Change his browser home-page to: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294317

Submitter:

1. Learn the difference between "everyday" and "every day."

2. In a depressed economy, never f*ck with another man's livelihood.

My coworkers made a habit of using my flavored coffee creamers that i kept in the main kitchen refrig, even when i put a sticky note on it asking them to respect my property. It continued, so i just emptied a cup of salt into a half empty carton and left it there for all the thieves to enjoy. I checked it a couple days later and it was half gone. I checked it a week later and the level had not moved. Justice is a salt lick.

ANY prank that could get to the hands of management, or worse, outside the company (as an email sig would) are COMPLETELY wrong and will likely get him, or hopefully you, fired. Good pranks are things that will BRIEFLY mess with his ability to work, or screw with his head. Don't fill his cubicle up with styrofoam; that'll take hours to clean up. Do shrink-wrap it, so it takes him five minutes to get into his desk while people snap pictures. If your prank costs the company too much productivity, the management won't be too happy with you.

An old favorite of mine: Buy a mouse or keyboard of the identical make/model as his, and embed it in either concrete, or a Jello mold. Replace his mouse/keyboard with yours, putting his originals in a drawer where they can quickly be found and used after yours are pitched. Reversing the monitor, changing language settings, etc. are OK pranks, but make sure you're on hand to put it right once you've had your fun; don't waste IT resources on correcting it. The desktop screenshot others have suggested is also easily reversible and harmless, so it's not too bad. If your company doesn't monitor personal Internet use (such that he could get in trouble for visiting prohibited websites), leave his browser open and pointing to an embarrassing (but SFW!!) website. Don't use stuff like porn, or anything political/racist/homophobic, etc. Go more for things like girls' cartoons, ballet schools, a sports team he hates...

You can also do things like subscribe him to newsletters to silly stuff (the same kind of subject matter as described above), or create an alias to his email address and use it to list him on Craigslist with some sort of goofy thing he has for sale.

Whether weed should be illegal or not is a different thread, but as long as it's still illegal, it's probably not a good idea to alter someone's signature line to state that they perform an illegal activity, especially when drug use can get you shiatcanned and make it hard for you to find other employment. Why not go whole-hog and change it to, "I like to touch little boy's penises" and be a complete assmunch, if you're going for the whole assmunch thing?

We used to do the standards; turn the video display upside down, reduce the cursor sensitivity, run the random jitter cursor programs, wallpaper with Erik Estrada or most anything rainbow.

Then we grew up.

The one thing we NEVER did, was anything that would be sent outside of their immediate work place, get them or ourselves fired. That's called being a dick and should warrant an ass-whupping.

Also, any company that is truly worried about security should issue proximity badges. Requiring employees to log off every time they piss is asinine.

Create a new folder called Icons.

Take screenshot of desktop

Make screenshot the active desktop image

Put all icons except for one folder in the new folder titled Icons.

Leave desktop image to fool the fool

The next day after he figures it out, come back and put two pieces of scotch tape over the laser on his mouse.

Dear subby.

It is evident that you are the annoying coworker.

Regards.

HAHAHAHAA!!!! That is awesome, Subby!! You should do that!! SRSLY!!! Better yet, change his sig to say "I randomly jizz in co-workers food". I hear that one really gets some laughs too.

/Dick. I hope he punches you in the throat.

I usually pop off an email to my immediate supervisor, saying what a great employee I am, what a hard worker I am, etc. I then log off the computer so nobody else can mess with them.

I will, immediately thereafter, go and inform said person of how they violated protocol, what I did (so they won't be surprised and try to deny it), and tell them they should be thankful I didn't send an email to the BIG boss telling him what I really think of him.

I figure they aren't going to fight the email that I sent on my behalf because it would make them look incompetent and would be apparent that they broke security protocol by leaving their computer unlocked when they weren't around.

One time, my buddy and I modified an unlocked co-worker's workstation so it had a glittery pink My Little Pony wallpaper. When he got over it, we instructed him on how to use WIN+L.

/that's about as evil as I would go; modifying a sig file is totally uncool.

Cyberluddite: Here's an interesting fact that I'll bet you weren't even aware of, Subby: You're a f*cking asshole.

Which is why we should encourage him so he gets fired for being incapable of acting like an adult at his place of employment.

dbaggins: Still, yes, every sys admin these days is a F-in moron.

False premise. The actual sys admins and technicians understand password entropy and human factors. The executives that make the policy are the idiots who require a new "strong" password every 45 days.

Corpsie: Rent Party: Aarontology: I hope they catch you, fire you, and deny you unemployment benefits.

