Practical Jokes

[blues7]

I don't know why I just thought of this but relatively early in my federal career I had a supervisor who was a great guy but was a bit of a nervous nellie and a frenetic personality.

When he'd be on a phone call he'd be a whirling dervish of activity with a loud voice that could be heard across the group.

One day we decided to be real jackasses and unscrew the earpiece of his telephone and remove the speaker so that he couldn't hear the party on the other side. (I don't think we put shoe polish on it, we weren't quite that bad.) Anyway, he got a series of phone calls and we were dying as he kept screaming into the phone as if that would make him hear the other party better. Once he finally realized we were rolling on the floor he got it and typcial of him, forgave us on the spot.

But, the best caper I ever pulled on Jerry was the following...

Every morning, when Jerry would park his car he'd walk around it, look under it and check that everything was okay. It wasn't unusual to see him do this again during the day if the vehicle was parked close by.

One morning I happened to notice him parking adjacent to a filling / service station on the corner of the block where our office was located.

On a break I went downstairs and asked the manager of the station if I could borrow some of his junk parts laying around for a while. He told me to go ahead...

...So, I put some around the perimeter and under the chassis of Jerry's sedan and then went back upstairs and grabbed a cup of coffee.

While standing at the window looking down toward his car, I said, "Hey Jerry, isn't that your car parked down there?"

"Yeah, why"

"Something doesn't look right. Did you check your car this morning"

"Yeah...Let me see. Oh my God. Oh my God. What the...?"

Well, Jerry scooted out of the group and flew downstairs faster than a man of his bearlike proportions would seem capable.

He spent the next five minutes with his hand on his forehead walking around his vehicle in disbelief. When he looked up at the office window and saw us laughing and then looked back down he realized that he'd been had.

The man was a saint and never sought revenge or carried any enmity. I probably haven't thought of that good man in 30 years. I hope he's still with us...the world needs more good folks like him.

And I'm sure I'm going to hell for torturing that good and gentle soul.


Please feel free to add your own practical jokes...

 

[chaparrito]

One time my wife got invited to a make your own pizza party by some of her foo-foo Sedona artsy crowd. The hosts made a bunch of homemade crusts and guests were invited to bring toppings. The toppings were to be laid out in dishes buffet style to share with everyone.. You could top your pie however you wanted and it went into their fancy Italian woodburning outdoor pizza oven, the inauguration of which was the point of the party.
Toppings were an amazing, upscale assortment. Smoked duck, wild boar salami, pricey cheeses, exotic greens, heirloom tomatoes, you name it.
I had told my wife "don't worry, I'll make something amazing", as I am the family cook.
I received endless positive comments on my cubed Pate of Pork en Gelee, which was, in fact, artfully arranged SPAM. They never knew.....

 

[SAFireman]

....evil firemen....

Many years back, our fire trucks had swing-out doors. The doors on the body that were immediately over the wheel wells swung up, these were great when you needed shade in the hot Texas sun, but were somewhat prone to damage.

One of my college roommates was in the fire dept with me, and one evening after truck checks were completed, he went to pull the truck out of the station. Most times, we had a spotter when we moved trucks around, but it was late in the day and some folks had ideas about dinner, so this fellow was on his own.

Prior to moving the truck, he had made a lap around checking everything one last time, but he missed those dang swing-up doors - he walked right under them.

Well, you guessed it, when he pulled out of the station he caught both doors on the station walls and ripped them right off!

Now, this made a horrendous noise. Both doors were torn completely off of the truck, and the tracks for the garage doors were pulled free and mangled beyond belief. All of the staff came running out into the bays to see what was happening. This poor fellow felt truly badly as he did everything that he was supposed to do, but made one big error.....and if you know firemen, we were not going to let him live it down any time soon.

We got the mess cleaned up, the doors set out to be hauled to the body shop in the morning when they opened, and it was time to close up shop. By this time most of the interest had died down except for a few stragglers watching the goings on.

This fellow and I had been roommates for some time and had attended the same classes, and even our girlfriends hung out together....I could not let this opportunity pass. He went out to the truck to back it in, we assigned a nice young fireman to guide him into the bay (lest he have another incident).

I walked over to the storage area just out of his field of view and picked up as many folding metal chairs as I could carry. When he was backing in, I waited right next to the door opening and just as he cleared the bay doors, i dropped the whole load of chairs on the concrete.

