By Drea, Business Pundit – March 29, 2010 at 11:40AM
April Fool’s Day 2010 could be the best workday of your life–if you plan your office pranks right. To help you strategize, we compiled 15 classic April Fool’s pranks that you can do at the office. See which one best suits the Dwights, Miltons and Lumberghs in your life.
15. Spilled Coffee
Know anyone who would lose it if they found spilled coffee on their desk? Feel like agitating the office neat freaks? Making your own spilled coffee can be a fun, easy prank. Construct your coffee lookalike about 3 days in advance for the best results.
14. Reset the Office Clocks
Arrive at the office before everyone else (or be the last to leave at night). Reset the office clocks one or two hours ahead. Savor the panic that results.
13. Who Taped My Conversation?
Stick a piece of Scotch tape on the mouthpiece of your coworkers’s phone. The people on the other end won’t be able to hear very well–but your coworker won’t know why.
12. My Pen’s on Fire!
Replace the head of a ballpoint pen with match material (the video above has specific instructions). Watch your victim’s face light up with shock as her pen catches fire.
11. Computer Malfunction
This will work especially well on Windows users. Go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Mouse Properties > Pointers (these are instructions for Vista). Make the pointer’s default setting an hourglass. Your victim won’t know why his computer is “malfunctioning.” Bonus: You can also set his mouse pointer speed to slow on the Pointer Options tab.
10. The Avalanche
Collect a bunch of empty water bottles, empty soda cans, packing peanuts, ping pong balls, or anything else that can easily get all over the place. Open someone’s overhead cupboard or cabinet door a crack. Start piling stuff into the cupboard through the crack in the door. Use a box or piece of paper to keep smaller items like packing peanuts contained. Shove the cabinet door shut. When your officemate opens it, she’ll be in for a deluge.
9. Desk Mayhem
Image: Hank Ashby/Flickr
Remove and change around the desk drawer’s in your coworker’s desk. If your target has the right kind of desk–and you’re motivated–take all the drawers out of his desk. Turn it upside down. Put the drawers back in. Turn the desk right side up. When he opens his drawers, all his stuff will fall out.
8. Who Farted?
If you have an iPhone with the iFart app, try this easy, if juvenile, office joke. Put a dollar on the floor near your desk. When someone bends over to pick it up, let your iFart rip.
7. Broken Mouse
Cover your coworker’s optical mouse receiver (at the bottom) with tape. Watch as she struggles to get the mouse to work.
6. Faulty Desk Chair
Tape down the lever of your coworker’s adjustable desk chair, as shown in the video. When he comes to work in the morning (or comes back from lunch), he’ll think his chair is broken.
5. Detour
If your building has two entrances, tape up official-looking signs saying “Please Use Other Door” on each door.
4. Stapler in Jell-O
The Office made this prank an instant classic. Pour Jell-O around a stapler. Let it set, then turn the mold upside down. Put it on a plate. Put the masterpiece on your coworker’s desk when she isn’t around. Watch her reaction at your leisure.
3. Auto-Corrected
Open your victim’s Miscrosoft Word or Outlook program. Go to Tools > AutoCorrect Options. Once here, you can do a few things. Replace their name with “Fruitcake” or some similar insult. Replace common words like “the” and “to” with misspellings like “thee” and “tough.” Or replace those common words with outlandish ones, like “banana.” There’s lots of room for fun here.
2. Who’s Calling, Please?
Image: William Hook/Flickr
This is another Office-inspired prank. Link your coworker’s cell and office phone to your Bluetooth headset. Proceed to confuse and aggravate said coworker.
1. Fridge Trouble
Image: d00d/Flickr
Popular Mechanics describes this priceless joke:
On most fridges (certainly the ones in most offices), you can flip the hinges from one side to the other, allowing you, for example, to open the door on either side for corner placement. Typically, one switches the handle as well, but if you don’t, the refrigerator becomes a nearly unsolvable puzzle as victims pull and pull on the handle. If no one’s watching, some will even dig in their foot against a nearby counter and pull in vain directly against the hinges.
Make the switch to your office fridge right before the lunch rush, and settle in with a sandwich to watch the fun. The beauty of this prank is that once someone knows the trick, they can’t wait to see someone else fall for it.