Purr-fect Prank
Spending 40 hours in the office each week can be a little tedious. It becomes the same routine of coffee, work, Facebook, lunch, Instagram, and possibly a little more work. Some add a little excitement to their days by choosing to pull a few good old office pranks on their coworkers.
These pranks range from annoying to borderline mean to pretty hilarious. Office workers get their jokes on with everything from pictures of funny-looking celebrities to live animals, and we have to admire their dedication to the prank game and duping their coworkers something fierce. Not that their coworkers particularly appreciated the effort, probably.
Ready to see just a few of our favorites? These prank stories go above and beyond. Way to go, pranksters, for your dedication to the trade.
Don’t Mess with a Man’s Car
My office tends to get pretty boring, especially on Mondays when everyone just doesn’t want to be at work. So I always tend to add a little fun to the day. One time, I hid a tiny speaker in an adjacent cubicle wall that emits a soft cat meow every two hours.
You should have seen my coworkers (and eventually my boss) look for the cat. I told only my closest colleague, and we sat back trying not to die of laughter. Reddit user: [redacted]
Sincerely, Your Master of Ceremonial Duck Herding
Do you know how you can fray duct tape and pull off long little sticky threads of it? So I pulled off a single long piece of it and put it down the side of my manager’s brand-new car. Looked like a deep, horrifying scratch on the paintwork. The look on his face when we went out for smoke was priceless!
He threw his hands onto his head, his knees went weak, and he basically crawled over to it and pulled the thread of sticky duct tape off easily. Harmless and fun, that one. Reddit user: FinalEdit
Winston, the Imaginary Cat
There was once a coworker of mine who really got on my nerves, and really the nerves of everyone else in the office. He would just talk and talk and talk and felt like he knew everything. So, I changed his auto-correct settings in Outlook so that when he types his name, it adds a ridiculous title….
Example: Tom Smith = His eloquence, master of ceremonial duck herding and debater of microwave etiquette, Thomas “The Velvet Hammer” Smith, Esq. Reddit user: USMC_0481
Paper Trail
My coworkers think I have a cat. I’ve named him Winston. I’ve pleasantly avoided many after-work happy hours and other work events with “I have to get home and feed the cat.” I even have a photo of some random cat on my phone (that I found online) in case anyone inquires further.
I don’t have a cat, of course. But I do chuckle to myself at the thought of Winston, My Imaginary Cat. Reddit user: BartholomewOobleck
I Want Candy
Our old human resources director was notorious for having a very messy desk. My manager and I made it our mission to add an additional 1,000 random sheets of paper to his desk over the course of a few weeks without him noticing. It was a crazy plan, but we thought we could pull it off.
Every morning he’d come in and 10-15 more sheets would be added to the mess. It took a long time for him to suspect something was up. Reddit user: beagle_dog
A Little Underdressed
Not me, but my husband’s story. They had a candy dispenser in their work area that made a particular noise when it dispensed candy. Well, he noticed that a particular employee would, whenever he heard someone else getting candy, get up and get himself some candy also. Like a Pavlovian response to the sound.
So he did what anyone would do: recorded the sound and rigged a speaker up. Randomly throughout the day, he would make the sound go off and sure enough, his coworker would get up and go get himself candy. Reddit user: LimeKilnRoad
Clipping Out
There’s a guy in my office who often comes to work in jeans and a t-shirt and changes into work clothes from his office closet. A few years ago, I came into the office around midnight and swapped his clothes for some Hawaiian shirts, checkered pants, basically a whole wardrobe of the loudest clothes I could find at a thrift store. When I got there the next morning, he was closed up in his office….
His secretary told me that he’d been having a pretty rotten week in terms of workload and was in a foul mood. Finally, he emerged wearing his jeans and t-shirt. He sort of grunted a hello at me, opened the closet door, and just stood there for probably 10-15 seconds trying to wrap his brain around what was in front of him….
Finally, he just started cracking up laughing and put on one of the more “understated” outfits. He spent the rest of the day trying to figure out who had done it; meanwhile, people from all around the office came to behold my handiwork. I finally fessed up at the end of the day.
