Top These: Four All-Time Great Workplace Practical Jokes

Practical jokes can at the very least liven up a work day. The best practical jokes become legendary, at least within your business.
Here are my four favorites; each is true, although in the interest of discretion I've omitted a few details.

See if you can top them:

1. "At the tone, press 1 for..."

One of our engineers spent most of his day on two outside interests: Starting his own company, and sourcing parts to restore an old Corvette. Other engineers got tired of carrying his weight and with a little help from an HR staffer who should have known better, snagged his voice mail password.

When he left for vacation they changed his greeting to the following:

"Hello, you've reached the voice mail of Joe Slacker. If you are calling for Joe Slacker Engineering Services, press 1. If you are calling to buy or sell Corvette parts, press 2. If you are calling for any other purpose, Joe will be unable to help. Press 0 for the operator, ask for the engineering department, and another engineer will be glad to help you."
Since he never checked his voice mail when he was away the message stayed up for the whole week. I helped make sure lots of people had a reason to call his number. I still wish we hadn't been too scared of getting caught to listen to the messages callers left....

2. "Hello, I'm Game Warden Smith..."
This one is waaaay wrong, especially for someone in a leadership position, but it was a long time ago... (I know, that's no excuse.)

I was a supervisor and an employee asked me for a little help. A guy on the employee's crew (we'll call the victim Tony) had been hunting squirrels out of season. They thought it would be funny if he got a call from a game warden.

I was hesitant to participate until they offered to buy me a soda, proving the right incentives can indeed motivate.

First, I did my prep work: Went to the parking lot to get his license number, then checked his personnel file for his address, date of birth, and Social Security number. The crew wanted to watch him squirm so I had him paged to a phone at the line. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hello. This is Game Warden Mike Smith. Am I speaking to Tony Doe?"
Him: "Ye--yes."

Me: "Mr. Doe, I need to verify a few details before we begin. Do you drive a Ford Bronco, license number ABC-1234? Do you reside at 123 Main Street? Is your Social Security number 123-45-6789?"

Him (stammering badly; later the crew told me his knees literally buckled): "Ye-- yessir."

Me: "Mr. Doe, witnesses saw you hunting on August 1. I'm sure you are aware no game was in season on that date?"

Him: "How--who said that? I wasn't hunting that day."

Me: "Mr. Doe, let's not waste time. Your Bronco was seen parked on the side of the road. You were hunting with a Remington 1100 shotgun. We heard at least five shots fired. Should I go on?"

Him: "Oh my god..."

I described the penalties, which included fines and loss of weapon and confiscation of vehicle... and then iced the practical joke cake. He had reluctantly promised to take his wife on a day trip the next Tuesday, so I said, "Mr. Doe, possibly we can work this out. I am willing to meet at your home on Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. to see if we can find a way to resolve the situation without involving the courts."

As intended, he was trapped: He desperately wanted out of the mess but he didn't want to cancel his trip... much less have his wife find out.

Since they didn't let him off the hook until he was walking to his car, he spent the next 11 hours of his shift scurrying from crew member to crew member in a desperate and futile search for advice and reassurance.

To his credit he took it pretty well, even after I later walked into the lunch room to a standing ovation.

Yep, it was a long time ago in a corporate environment far, far away.

3. "What kind of expense report is this?!"
The same engineer from above was also notorious for padding his expense reports. We suspected he made money on his company trips. Our suspicions were confirmed when we saw an expense report showing he paid for all meals for five of us during a three-day trip to another plant, and we had paid for our own meals.

Expense reports were generated using a simple spreadsheet, so someone (not me, darn it) decided we should streamline the process for him. We changed the formula to multiply results in all totals cells by 1.5. The rationale? "That way he won't have to manually add in his fluff; the spreadsheet will do it automatically. We're saving him time!"

Now imagine the plant controller, a guy who met every imaginable controller stereotype, reviewing the next expense report. One of my great regrets is not having been present when he saw it.

4. "Can you move your car... and tell me why you parked here?"
A couple guys on my crew were bodybuilders, and one liked to brag about how he could lift the back of a car. Since no talent should ever be wasted, we went to the the parking lot during lunch and scooted a new employee's car behind the plant manager's car.

While that may not sound particularly creative, the new employee was only eighteen and this was his first job. And the plant manager was an old-school, early sixties, gravitas-and-importance-and-king-of-the-world kinda guy. (Summary: He was kind of a jerk.)

The new guy had to go outside and explain why his car was parked there in the first place (he couldn't), had to explain why his front bumper was touching the rear bumper of the plant manager's car (he couldn't), had to listen to a nice little speech about knowing his place and paying his dues and taking his job and the company seriously....

Good times.

Can you top these four? Let's hear your best!

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