This. I don't give a shiat if I leave it unblocked, wide open, and sitting in the farking hallway. Keep your farking mitts off my tools.

And it's not your fault if someone takes the station you left unblocked, wide open and sitting in the hallway to put a virus on the company network?


No. It's yours for having such shiatty network security. Here's a clue: The single largest security risk in any enterprise is people: That usually takes the form of poorly disciplined and managed administrators.

You know what you do if you find an unlocked computer? You lock it, and leave a polite post-it note on the computer screen.

Beyond that, and fark you.

Rule #1. Never talk to or acknowledge a co-worker. The day will go by much faster without all the chit-chat crap and everyone will leave you alone.

I agree that office practical jokes should be aimed to be harmless. I prefer the 'delayed action' jokes. My favorite may not have been discovered yet:

I had a boss who was retired Army; and he had displayed proudly on his office wall a photo of his decorations case. He went on vacation one week and I was bored, so... I removed the photo from the frame, scanned it into Photoshop and altered it a bit. I printed the result and reassembled the frame with the color print on top. One of these days someone is going to ask exactly where and how he got the Order of Lenin.

Another boss left his computer unlocked over lunch. I took the opportunity to give myself network share access to his windows folder. I spent the rest of the year messing with his head. His favorite wallpaper, John Wayne in the Green Berets, altered subtly, First Col Wayne became Lt Wayne, Then the flash on his beret was replaced by the gay pride rainbow triangle, Then the earring appeared... His email notification sound tended to change as well.

I used to work in a warehouse that had old Texas Instruments terminals in the workstations. Green type on a black screen. My "team leader" was an old woman deathly afraid of computers. If you hit the wrong button, you'll shut down the entire eastern seaboard. Her basic job was to do NOTHING all day except order people around and take credit (and collect a paycheck) for everyone else's work.

I would wait until she was away from the terminal and change the font color to black against a black background. She would flip out and call IT to come fix it, then literally run away from the evil computer. With her away, I would change the type back to green so that IT would find nothing wrong. They would leave and I would change it back to black, repeating the cycle.

Eventually IT went to management and had her demoted and me put in her place. I used my promotion as a springboard to launch my career in the company and eventually made operations manager. She retired early because she couldn't handle the physical part of the job. Last I heard she was forced into moving in with her daughter because she hadn't put anything away as a savings. Retirement accounts are evil too.

Don't prank co-workers who annoy you, only prank your friends and coworkers who can take a joke. Doing it it to someone you don't like (and likely doesn't like you) won't end well.

Set his/her keyboard layout to dvorak.

Never worked in an office in my life- apparently people that do have plenty of time to fark around at work - maybe I should work on my typing skills.
I like the don't be a dick and just buy donuts for everyone suggestion.

Going to stick up for Subby. I work in finance, which means this: If you leave your computer unlocked, someone can easily steal a client's identity. It's to the point were we can't even have cell phones out because people were taking pictures of accounts.

Just imagine how you would feel if your account information was stolen because some idiot couldn't hit Ctrl Alt Delete. I had a guy when I worked at The Vanguard Group that couldn't get that point through his head, even though we had institutional accounts up that were worth billions. Management knew about it and wouldn't do a thing. I would have loved for him to have gotten canned. He put millions of dollars at risk every time his dumb ass forgot something so simple.

Reposted from a previous prank thread.

A bunch of years ago we had a very sheltered sweet young thing (Jen) working as our receptionist. My friend (Curt) and I walked over to Mini Mart and grabbed a couple of packets of pureed onions from the condiment rack. When we got back to the shop we dumped the onion goo into a condom and dropped it outside the front door. We went back in and got back to work. Later I went out for a smoke break and when I came back in I made big fuss about the nasty thing someone had left near our door. Jen and Curt come out and see it laying there and she starts going off about how disgusting it is. While she is in mid rant Curt reaches down, picks it up, and sucks all the onion goo out of it. I will never forget the look on her face.

You can make the sig line funny without getting the dude fired.

Something like "I'm a pretty pretty princess."

Our office was being renovated and a moving company was hired to work over a weekend to move everyones belongings into their new space.

All boxes were tagged with a code to identify which office/cubicle they were to go to. I grabbed a roll of labels and a marker and labeled every plant I could find with the bosses office code.

I arrived on Monday morning to find an email sent to all staff stating that if they wished to have a plant in their area to please come and pick one up from his office.

Guess what, subby. You are the annoying one.

Here's a simple harmless prank. Requires that the person use sound/headphones while working:

Record an audio file of someone in the office saying the person's name. Insert a 30-second delay at the beginning of this file.