He swore revenge, although he still hasn’t made his move. Best April Fool’s prank I’ll probably ever play. Reddit user: JedLeland
Gas (or Fan) Lighting
I made 20 copies of a paperclip and put them in the paper tray of the copier. A woman in my office made a copy, got the paperclip in the pictures, and thought there was a paperclip in the copy machine somewhere. She was searching and searching and even went and got a flashlight and started looking everywhere in the machine.
She was opening up drawers and panels for 20 minutes trying to find the thing. It was pretty fun to watch. Reddit user: IrishGuyGolfer
Geek Squad
Helped my friend move an entire cubicle up a space. To achieve it, we actually took the cubicle apart and moved the walls, so none of the decorations moved even an inch. Next, we took up the 9 carpet squares and switched them, so that way the big coffee stain and whiteout explosion stayed.
Everyone then shuffled so the guy in seat 1 was now in 2, 2 in 3, and so on, with 20 in 1’s spot. Now the only thing to cue him off was that his cubicle was directly under the fan and he hated being cold. A friend told me he worked for two days before starting to claim that they moved the fan.
It took him almost a month to notice that the “other row shifted because the guy directly next to him before was now one desk back.” During this time, he started wearing jackets and sweaters because of the fan. Reddit user: sultology
Less Bitter, More Glitter
Was with some programmers; we would put copies of a .exe file of a desktop sheep pet on the others’ computers and sneak something to run it somewhere in the startup. The sheep would just run around on the top of windows, but you could get rid of it by right-clicking and closing the application.
I put about 20 copies of it to run on another guy’s system, and he didn’t know that you could just end the task. He spent half a day constantly throwing sheep out of the way while he tried to do work before he finally asked for help. Reddit user: PangPingpong
Compact Disc-traction
There was a coworker of mine who would try to stir drama up in the office. She would constantly make up lies about me and other colleagues of mine in the hopes of getting us in trouble, and she almost did! So I sent her a manila envelope full of glitter. She promptly tore it open….
That was two years ago, and she still finds glitter everywhere to this day. She’s our little office fairy. Reddit user: Wonder_WomanUnderoos
War of the Teachers
I was the tech guy at a big company, and one time quite a while back, probably a few years now, I found a little script that would randomly open and close the disc drive on my coworker’s computer. It didn’t happen incredibly often, but enough to the point where it was annoying.
So I watched it work and soon enough, he requested a new computer. He got one and I reinstalled the .scr as soon as he left that day. So he has to deal with it on this new laptop too. Reddit user: SnaggyKrab
Cloud to Butt Prank
I teach elementary music. Once, I had a rivalry with the gym/PE teacher. She would send the kindergarten class to mine and tell them it was my birthday and I loved birthday hugs. She would do this about twice a month. I sent them back to her and told them she loved it when people would step on her foot.
They rushed her and started stomping. She also told the kids to go into my class, say nothing, and just stare at me. It was the creepiest thing. She won. Reddit user: Jabez77
Not-So-Lucky Penny
I installed “cloud to butt” on my coworker’s PC. It’s a Google Chrome (the internet browser) add-on that changes all instances of the word “cloud” being displayed to “butt.” He didn’t notice it for months. Last week he finally asked me what that customer could possibly mean by “uploading files to my butt.”
It was absolutely hilarious. I acted like I had no idea, and I never told him what I did either. Reddit user: verenelle
An Adult on Display
Every day I would get into the locker room before my coworker and place one penny in his right boot. This went on for 2 months. After about a week and a half, I could see him getting frustrated. After a while, it just became the norm for him to shake the penny out of his right boot everyday.
He wasn’t frustrated anymore, he was defeated and just accepted it. So, one day I decided to put it in his left boot. He came in, shook his right boot out like usual, but nothing fell out. He looked so relieved, like a huge weight had been lifted. Then he put on his left boot and just freaking lost it.
He slung that boot across the locker room with all his might, calling out whoever did this to him. I stopped after that. I plan on putting a penny in his boot once a year from now on just to remind him. Nobody knows it was me, and I plan on keeping it that way. Reddit user: [redacted]
Suiting Up
I made a new folder on the desktop of somebody I absolutely hated at work. He was a bully and an all-round idiot who thought he knew how to do everything. I named the folder Russian Dwarfs In Love, and then I took a screenshot of his desktop. But I wasn’t done; I set the screenshot as his desktop background.
