The Time for Vengeance is at Hand!

[Paelos]

Here's the story. For a long time at my office I'd printed off pictures from the internet and taped them up on the walls of my cube in a kind of funny collage. One of the women didn't like my pictures much and expressed such distain as well as idle threats of getting rid of them. Today I came into the office and they are all gone. It could only have been her, which now opens her up for retaliatory prank warfare.

That's where you people come in. I need ideas that will be good for office pranks, but they need to be stuff that won't get me fired. She is the executive assistant for one of the bosses in the office, and she has been here longer than I have. If the prank is funny enough, there is no way I'll get in trouble. The winning idea will have pictures taken of it and posted here on the boards. Please feel free to get creative. Thanks!

[Dark Vengeance]

The Time for Vengeance is at Hand!

Apparently, I didn't get the memo. I'm already booked for a metting until this afternoon. Sorry.

EDIT: In all seriousness, a great revenge prank is to remove all the contents from a desk drawer (preferably a small drawer), put them someplace secure. You want to take a garbage bag and fit it to the drawer.....then you get a can of shaving cream and freeze it. Then carefully (very carefully) break and remove the can, and insert the frozen contents into the drawer. As it warms up, it will expand and fill the drawer with shaving cream. It's a good one to do the night before, or even on a Friday or Saturday for Monday morning hilarity.

By removing and securing the contents, and using the bag to protect any other property in the desk, you show enough consideration to sidestep any unpleasant disciplinary action. Additionally, it cuts the cleanup time in the event you get stuck cleaning it up.

If you prefer simpler pranks, might I suggest applying water to the seat of her office chair (dark chairs only). The WetButt(tm) is best done with discretion....you want it damp, but not soaking.

Also, there is always setting the fax machine to call her desk....set up a speed dial if possible. Not only will the calls drive her nuts, but each time you do it, most faxes will auto-redial 5-10 times.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

[Shockeye]

Here's what you do. Go to her computer and take a screen capture of her desktop. Then drag all the icons off the desktop and replace her desktop background with the screen capture you took so it looks like her desktop is there.

[Arcadian Del Sol]

Please to be considering the possibility that she complained 'further upstairs' and either her supervisor or yours just removed the photographs, and is waiting for your indignant reaction.

[Mi_Tes]

The first question is why didn't she like your collage and was she the type to joke about the pictures or was serious about legitimately disliking them? (were some on the line of work inappropriate, just too many, could visitors see them)

If the collage deserved to be removed for some reason (perhaps even the boss removed them at her suggestion or at re-looking at them), you might just want to take the high road on this one and let it go.  However, if taking them down was meant to be a joke on her or anyone elses part and it was not offensive, it most likely not get you in trouble if you prank back in a funny, rather than mean way.

My idea would be to give everyone else in the office a special "collage" for their cube, except for her.  Or at least get several of your office friends to put up their own collages for a while.

[Shavnir]

Actually, right click the desktop, Arrange Icons By, uncheck "Display Desktop Icons".  Same prank, but easier to pull off :)

[Nebu]

I'd suggest acting like the whole thing never happened.  If the person that had your collage removed sees that it's not producing a reaction from you, they may be less likely to do it to you or someone else in the future.

Yeah, my suggestion isn't fun... but I see you gaining nothing by retaliating.

Oh... remind me not to EVER piss you guys off. The desktop snapshot idea had me laughing out loud.

[Paelos]

Non-retaliation is not an option. She went over a line by messing with my cube. As for the offensiveness of the pictures, most of them were jokes you commonly see on the internet. The bunny with the pancake on its head, the sniper kitten, squirrel drinking a beer, etc. None of the pics were graphic, sexual, or foul in language or content. It was simply a move on her part to either be funny or mean.

I'm not sure which. Either way, she's getting hers. I like the desktop idea, too. How do you go about taking a screen capture to make that happen?

[Paelos]

Please to be considering the possibility that she complained 'further upstairs' and either her supervisor or yours just removed the photographs, and is waiting for your indignant reaction.

Were that the case, there would have been a note, or a memo that a decision had been made. In addition, they would have made me remove them myself, not have someone else do it without my knowledge. Also, I'm in accounting, and we don't have any similar bosses. She would have no position to make that move to my boss who likes me and the collage.

[Shannow]

Heh its so good Im gonna have to try it on someone here at my work.

heheheh.

And yeah and report it to HR as a theft....then we'll see how funny she thinks it is.

[Dark Vengeance]

Oh... remind me not to EVER piss you guys off. The desktop snapshot idea had me laughing out loud.

Pissed off? Those are just the "hah hah" kind of pranks we do at the office.
Plus, there's the sugar container filled with salt at the coffee area, the old loose salt shaker cap in the cafeteria, the remote control fart machine in the desk drawer, the open can of sardines in the rarely-used file drawer, or inserting amusing (yet office safe) pictures into random files.