Set it as the system sound for minimizing a window.

Replaced the batteries in a coworker's mouse with a handful of M&Ms.

There are many companies where it is completely acceptable to change the password if someone remains logged in as Admin. As an Admin I approve.

thucydides: Then there was the time in high school when my brother and I got hold of a friend's car keys, cut a spare, and started moving his car to a different space/lot from the one he parked it in every day. Thought he was losing his mind until he figured it out.

I once did something similar, but opposite.

Long ago it was my ex's birthday. A few days earlier I went to her parent's house and borrowed her spare car key. I took the day of off from work and didn't tell her. When she started her 6ish hours of college classes I went to where her car was parked, got in, took it to BestBuy and had a brand new CD deck installed to replace her shiatty factory radio. That Cavalier required you to take off the dash to change that biatch so I wasn't about to do it myself.

Anyway, I drove her car back and parked it in the same spot. When she got back into her car there was suddenly a new car stereo and a stack of new CDs sitting on the seat with a "happy birthday" note on it.

/Just felt like sharing

SPLAMM: My coworkers made a habit of using my flavored coffee creamers that i kept in the main kitchen refrig, even when i put a sticky note on it asking them to respect my property. It continued, so i just emptied a cup of salt into a half empty carton and left it there for all the thieves to enjoy. I checked it a couple days later and it was half gone. I checked it a week later and the level had not moved. Justice is a salt lick.
[coloradoguy.com image 374x747]

I used to keep a stick of butter in the fridge to put on my Friday bagels. I didn't mind a little borrowing from time to time but the line was crossed when someone left me with a tiny little nub that wouldn't even butter half a bagel. The next time I brought butter, I put a sign on the drawer that said, "I licked the butter." Nobody took any more of my butter. But I wouldn't be surprised if people licked it.

And I just remembered a prank I played on my boss in the before time. I installed an extension that would drop the cursor to the bottom of the screen after x minutes of inactivity. Even tho we'd been talking about similar cursor pranks, it still took her almost a week to catch on and I'd forgotten about it. Those are the best pranks because they pay off twice. They're fun to set up and fun all over again when they pay off.

Like the time someone wrote "buttplugs" really big at the bottom of a friend's shopping list on the fridge and it was up there for a month. "Oh, that! Man, I did that when we had that BBQ. I forgot all about it." "That was a month ago. It's been up there all this time? I've had clients in my house!"

Anyone who leaves their computer unlocked deserves to be farked with. Not in a manner that's damaging, just one that's embarrassing enough which will help them remember to secure their station prior to taking a break. Bonking morons on the head like this is helpful and avoids actual damage from being done.

don't take a picture of the desktop... move the monitor out of the way and take a picture of what is behind the monitor... then make that the wallpaper.

(google, transparent screen illusion)... you can get fancy with PS...but who has that kind of time for a prank.

traylor: [www.cambosastra.org image 425x282]

1. Wait until he goes out for lunch break.
2. Release the air from his chair.
3. Use tape to fix the mouse trap on the lever of his chair.
4. Don't forget the camera.

Yeah, we used to had a mouse trap in our office that was the source of endless fun. Sadly, after the above prank, everybody grew super-suspicious and it no longer worked.

One other time we hacked a coworker's computer. Made a screenshot of the empty desktop with the icons on it, then made this image the desktop background, and deleted a few shortcut icons. It took a few days for the guy to find out why clicking on those icons didn't work.

I think you're lucky nobody had a broken finger or hand.
Mouse traps aren't funny. They hurt.

LincolnLogolas: Mongo No.5: step 1: open desktop
step 2: print screen
step 3: set to background
step 4: hide desktop icons and task bar
step 5: sit back and laugh as they maniacally try to click on things that aren't actually there

bonus is there is no harm done and nothing to install

It's even better if you cause an error window to open, THEN do the screen cap.

In the late 90s, I did a screen cap of a coworker's desktop and added a folder labeled "Porn Browser" after removing the duplicates of his shortcuts. The folder was next to an open window with some legit (non-porn) program/plug-in/cache folders inside. His shortcuts all worked, but he could neither remove the folder or close the window. This wasn't a workplace that would have fired him, and we all knew he would be a good sport about it.

Another time, I had a widget that let me trigger events over the network on someone else's computer. I recorded my Boss' ringtone (90s cell phone) and set it to trigger on his computer (where he always left his cell phone). Every time he decided to stand over our shoulder's and micromanage our mouse clicks we'd use an F-Key to trigger the sound of his cell phone in his office. He'd leave... but mysteriously, he never had any missed calls listed. Again, this was a boss we knew we could prank.