For an engineer, it took him a ridiculous amount of time before he realized why he couldn’t delete the folder. Reddit user: pineapplespaceman
Head of the Office
This prank is only targeted toward my bosses, but when I know I’m due for a raise or promotion and they tell me they don’t have a budget or that I need to wait a while, I start wearing suits to work. Not every day, but maybe once a week, maybe twice, skip a few, repeat.
It makes it look like you’re going to interviews during lunch or after work. And it works every single time. Reddit user: tinker_dinker
Objects in Photos are Not as They Appear
This is a prank that I pulled on one of my coworkers. While I don’t exactly hate him, he does get on my nerves quite a bit, so I get a kick out of messing with him. I have very tiny printouts of just his head. I sneak them all over the office in inconspicuous places and leave them for other workers to find….
This has been going on for 2 years. And he still doesn’t know it’s me. I make sure that I’m one of the workers who “finds” these pictures of him too. Reddit user: rnpbamc
Getting Ghosted
One of my co-workers has a ton of family pictures all over his desk and walls. I was slowly changing them all to pictures of me. I worked really hard to find similar pictures to replace them. I even traveled to some of the places to replicate them. Yes, I know that was a bit excessive….
I just about had them all when another guy we worked with asked him why he had so many pictures of me. He thought this married guy had a crush on me or something. Reddit user: littleredhoodlum
Pronunciation Pranks
My department is pretty small, so when we mess with someone, everyone is involved. We have a tradition to set up elaborate pranks if one of us returns from vacation, with the crown jewel being an office poltergeist we staged. We threw in a bait-and-switch and adorably made the desk a beach scene.
It was complete with a cardboard cutout of Justin Bieber in scuba gear, a kiddie pool with sand, and a crafty palm tree. About a few hours into her shift, shit got real. See, the rest of her desk was seemingly normal. However, behind the scenes, it was a whole different story….
There was some fishing wire connected to different objects on her desk, with the other ends spread across the rest of our desks attached to pens, activating the big ‘event’ with the simple tug of a pen. There was an instant messaging group where we planned in real-time behind the scenes.
For the next few hours, in intervals of about 20 minutes, things on her desk started to move. A rose we had bought for her flew at her, a tack holding up a corner of a calendar loosened, her mouse moved, drawers opened, etc. This started subtly and got more and more ridiculous as the day played out.
The end of the poltergeist, however, is when we suckered someone in accounting to remove a panel in the corner of her cubicle and roll a ball through the cracks with a picture of the victim’s face taped to the ball. We have yet to top this one. Reddit user: Dengakuslash
I (Don’t) Spy With My Little Eye
I like to incorrectly correct people’s pronunciation. Like they’ll say beignet “ben-yay” and I’ll say, “Actually, it’s ‘bang-yet.’” Most of the time it’s obvious I’m just messing with them or they already know the schtick and they laugh it off. But every so often, I’ll actually convince someone they’re wrong. And it’s glorious.
It’s a pretty low success rate, but when you hear someone use the wrong pronunciation in a conversation months later and you know you did that, it makes it all worth it. Reddit user: stickymeowmeow
A Bad Day for Throwback Thursday
Not an office, but it actually got pulled on me. Working as a new EMT and I’m put on a truck for training with these two guys who loved messing with rookies. Most ambulance bays have a keypad to type in the code to get in. We were pulling into a hospital I hadn’t been to yet, and I preemptively ask him what the code would be so I don’t look like an idiot.
My partner tells me, “They have a retinal scanner here, just put your eye in front of it and you’ll be all set.” I’m stupid and believe him. I don’t know why, I was just so worried about doing anything wrong that I was trying to do everything right so I didn’t even question it….
We take the patient over to the doors, I see the little camera and pop a squat and stare at it for about twenty seconds. Meanwhile, my partners and patient are dying of laughter behind me and grabbed a picture of it. I ended up famous on an EMS Facebook page, but I was pretty cool with it. Reddit user: [redacted]
The Adventures of Pencil McPencilface
Well, I didn’t pull any pranks, but when I walked in this morning, every computer background in the office had been changed to a picture of me from middle school. I was just as surprised as everyone and a bit embarrassed to be getting so much attention from everyone else.
