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What's a good way to prank your coworker?

I got pranked with this website: https://updatefaker.com/

I recently switched from manual labor to office labour and learned the hard way to lock my screen :)

In hindsight it was hilarious, but I waited for maybe 20 minutes before I got suspicious. How can I take revenge?

89 comments
    • Screenshot their desktop
    • hide all icons
    • set screenshot as desktop background
    • watch them die inside as nothing works, not even a restart.

    Optional step:

    • put your wireless mouse receiver in their computer and subtly click occasionally, or move when they move. Has to be subtle enough for them to question their sanity for a few hours.

    I managed to do the above once. Worth it.

    • I did that with the bonus of flipping the screenshot upside down on photoshop first. Then flipped his screen.

      • That's a great addition. We used to screenshot it with an application open so they would keep trying to close the application. I had a coworker restart their computer several times before he realized what was going on.

    • Don't forget to move the taskbar to the other side of the screen and set to auto-hide.

  • DON'T do what I've done a couple of weeks ago - landed me my first HR meeting ever :D

    I had to use my coworkers (lady around 50, not too clever with the computers) computer on remote desktop. As I was about to close it, I thought to myself "Perfect setup for a joke". On her computer, I went to https://pranx.com/hacker/ and put in on full screen. Literally like 30s later, our IT guy (he's in the same room as me) get a phone call and all I can hear is shouting in the earpiece. I say to him don't worry, I know what's this about, I'm going to sort it out. I went downstairs and boss's wife is running past shouting that we need to phone the police, I walk into the lady's room and she's hysteric. I say cool down, it's a joke.

    Safe to say, they were not laughing (probably the fact that I still was, wasn't helping my case :D)

  • A very French joke: We used to use their email client and send to the whole team "Hey, I feel generous so tomorrow morning I will bring croissants for everyone. Look forward to it!"

    The person would get plenty of "thank you" emails in reply and discover the trick. It was a small office so usually the person would bring the pastries. Yum!

    • We did this too, always a lesson in locking your computer. "Hey team I'll be buying lunch today since I forgot to lock my computer!"

      Just make sure it's a small group and not 20 hungry people

    • Croissanting is an art form.

      In my previous job we had the Constitution of Croissanting printed in every open space, because ignorance of the law is no excuse.

  • Buy a live lobster, cut the rubber bands off, and hide in their lunch bag.

    • That’s a big lunch bag if you can hide in it. Hope it keeps you safe from that angry lobster.

  • I am not sure this works anymore or if it ever did since I heard about it years ago, but when you send an email to someone on something like gmail who doesn't use some form of adblocker, be sure to put some hidden text in whatever color the background of their client is. Apparently they'll eventually start seeing ads for that specific thing you hid in the email since those emails are most certainly scanned so you can get targeted ads (especially gmail and most likely outlook as well).

    • You probably need to receive more than one email about a subject before you start getting targeted ads

      • Forgot to mention the part about it being something you need to constantly do. Thanks for the heads up.

89 comments