At my last company, our snack machine vendor brought over a new vending machine. I posted a memo on it with the vendor's letterhead that read something like, "Attention: this vending machine is voice controlled in compliance with The U.S. Workers with Disabilities Act of 1974. Please insert coins or bills and clearly announce your selection. Note: Be sure to face the keypad and speak loudly".

Our senior VP was the first to fall for it (in front of witnesses, anyway).

Go into the mouse control panel, do the mouse calibration, then move the mouse in the completely wrong direction.

Simple, infuriating, and unless the target knows a bit about Windows, they'll drive themselves nuts trying to figure it out.

Balchinian: HAHAHAHAA!!!! That is awesome, Subby!! You should do that!! SRSLY!!! Better yet, change his sig to say "I randomly jizz in co-workers food". I hear that one really gets some laughs too.

/Dick. I hope he punches you in the throat.

Tough love is sometimes the only thing that will get through to people.

I've worked in secure environments where if someone left a system unlocked and their boss found out it would have meant being fired. It's the kind of a security lapse that just isn't acceptable. A prank is something that will at least leave enough of a mark on their memory that will perhaps smarten them up.

We used to change backgrounds mostly; David Hasslehoff in a plum-smuggler was a favorite. In college the Asian grad students had a habit of wandering off for the night with their workstations logged in. The Admin, a man with balls of steel I might add, came in with some mpeg of a woman felating a horse and set a script for it to play on startup and then delete. They'd be forced to sit through about eight seconds of happy horse sounds and then a woman choking and vomiting before they could do anything. He was a vicious bastard....glad I never landed on his bad side.

Attach threads from their chair to pretty much every small unbreakable item on their desk, such as pencils, stapler, tape dispenser, etc, when they pull their chair out to sit down suddenly their entire desk is rushing at them and ends up on the floor, usually takes them 10 - 15 seconds to realize a ghost did not just attack them

I'm a little late to this party, but FFS do not do anything. Don't go near the computer for any reason. Pranks of this sort can come back to haunt you -- or worse, the poor person who's not implementing security measure.

Trust me on this. You may be exposing yourself to a world of troubles.

/end lecture

SPLAMM: My coworkers made a habit of using my flavored coffee creamers that i kept in the main kitchen refrig, even when i put a sticky note on it asking them to respect my property. It continued, so i just emptied a cup of salt into a half empty carton and left it there for all the thieves to enjoy. I checked it a couple days later and it was half gone. I checked it a week later and the level had not moved. Justice is a salt lick.
[coloradoguy.com image 374x747]

Related, I had a co-worker that would eat anything in the fridge. Didn't matter if it had your name on it, or not, if it wasn't locked away half of it or more would be gone by lunch time. The guy had a typical type-A "I'm WAY better than these drones I work with" personality. So one day, another co-worker, who was fed up, cut up some dog biscuits and left them on the counter. Not 10 minutes later we see the guy sneaking into the kitchen, 1 minute after that we heard loud gagging and coughing. Everyone rushed to the kitchen to find him on the ground puking into the trash bin.

The public shame still makes me smile to this day. Oh and the food suddenly stopped disappearing.

Depending on where you work leaving the computer unlocked may be against company/organization policy. Check and if so report them to the proper personnel for their impending termination.

Open up any program; one like Excel or Word works fine. Then hold down CTRL + N until the computer is unable to open any more windows. Simple, harmless, and they'll get the message, especially if they were already writing something in Word and now they need to close dozens of windows to get back to that one document.

About 1990 I worked at a newspaper pasting up pages with actual paper copy. Every day we had a rundown of where everything was supposed to be on each page in each section. An average paper had about 16 pages that we had to worry about

One April Fool's Day I went in early and cut-and-pasted that night's rundown with the previous night's rundown. Jim came in and looked at it and turned pale. The paper had about 32 pages, two of which were editorial pages in different sections. He was going around to the copy boards and trying to line them up with the rundown. I was trying not to bust a gut laughing.

He called the boss at home to find out what was going on.

Best April Fools prank I ever pulled.

/Got away with it only because it was April Fool's DAy.

Oh look! One of my coworkers doesn't believe it is necessary to put constant security on his computer, as they think we are all mature adults. I'll show him! Ha ha!