I still don’t know who it was, but I have guesses. The people in my office still like to bring it up every now and then. Reddit user: BurritoBass
Book Smart
A guy I know stole a coworker’s novelty giant pencil, then started emailing said coworker in-character as the pencil, with photos of the pencil in different locations around Europe. He even got another coworker in on the act to deflect suspicion and used proxies to ensure the emails couldn’t be traced back to him.
The original owner of the pencil got so pissed off that it initiated a company-wide hunt for the perpetrator. So far as I know, it was never resolved, and Pencil McPencilface roams the world to this day. Reddit user: batty3108
Our New Coworker: Nicolas Cage
At a bookstore I worked at, it was something of a tradition to pull some kind of departure prank when people were on their last day. I’ve told the story many times about the guy whose last day prank was to order fifty copies of Mein Kampf, permanently screwing up our inventory in the process….
My own last day prank was to go around on those ladders you see at a lot of bookstores and unscrew every lightbulb in arm’s reach just enough so that it wouldn’t turn on and wouldn’t fall out either. Apparently it took them days to figure out there was nothing wrong with the wiring in the place. Reddit user: schnit123
Are You Jell-O of This Prank?
I have a reputation for being the office clown, and one day, I thought of something pretty silly to do to one of my coworkers. I printed out 9 pictures of Nicolas Cage, hid them throughout the coworker’s cubicle, then admitted it was me that hid 10 pictures of Nic Cage….
It actually inspired other coworkers to join in by placing different pictures of various celebrities throughout the office. It’s nice to know my legacy lives on. Plus she could never find that final picture. Reddit user: ElToberino
The Mouse Trap
I put my co-worker’s stapler in Jell-O, and it took me so many tries to get it to work. Meaning: the stapler would push out mini Jell-O staples whenever you pushed it. I had to keep it in the fridge for the Jell-O to stay firm, though. He didn’t really get it because he hadn’t seen the whole process.
But it’s okay, because I laughed enough to make it worth it. And I would totally do it again, with a few changes this time. Reddit user: thelittlegnome
The Pen Thief
My coworkers were notorious for pulling pranks, and I had to think of an ingenious way to get back at them. Which is why this happened. For a while, my favorite thing to do was to unplug their mouse and put a sticky note under the mouse sensor. It was great when people plugged it back in and it still didn’t work.
After a while, I had to stop because my mouse wasn’t getting pranked and it started looking suspicious. I plan to do something else very soon. Reddit user: statscollector
Reading Outside The Lines
In my first job out of college, I worked at a small tech company. One of the bosses was a very sweet woman. She had borrowed pens a few times and forgot to give them back. At one point, one of my coworkers accused her of intentionally hoarding pens because they knew she would be embarrassed….
Thus began the gaslighting. I began to steal every pen in the office over the course of a month (100+ pens). I targeted the specific people who had made the original joke to make sure that there was good visibility to the prank. I made sure that the nicer pens that people associate as “theirs” were always specifically found in her desk.
She would always deny it only to find them right there. Christmas rolls around and we have the company Christmas party. I package up the pens for the white elephant gift exchange, making sure to place my present in the exchange pile without having anyone see who placed it there. When it’s opened, the room explodes with laughter and accusations. Reddit user: lillmaverickllll
That’s Not My Kid
I may or may not have convinced several people, including our secretary, that I lack the ability to read. When asked how I’ve gotten this far (5 years of undergrad and halfway through a master’s program), I confidently state that I memorize the shapes and fake it till I make it….
I can’t believe they believed me, because part of reading is actually memorizing what the letters look like. It’s had me laughing for months. Reddit user: theneckbone
A Hairy Situation
My boss is usually a very chill guy who likes laughing and making jokes with us. One time, I realized that he was a little down; maybe he was stressed from work or something, so I hatched a plan. He usually keeps pictures of his kids on his desk, and so when he left the office, I replaced them with photos of Owen Wilson….
When he came in the next day and saw what had happened, he laughed for hours. I came clean eventually, and he thanked me for being so silly. Reddit user: cnik70
How Low Can You Go?
