phones because a burst of concentrated air will be sent through the phone lines at a certain time, and if the phone is not unplugged, the cubicle will fill with dust.
One of the best practical jokes ever played on me took me years to figure out. I still don’t know who did it, but it was a beauty. It won’t work if your victim has caller ID, unless maybe you block your number. It works like this: Find someone who has two phones – say a work phone and a home phone. Pick a time when you know the target is near one of the phones and no one will answer the other. Call the phone that won’t be answered, then use three-way calling to call the phone that will be answered. When the target answers, say nothing but connect the three-way call. He’ll hear his own answering machine at home telling him to leave a message. Trust me when I say this will freak a person out. It took me about five years to figure out how my home answering machine called me at the office.
I haven’t seen this prank done, but I think it would work if you have a secretary who is unusually clueless about technology. Tell the secretary that some other department is out of copier paper and ask him/her to fax some blank pages, just enough to hold them until their paper shipment comes in.
Send a department-wide e-mail telling people that a once-in-a-century alignment of Pluto and Venus will cause gravity on earth to be 20% less for about five minutes starting at 9:47 AM. Suggest that people test the phenomenon by jumping straight up and down at that time. I stole this idea from here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070329/od_afp/lifestyleaprilfoolmediaholidayoffbeat;_ylt=AoTVC4N.0t6cqXq9w25MVBkDW7oF [no longer available]
When I left my first job at a large bank, personal computers were so new that there was only one in the entire department. Everyone shared it. I was the only person who knew much about how computers worked. Before I left for another company, I wrote a program in Basic that started whenever the computer was booted. It offered a multiple choice test that had to be answered before the user could continue. The question was something like:
Scott Adams is a wonderful human being because of his…
a. Sex appeal
b. Gigantic brain
c. All of the above
It didn’t matter what the user picked. All answers worked. But the computer couldn’t be used until the quiz was completed. I heard later that no one ever figured out how to remove it, and the question was dutifully answered every morning when the computer was booted.
I heard this prank that happened in a typing class. (Or keyboarding class if you prefer.) The prankster switched keyboards with his victim and when she tried typing, he would type messages to her screen as if her computer was a sentient being. Apparently she started asking it for advice, thinking it might be God. This prank would work even better with a wireless keyboard. You could control your co-worker’s computer from across the next cube.
What’s your best prank?