That truck had never stopped so hard in it's life. The poor driver hit the parking brake and bailed out....he was hyperventilating and turning various shades of red. When he realized what I had done he just crumpled to the floor. I guess that he thought for sure that he would be fired for two crashes in a single day

I still have not been repaid for that little joke, but he has a good memory...I am certain that he will get me at some point in the future even though we no longer work for the same depts.

 

[Tom K]

When I was a young engineer at Rockwell International (early '80s) I sat next to a draftsman named Jim. This was in the era where everyone was in a big open room, each person with a drafting table for a desk. Each side of the table had a set of drawers with a shallow drawer at the top for pens, pencils and such. A standard piece of equipment was a 12" engineer's scale, which was triangular in cross section and looked like this:

We had taken to shooting rubber bands at each other, trying to catch the other unaware. Somehow I found out something about these scales. You took a rubber band and hooked one end in the middle of the end of the scale so that it was locked into the grooves, and hooked the other end of the band at the other end of the scale to where it was just above the grooves. The end that was on just the wedge shaped lobe would slowly slide up the wedge until it came loose, and shoot the rubber band wherever the scale was pointed.

So I set one up like this and laid it on my open drawer closest to Jim and walked away. After a minute or two the rubber band slipped off and popped Jim hard right in the side. He just knew that I had done it but had no idea how. I finally did tell him, because it was too good of a gag not to share.


Since the desks and stools were tall so that you could work at them standing up, there was a metal footrest under each desk that was made of sheet metal bent into a channel about 8" tall and a foot wide. Laid on its side, it would ring kinda like a bell pretty well.

One evening I stayed late. I took a piece of poster board and used it to form a channel about an inch wide and an inch deep. I taped it underneath Jim's desk so that it slanted downward at a slight angle, directly over the footrest that I had turned on its side. I tied a straight pin to a piece of thread and stuck the pin through the lower end of the poster board channel, then filled the channel with a couple dozen marbles. Then I pushed his chair underneath the desk and tied the thread to it.

Next morning, Jim comes in and pulls his chair away from the desk to sit down which of course pulls the pin on the channel. DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING.... Bonus - the marbles rolled all over the linoleum floor.


A few years later I was on loan to Douglas in Long Beach, working on the C-17. It was another big room with drafting desks and an open ceiling structure with fluorescent lights and air vents just hanging from the concrete ceiling - no acoustic drop panels. There were also big square concrete columns here and there. I got to be pretty good friends with the other youngsters I worked with (I was the old guy at 28). If it was someone's birthday there would usually be cake and a card or flowers or something on their desk first thing in the morning.

Christine's desk was in front of one of these columns. Her birthday was coming up so the night before, so I set up another marble channel under her desk. Since the column was behind her I was also able to run a tube across the floor and up the column and over to the fluorescent light fixture and air vent over her desk. Inside the tube was another thread that I attached to a "Happy Birthday" banner that was stuffed up inside the air vent, and a couple of mouse traps on top of the light fixture with paper cups full of glittery confetti in them.

The next morning Christine came in, and was bummed to see nothing on her desk. Nobody remembered her birthday. She pulled away her chair from the desk and the marbles roll - DING DING DING DING DING and the banner falls down, right on cue and everyone turns to look at Chris. To my dismay the mouse traps with confetti didn't go off - until a few seconds later when everyone was looking, and she pulled on her chair a little more. Pop pop! Accidental perfect timing!

 

[blues7]

In the early 60's when I was about 11 or 12 I got a "job" handing out flyers for the local movie house which was located about five or six blocks from my home. By handing out or delivering the flyers I was able to attend the Saturday matinees for free.

Since I was already well on my way to becoming a ne'er-do-well I soon figured out ways to lighten my load. Some flyers ended up down a sewer or left in abandoned properties. (That is until a vagrant who had taken residence in one fired a bb gun at me and convinced me there were better places to "drop off" some of my leaflets.)

Anyway, my scheme was soon found out by the manager and I ended up relieved of my duties and unemployed.

Not taking this shame sitting down I decided to exact my revenge.

Back then if you called the movie house one of the phone numbers would connect you to a recording which would inform you of the name of the feature and the times of the shows. It usually went on for several minutes to accommodate both weekday and weekend showings.

My dad had only recently bought me a cassette tape recorder and I carefully recorded the message spelling out the features and times.

After making the recording I would call the manager's office, he had a separate line, and when he answered the phone I'd push "play" and play back the recording. "Thank you for calling the Main Street Movie Theatre...Today's feature will be...showing at..."

