So I had the luck to be in my local Advance picking up antifreeze at the time of a masterful prank on the manager. The team had rigged an air horn to the base of the compression stool they were using to stock the shelves. It scared the beejebus out of her and everyone in the shop to much delight from the staff.
It got me thinking about what our favorite shop pranks are.
Discuss...
Tossing the display battery mock ups to/at someone. They're a plastic case that looks like a car battery.
Putting the jet black grease from a forklift slides on the bottom side of the (black) steering wheel rim and lift operation handles. No way the victim can see it there before grabbing the wheel and/or handles and getting messy.
Oxy acetylene and a solo cup..
In my dad's high school woodshop class, there was a storeroom off the shop that was lit by fixtures that plugged into a switched outlet. Dad and a friend grabbed a belt sander, unplugged the lights and plugged in the sander, then set it on the floor and pointed it at the door to the storeroom.
Couple minutes later the shop teacher noticed the lights were off, so he walks through the door and hits the switch. Belt sander fires up and starts screaming across the floor towards him, but it hits the end of the cord and unplugs itself before it hits him. Dad said the old guy was impressed enough by the ingenuity that he didn't even really punish them.
Drill a hole in the lid of an empty, rinsed out antifreeze jug.
Screw an air fitting into the lid.
Snake turned off air hose into drop ceiling in bosses office and connect bottle to air hose.
Wait.
Turn on shop air.
BOOM!
I once taped the air horn cord of a delivery truck to the drivers door window. The guy who went out to fire up that truck was very hungover from the previous night and just about crapped his pants when he attempted to open the door.
Still funny to me
Fill an air hose with 30w?
Grab managers' old coffee cup (Dunkin etc.) carve out the bottom, fill it with kitty litter and place it on the desk-tool box- station and when picked up deposits its cargo.
(Navy trick). Black shoe polish on a toilet seat ia always fun.
Ours was to wait for someone to park themselves on the comode then have them repeatedly paged.
There"s always the old one about sending the new guy over to the supply room to ask for 50 foot of flight line and a bucket of prop wash.
After that, it's time to change the brushes in the vortex generators.
Simple one is to send the new guy to the basement of the one story shop for something. It is amazing to see how long the victim will look for the stairwell before asking.
Those snap caps, the kind that pop when you throw them? Carefully place one under each pad of the toilet seat.
Mine are both academic in nature (but I'm a teacher, so the classroom is my 'shop' right?)
1.) This one's likely a classic. Give students a really complicated exam on the third or fourth day of class (can't be too close to the beginning or they'll catch on) with really long, intense instructions. At the very end of the instructions, add a line to the effect of "Do not fill out anything on this test. Turn in a blank exam to receive 100%."
2.) A friend of mind in college would always embed a line half way through her paper something like "Prof. so-and-so, if you make it this far, I'll buy you a bottle of scotch/wine/dinner/whatever". No one ever took her up on her offer.
My dad was a mechanic in the Air Force. They use to charge up a condenser and bend the lead so it was almost touching then throw it at someone to catch.
Coworker hooked an alarm loudspeaker to the reverse light switch on his buddy's Camry.
If someone has their personal car up in the air, sneak a zip tie or three onto a cv shaft or driveline, and leave the tail so it hits someone on rotation.
Saran Wrap or similar between the toilet and toilet seat. This works best early in the morning.
Super Glue stuff to people's desks / benches.
Open interesting web sites on unlocked and unattended computers.
In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :
I helped install the latest fresh engine in a friend's 442 after the most recent of a series of spun bearings. I was knocking on the fender as loudly as possible when he started it. He couldn't hear it inside the car due to the open headers and the RPM needed for cam break in but the rest of us were cracking up.
Back when I still had some color in my beard, about 1989.
There was a time when PHG wasn't PHG just my NAPA rep, I in passing mentioned that dolphins kinda freak me out. She apparently went to great lengths to locate her childhood Barbie collection and the accompanying small realistic action sounds dolphin figurine. She hid this thing in my socket drawer. For like three weeks every time I opened my box I got surprisingly loud dolphin noises. Never did figure it out until she tried to sneakily change the battery.
First date was that night. Stupid plastic dolphin glued to the top of my toolbox
We put bubble wrap just behind a tire of a car. Tech gets in, goes to back up and runs iver the bubble wrap. Good for an instant panic dtop every time.
I work in a shop that does Nickel alloy. We have a display piece about the size of a soup can. I like to hand that to people casually. It is deceptively heavy.
Way back at the dawn of time, the IT department in the office where my [then future] wife worked arranged for a gloomy-looking moose to show up randomly on people's screens and complain about the state of their relationship, then disappear. It would start with the moose saying, "We never talk any more" and go on from there. As far as we could figure out, the objective was to have staff end up asking for tech support because they were having trouble breaking up with a moose. A real knee-slapper, right? Computer people are a bit strange.
I was struggling with some POS while on a creeper back when it was my father's shop.Kinda both hands occupied and seriously focused on the task. When I rolled out and stood up my left shoe felt odd, squishy. Other wrench had filled it with oil from the squirt can. I never adequitly retaliated, and it still irks me 50 years later!
Some examples from when I trained race horses:
Like trainers of any athletes, we would use lots of therapeutic tools, ranging from ice to lasers and ultrasound.
One of the trainers sent a groom to another barn to find the "Steam machine" to bring back a bucket of steam so they could "steam" her horse. Of course, they told her they had finished with it and sent her to another barn, where she was told they also had finished with it and sent her back to her own barn.
She carried that bucket around for half an hour without ever wondering how one could possibly carry steam in a bucket.
Another classic was to send one of the newbies to the racing secretaries' office to get the "key to the 3/4 pole."
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