A certain sales rep I'll refer to as Mr. Nelson has been tabbed "Gunnar", and has spent the last 6 months or so finding various printed pictures of the storied 80's band in his files (we inserted roughly 1000 pages into various files over several weeks), set on his desktop, full songs left on his voice mail, one of his teammates even set his entire computer with a Nelson desktop theme complete with audio.

Of course, when real serious tempers actually start to flare between co-workers, us single guys retaliate with the best revenge of all.....sleeping with their adult daughters.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

[Merusk]

Here are some of the simple & quick "While they're getting coffee" pranks that have been pulled at offices I've worked at in the past.  A great deal of them are even better if they're pulled off on someone who only has limited computer knowledge.

- Remove the trackball from their mouse, then replace the mouse
- After you pull that one off the first time, the next time you pull the mosue out of the back of the machine.
- Replace their desktop with something they're horribly frightened of, then maximize an app they don't normally use.  ( This requires a shared drive or a floppy to transfer the picture. Psycho Clowns like Pennywise are usually good here.)
- Turn the speakers on their computer to max and set their windows login to something unique.
- Remove the plug from their phone base/handset
- Alter their display to 600x800 resolution. (Put the display properties to the upper right before you apply, otherwise you'll have a bitch of a time fixing it.)
- Log them off the network, but leave the computer turned on.

[Sky]

I tend to favor direct confrontation and a reminder of why this is the land of the free, not the land of the free unless it upsets some whiny bitch's delicate sensibilities.

Reporting them as stolen sounds nice, too, though.

[NiX]

Since you work in an accounting office, this may not apply to you..

When I worked in a market research firm this guy took my headset while I was on my break. Being that I have a bad wrist holding the phone to my ear all the time is painful. He went on break and I confronted my supervisor and my boss too. They gave me the OK on my prank. I grabbed the phone book, got every porno store/adult toy store I could find and loaded it into his calling list. Needless to say, he likes using speakerphone to make calls when he doesn't have a headset.

[toma levine]

What material are your walls made of? Are they standard cubicle fabric? If so, what color? Could you, say, print out your funny pics again on iron-on paper, bring in a steam iron, and iron-on your pics to your office wall so they couldn't be taken down again?

[Paelos]

No the cubes are not a standard removable cube wall. They are actually drywall areas built into the ground with granite desktops attached to them. In essence it's just like the walls of your house, which seriously makes me wonder why they didn't just build them to the ceiling, but I'm guessing this was way cheaper. Such is life in a development company. So yeah, no way to iron anything on. I'm just putting new stuff up now as I find it. I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of breaking my collage.

[Shockeye]

A certain sales rep I'll refer to as Mr. Nelson has been tabbed "Gunnar", and has spent the last 6 months or so finding various printed pictures of the storied 80's band in his files (we inserted roughly 1000 pages into various files over several weeks), set on his desktop, full songs left on his voice mail, one of his teammates even set his entire computer with a Nelson desktop theme complete with audio

I think I still have one of my old Nelson tapes somewhere. Ahh... the 80's, how I miss them.

[HaemishM]

Here's what you do. Go to her computer and take a screen capture of her desktop. Then drag all the icons off the desktop and replace her desktop background with the screen capture you took so it looks like her desktop is there.

You sir, are a genius!

[Sky]

Nah, that's an old one.

[Murgos]

Drag a link from some web page to the desktop and rename it so it looks like the regular internet explorer icon, also change any links in the Taskbar and on the start menu.  Then delete or move the orignial links.

If she is not very savvy she will think its a homepage adware/virus thing and try and swtich it back.  But of course, because you havent changed the homepage, that doesn't do anything.  So they are left running virus scans and adware removers trying to fix thier PC homepage redirection problem.  All to no avail.

A favorite of mine to do to co-workers is to use a gay sex web site.  Something bright with lots of images and pop-ups.

It used to be easy to set the homepage permenantly in the registry but with windows XP it's not so easy anymore.

Of course the all time greatest practical joke at work was to put a sardine inside the handset of someones telephone...

[daveNYC]

If you have the time, abuse the Microsoft Word autocorrect feature.  Have it force a misspelling of her boss's name, or switch around their, there, and they're.

[Kenrick]

My opinion:  Rebuild your collection of kewl net photos... tenfold.  ie. Make it an even bigger and better display than it was before.

Last year when I was living in Scotland, I awakened one morning to find that the bandana in the American flag pattern that had been hanging above my bedroom doorframe was gone.  Now, I could have gone to (the assumed guilty party) the stupid fucking psycho Spanish bitch who lived in the house with me and torn her ugly-ass, carpet-munching, america-hating head off... But I took a deep breath, and a much better idea came to me.  I went  to downtown Edinburgh to some shop that sells camoflauge fatigues and the like, and purchase a 3'x5' US flag.  I hung it longways in my doorframe, creating nearly an entire threshold into my bedroom of stars and stripes.  Nothing was ever said about the incident, and my giant flag was never touched for the remainder of my stay.

