Most of us can’t help but admit that there’s something uniquely hilarious about fooling someone with a series of practical jokes. No matter how old you are or what environment you are in, there’s always the temptation to play a friendly practical joke on someone and enjoy a little laughter at their expense.
The workplace is one environment that’s notoriously rife with pranksters. Co-workers who desperately try to get through the monotony of their day will often target each other in a good natured conflict involving whatever they can get their hands on.
Let’s take a look at 6 of the best practical jokes you can play on your co-workers.
1. Forever occupied bathroom stall
There’s nothing like the classic frustration of walking into the bathroom only to see a pair of feet under the stall, preventing you from relieving yourself. Now you can make everyone feel this frustration by setting up a fake person inside the stall.
All you need is a pair of sneakers and trousers – then simply set them up on the toilet seat to give the appearance of someone in the stall. This is a great way to give yourself more time with the toilet as only you will know what it’s really vacant.
2. Balloon conference room meeting
There’s nothing quite as boring as a meeting in the conference room, right? Try and spice up this otherwise dull occasion by filling the room with inflatable party balloons and maybe even have some music queued up.
3. Celebrity toilet seat
One great prank that doesn’t take a lot of effort but sure strikes up conversation is the classic celebrity toilet seat. This prank is pretty self-explanatory – sticky tape a print out of a funny celebrities face to stick under the toilet seat lid.
This allows you to have a really intense photograph of Nicolas Cage or Will Smith or whoever you want greeting people every time they take a leak. Just be careful not to use any images that might be TOO frightening.
4. Stapler in jelly
This prank was made famous by the Office TV show and involves taking a co-workers stapler (or any other office item like a calculator or mug) and baking it into a batch of jelly. This prank is incredibly bizarre in the amount of effort it requires from the prankster but really pays off in terms of how memorable (and delicious) it is.
5. Voice-activated technology
There’s nothing quite as funny as playing pranks on the naive new employee who’s eager to impress at any cost. Simply print out some labels saying “voice activated” and stick them to office and/or kitchen equipment.
You’ll know the prank is a success when you hear your victim asking a soulless object to make them some toast.
6. The classic ‘hack’
If you don’t want to go to huge lengths for the sake of an incredibly distracting practical joke, you can always go with something simple and effective like the classic hack. All this involves is running over to your co-workers computer while they take a bathroom break and changing their desktop background to an image they’ll really hate.
Make sure to hide their wallpaper behind their work so it looks the same as when they left. This means it might be hours until they actually notice what you’ve done to their desktop.
As with all practical jokes, you have to find an appropriate line to draw so that you don’t go overboard and injure, insult or traumatise someone. The most successful practical jokes are those that everyone can laugh at together.