My dad and I had a prank war where I ultimately came out on top. As the loser, he had to do something drastic. So he decided to stop shaving and cutting his hair, just to see how far he could go before I said anything. I had to endure.
My dad gave in after three years. He looked like a 50-year-old Jesus. It was freaking hilarious every time I saw him. Reddit user: alexmunse
Feeling Fishy
This was at my last job. Every single day for probably two years, I would step into the marketing guy’s office and lower his chair as low as it would go. I found the guy really annoying, so it was, from my view, just a harmless prank. I guess I overdid it though….
One day, my assistant editor was sitting in the marketing guy’s chair, and the marketing guy lost his mind and beat the living crap out of him. It was like the new Dave Chapelle bit, “you had this coming,” and he just kept wailing on him. Honestly, it was pretty scary. Neither of them stayed at the company after that.
I only confided in one person at that company that I was the one lowering the chair every morning. She never said a word, and I don’t play pranks anymore. Reddit user: rabidoverlor
Not Cool, Man
I emptied out my boss’ largest desk drawer (1 ft x 1.5 ft x 1 ft), used heavy-duty staples to secure a shower liner to the inside of the drawer, and filled it with water and aquarium rocks. Then I placed 4 live goldfish and a crab in the drawer and partially closed it.
I also bought him a fish tank and fish food, so after he dismantled his fish tank drawer, he would have new office pets. It worked out perfectly. All fish survived the overnight drawer life. It was a part of a long and well-fought prank war that lasted several years, but this was definitely my favorite prank. Reddit user: _Surf_Ninja
Just Keep Pranking
I used to work in this restaurant once. Whenever we would get a new dishwasher or an inexperienced cook, we would say something like, “Hey, we’re out of ice mix, head to restaurant X and grab some.” The other restaurants were in on it, and the poor kid would be sent restaurant to restaurant until he caught on….
Another good one is to send them for the “long stand.” Same kind of thing, but they come in and ask for the long stand, then they are basically left to stand there as long as it takes to realize that they are an idiot. Reddit user: Missteeze
Millennial Monday
Over the years I’ve played my share. My favorites are as follows: Press CTRL+ALT+DOWN to flip the monitor. Make a screenshot of a person’s desktop, then delete all the icons and make the screenshot the desktop and watch the humor begin. And then place a piece of tape underneath the mouse so it doesn’t work.
This one is a long con. Every day for a few weeks, slightly increase how much work is required to move the mouse. I guess that’s the DPI settings. Anyway, up this number over the course of weeks if not months. THEN one day, place it back to where it initially was and watch the reaction. Reddit user: [redacted]
Clocking In
I work in an office full of millennials with a really casual dress code. Well, no dress code. You will never see panic like circulating a fake dress code memo in an office of 20-somethings who wear t-shirts, ball caps and jerseys to work every day. I do this once every six months….
And it always works like a charm. I do, however, notify the higher-ups beforehand, so they know and help make it look more authentic. Reddit user: Caruthers
A Real Fiesta
I put a simple alarm clock in the ceiling tiles of the server room so that every 12 hours, it would go off with a simple constant beep that would last about two minutes. I was in the room with my manager one of those times, and she went nuts when it went off….
“Every day one of these machines has an alarm, and I can’t figure out which one it is!!” She was frantically checking wires and buttons trying to find the source. Very hard to stifle the laughter. This went on for about 4 months until another manager discovered the clock. He just left it on a desk with a post-it note that said “mad props.” Reddit user: DadWindu
Styro-FOMO
I work at an office that allows us, the staff, to use vehicles throughout the day. We almost never get the same vehicle as the day before because it’s first come, first serve, and everyone always rushes for the nicer models. Because who wants to drive the old car or truck?
So whenever I turn in a company vehicle for the night, I leave the radio on the Mexican polka station. I don’t speak Spanish at all. And the new driver is almost always really annoyed. Reddit user: [redacted]
People in my office were heavily dissuaded from playing pranks as per company policy. They believed that it would be too distracting and that the nature of the business was way too serious. I didn’t do it, but a co-worker filled an office with Styrofoam so it would be difficult to get in.
It was the biggest mess ever and took the managers three days to clear out. That co-worker was fired. Reddit user: DarthMurdok