April Fool’s Day – Tricks In The Office

In the spirit of April Fool’s Day, we’ve come up with a few practical jokes that should make people smile. We’ve chosen them to give everyone a bit of a surprise.

Whatever prank you choose – whether it’s one of ours, or one of your own making – think whether your colleagues will appreciate it. Your colleagues – or boss – should see the funny side of it, get the joke, and not be offended.

The Man In the Ladies

I found this one on the Internet. It’s pretty neat.

This creates an initial shock, but it’s harmless. Get a pair of men’s trousers and a pair of shoes and sneak into the ladies’ loo. Place the trousers over the edge of a toilet seat so they look like legs and put the shoes at the end of them to complete the illusion.

Now it’ll look like one of your colleagues has fallen asleep in the wrong cubicle. (If you’re going to do this – and to reduce potential grumbles after people discover the prank – just refill the loo roll dispenser at the same time.)

The Puzzling Printer

At one company someone printed out ‘upgrade’ notices for their office printer, complete with official logos and jargon, saying it was now voice activated.

If you really want to sell this, make sure it’s a wi-fi printer and have a colleague go and ‘use’ it while a teammate sends a print job, so it looks he’s controlling it just with his voice.

The Post-It Note Zone

There are many cool Post-It note pranks on the Internet; covering people’s houses in them, making office desks look like seaside resorts and much more. But our prank is a bit more subtle. And requires co-conspirators.

If you’ve got a colleague with Post-its all over their desk and computer monitor, take a photo of how they’re arranged and then replace them with notes of your own written in gibberish. Make the gibberish look as close to their own handwriting as possible. (Or you could just keep them blank.)

Now you and your other co-workers will replace all your own sticky notes with gibberish too. When your victim asks what’s happened to their Post-its, you feign ignorance and point to your own. When they check with someone else, theirs are changed too.

If you play it dead straight and serious, you might get them to question their own sanity for a second or two.

Photo Swap

If your office has framed photos on the wall, see if you can replace them with your own and time how long it takes someone to notice. (It might be days…)

Just print a photo of yourself, or a celebrity, that somewhat matches the picture in the frame. Obviously you want something in similar colours, or poses, to the original picture and for best results use photo paper.

You can either open the picture frame to put your new image in, or you can just stick it to the glass with Blu-tack.

(If you want to be extra sneaky, you don’t even have to replace the whole photo. Just print a tiny cutout of your face and stick that on to the picture instead.)

The Huff-Puff Balloon Trick

Fancy pranking your boss? A nice way to go about it is to fill their office with balloons. It’s colourful, friendly and easy to clear away afterwards.

(In a peculiar way it also shows dedication, since you’ll appoint the most junior member of the team to spend their lunchtime blowing them all up by hand – hence huff puff.)

And if you want to play a secondary trick on people, claim that one of the balloons has £20 in it. While everyone is searching you can pinch their lunch. Ha ha!

Do you have squeaky drawers?

Internet-person ‘Zookie’ had a great idea, which is to get a dog’s squeaky toy and place it behind colleague’s desk drawer. That way every time they open and close the drawer, it’ll squeak.

Like the Post-it note prank, this will work even better if everyone else claims they can’t hear the sound.

Jiggly Staplers

And if you simply want to be a tad annoying, try this one, as seen in The Office (available on #Netflix). Take a colleague’s stapler and set it in jelly. Of course I wouldn’t want someone damaging my favourite stapler, so put your victim’s stapler in a sandwich bag, so it doesn’t get gummed up.

Doesn’t Martin Freeman look young? From The Office to The #Hobbit, eh? Who knew that pulling pranks with stationery would turn you into a Hollywood star?

Previously on The Euroffice Blog…

Euroffice SME News Roundup – March 2015