My advice:  start printing.

[bhodikhan]

Get a strip of an onion from BURGER KING. They use a variety of onion that is really great. It smells like BO.

Tape it to the computer fan output and it will make the entire area smell like BO. Everyone will really wonder what the hell is going on.

Works everytime and the source won't be found.

[ajax34i]

A lot of the suggestions have to do with altering the computer setup, and if you're not in the IT department, the tech support people will probably get pissed off.  Because they'll have to fix whatever you change.

Just like the disappearance of your pics can be considered "theft", so can your altering anything on her computer be considered a breach of security.  The IT department will take it very seriously when she reports it.

Besides, her screen will probably be locked every time she's away.  Most people put passwords on their screensavers at work; it may even be a user policy.

I would also recommend just ignoring the thing and moving on.  You're going to work to work, not to goof around.

[ahoythematey]

Print dozens of copies of "Fun and levity is double-plus ungood,"  in big, bold letters, then tape them all over the place periodically.  What'd be even better is if you could find a picture of her face and photoshop it to include a Hitler-moustache as well as being framed in that "pose" which was so common on Nazi posters.  Maybe put some cryptic german underneath, something translating to, "I have a final solution for the collage question..."

[Paelos]

Well I appreciate the replies, but as I've found out recently my chances of getting back at this woman are now impossible. She just seperated from her husband last week, and anything I do now would be considered in very bad taste at the current time. Also, I can't get to her computer anyway without knowing security codes which only the IT guy has, so that wouldn't work anyway. I've decided to take the high road and just put up a new collage with even more pictures. That seems to be the best way to go right now.

[Dark Vengeance]

At this point your mission is clear. Ask her to dinner. Be a sympathetic ear to her problems. Sleep with her. Take pictures. Make a new collage. Send it to her husband.

Best. Revenge. Ever.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

[UD_Delt]

My personal favorite is the Valerian Root trick. Valerian root is a cheap herb you can buy at any drugstore. The thing is it smells like crap. It has a very strong dirt smell to it.

The trick is to buy some Valerian pills that are the powder in a gel cap type. Crack open the gel caps and sprinkle the powder into someone's keyboard. Everytime they start typing they and they alone will get that nice dirt smell. Freshen the valerian every week or two and you can keep the prank going as long as you like.

The bonus is that it's hard to figure out what the smell is and with a can of compressed air also easy to fix...

[grebo]

To make a background of your desktop, if anyone still wants to know, just hit printscreen when you have the desktop up, open up MSPAINT, hit CTRL+V, save as bitmap.  Then just select the file you saved as the background in desktop properties.  Voila.

[DarkDryad]

Non-retaliation is not an option. She went over a line by messing with my cube. As for the offensiveness of the pictures, most of them were jokes you commonly see on the internet. The bunny with the pancake on its head, the sniper kitten, squirrel drinking a beer, etc. None of the pics were graphic, sexual, or foul in language or content. It was simply a move on her part to either be funny or mean.

I'm not sure which. Either way, she's getting hers. I like the desktop idea, too. How do you go about taking a screen capture to make that happen?

First make sure it was her. If it was them ask her to kindly keep her fucking hands off your propererty and then send a formal complaint up the chain. Nothing says gotcha like a pink slip.

[Paelos]

Well the situation deepens even more, the woman I thought was responsible has an alabi, and she was gone when the event happened. I believe my boss knows who was responsible as she received complaints from certain people she won't name about the wall. She hinted as much at a lunch meeting with the accounting group. I said the only thing about it was that people never asked me to take them down or approached me about them at all. She said that they were the type of people who would rather go behind my back than tell me anything to my face, and that I should be careful about what I put up on my wall from now on. Basically, she's protecting the person who did it because she doesn't want the situation to escalate. That's an indirect way of telling me not to retaliate, but that makes me even more frustrated.

Now I know for sure somebody was out to screw me, but I don't know who at all anymore, and nobody around here is talking.

[ajax34i]

Take a lesson from TV; they always do this in Stargate SG1, add a radioactive isotope to their naquadah supply and then they can trace it from space.  

So the trick with you is to get paper made from cellulose with C14, instead of regular carbon, or, easier, from some of the trees in the forests near Chernobyl, and then re-print your posters on it.   Then the very next day, when they steal your stuff again, you can walk around with a pocket Geiger counter, and follow the clicks to find the culprit.

Simple.

[DarkDryad]

Or just send an email to everyone that simply says if you have a problem with something of mine talk to me about it but in the meantime keep your fucking paws off.