If my old boss would find someone in his group had left his/her computer unlocked, he would send an email to himself from that users account saying "I quit". Then he would go back to his desk and reply back "Ok, I'm sorry to see you go".

change the "CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE" to a "COHERENCY NOTICE" something like the following:

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The materials in this e-mail message, including any attachments, are private and confidential and are the property of the sender. It is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that any unauthorized review, use, copying, distribution, disclosure or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error and are not the intended recipient, immediately notify the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.

COHERENCY NOTICE: The materials in this e-mail message, including any attachments, were composed in an attempt to present the coherent message of the sender. It is for this sole purpose that the intended recipient(s) were sent this e-mail message. If the message, however, does not reflect the coherent thoughts intended by the sender, be advised that any misinterpretation of the message by the recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail and find that it does not appear to contain a single coherent thought, immediately notify the sender by reply e-mail and understand that not every message can be perfect.

People complain too much about having to lock computers. It's two key strokes (Windows Key + L). A harmless prank can be a nice lesson, but you never do anything that will get you or him fired.

When a coworker on a security team with me was talking to our boss in the boss's office, (and left his screen unlocked) I sent an email to the boss (as the employee) that read like this "Do to my great performance in the past year, in addition to my expected raise and bonus, I also feel I deserve a reserved parking spot. If one of the reserved spots is not available, I would be ok with the company repurposing a handicapped spot as a reserved spot for my use."

In this case, email was sent only to the boss (who knew the employee was in his office when the email was sent), no one else, the boss had a good sense of humor, and there was no fall out. Lessoned learned. (I did have to watch my back for repercussions though.. as expected on a infosec team)

darcsun: Going to stick up for Subby. I work in finance, which means this: If you leave your computer unlocked, someone can easily steal a client's identity. It's to the point were we can't even have cell phones out because people were taking pictures of accounts.

Just imagine how you would feel if your account information was stolen because some idiot couldn't hit Ctrl Alt Delete. I had a guy when I worked at The Vanguard Group that couldn't get that point through his head, even though we had institutional accounts up that were worth billions. Management knew about it and wouldn't do a thing. I would have loved for him to have gotten canned. He put millions of dollars at risk every time his dumb ass forgot something so simple.

Again, if they are that concerned with security, tell them to install proximity logoffs on your id badges. If you walk more than 'x' feet away, you are automatically logged off.

Not a prank, per se, but an act of, "knock it off you annoying asshole."

I used to work in a maintenance shop. Part of it had two rows of our desks and we all had (scavenged) high back office chairs. The biggest trouble maker in the shop had the squeakiest chair.

In the morning the boss would come in, give the morning meeting, and hand out the work orders for the day. This trouble maker loved to squeak his chair in the rhythm that the boss spoke, while he was speaking. I got fed up with this one day and when no one was around I took penetrating oil and sprayed the shiat out of every moving part of that chair. He never could get it to squeak again and never knew why.

Go for something more subtle... swap the m and n keys.

I'm a helpdesk guy and the Windows sysadmin at work. All of my coworkers have admin accounts that we use for all the tasks that you need admin access for around the office, and it's important that nobody else use those accounts - they could mess things up.

To that end, whenever anyone sees someone else's admin account logged in, we always change the background to something embarrassing and then log it out. Next time that person logs in, they get the embarrassing background as a reminder to log their shiat out.

The best use of this was when I set someone's background to a Live desktop of the My Little Pony theme song. He couldn't figure out where I had set that, never having used Live desktop before. I believe he found this out when he logged into the PC of a VIP, and the My Little Pony theme started going.

I haven't seen him make that mistake again.

/Yes, auto-logoff would make more sense, but this is more fun, and sometimes the admin accounts need to be logged in for a while.

So Subby's "prank" is a dick move...but here's one of my favorites:

A co-worker of mine always used to leave our shared PC unlocked and logged in when he would leave (he was the daytime manager, and I was graveyards) which would mean it had been unlocked for several hours before I got there, and after he left. Since we had a lot of confidential info on the PC, that was a pretty bad thing to do, so I had a little fun with him: I made a quick script that went into his startup folder (so it would only affect him) that would wait 5 minutes after he logged in, then pop up a window and say "You really screwed up your computer this time, didn't you?" Then shut down. I went home, and just sat next to the phone waiting, since he knew NOTHING about computers.

He actually sat on that for about 5 hours, trying and trying to start up without it happening (he was either stubborn, or hoping that it would just go away)...and he finally gave in and called me in a panic. I had him start up the computer, set it to lock whenever it went into sleep mode, and THEN had him remove the script...and he never figured out that it had been me the whole time. ;)

I heard the next day that he was just working in 5 minute intervals, rebooting the PC over and over again. /facepalm