While playing the recording I could hear the manager muttering "What the ####!!!" and continue a string of curses as he couldn't understand why his phone was being connected to the theater's preview line.

I'd do this every half hour or so, (thank God there were no caller ID's back then), and I'd laugh my *** off as he got more and more riled up.

Ah...sweet revenge!

I still get a big smile on my face when I think of that time.

(Though I'm not particularly proud of shirking my responsibility, I tried to make up for my lack of character as I grew a little older and wiser.)

 

[chopshopcop]

When I worked patrol, the whole shift went into prank mode for a while. No one was immune, even the Lt. It started small, Vaseline on car door handles, inside the sweatband of the patrol cap, talcum or glitter in the AC vents.

Soon it escalated to pepper gas in the vents, eggs and water balloon drive-by's, we were stalking each other all over the bounds of the precinct. Then somebody took it up several notches and brought a paint ball gun into play. Man, it was on like Donkey Kong!

For about a week, there were running battles between the ward cars. Then one night, two guys were on a call and were talking to the complainant and her son in the front yard. Two officers from the adjoining ward did a drive-by on them and got 'em good. Unfortunately, they also incurred civilian casualties. But the civvies were surprisingly good natured about it and took it all in fun.

Next night at roll call, after learning of the collateral damage, the Lt. firmly announced that all hostilities would cease by midnight. The two perps from the night before had so far been the only ones that had escaped being hit by paintballs, so everyone was gunning for them. Late that night, they had made an arrest and transported downtown, everyone knew it was their last chance before the ceasefire.

There was a long narrow walkway leading from the sallyport to the write-up room and a hasty ambush was laid at the chokepoint. There were at least half a dozen people there waiting on them as they came down the hall. When the targets were about halfway down the hall, the ambushers opened up. Every color of paintball imaginable was represented on the walls, floor and ceiling, there had to have been around 30-40 rounds fired...but some how they survived without taking a hit!

There were plenty of other incidents over the years but none as memorable as that

 

[shouldazagged]

I like gags that mystify or reduce someone to helpless laughter without hurting or embarrassing him.

Once when a colleague of mine in the outpatient department of a treatment center was away on a two-week August vacation I got one of the maintenance guys to help me completely decorate her office for Christmas. Decorated tree, tinsel hung everywhere, the lot. She nearly injured herself laughing when she came back to work.

My late wife had a similar sense of humor. Once we went to an antique fair, with her carrying a clipboard. We would walk up to a large piece of furniture, and I would take a piece of white paper tape and rub it lightly on the underside and examine it closely. Then I'd call out a number, like "C 145", and she would frown, say "Hmmm," and write it down. Then we'd walk on. If anyone asked what we were doing we'd smile apologetically and say, "I'm sorry, we aren't at liberty to discuss it."

 

[GKC]

I'm going to relate one that happened TO me, rather than one I pulled.

We lived in Florida in 1990, and I had just bought a brand new truck. I left it parked outside one night, and the next morning came out to find it sitting on cinder blocks...the tires and wheels had been stolen. The thieves also hit several other cars in the neighborhood. We called the police, and the insurance company covered the loss. I didn't expect to hear anything further about it, frankly.

About six months later, I was in my office and got a call from someone claiming to be the thief who stole the tires and wheels from my truck. He said he had hurt his back while on my property, and wanted to see if my homeowners or medical insurance would cover his injury. He also wanted to see if he could get some of the insurance money that paid to replace my tires and wheels, since he didn't get as much for them as he had planned. Well, the conversation went from incredulous to obscene on my part, as you can well imagine. Finally, the caller revealed himself to be a DJ from a local radio station.

This radio station had a morning program (which in my defense, I never listened to) which featured this DJ and crew calling individuals up and seeing if they could get them to react. It turns out that my dear, darling wife had called them and put them up to calling me...and, my employees knew that the DJ was going to be calling me. When the call came in, my secretary told my employees, and they were all standing outside my office laughing their heads off.

The radio station aired my "bag" (which is what they called it when they bagged some fool) which had been enhanced with funny sounds, a laugh track, and the DJ's voice was altered electronically to sound like a stereotypical minority (this was in 1990, and no way would this happen today.) By the end of the call, all that could be heard of me was a series of bleeps, since what I was saying couldn't be aired.

The radio station regularly played my bag for years. I was transferred back to Texas in 1996, and for several years after that my former employees would call me and tell me they had heard it on the annual "best of the bags" program. My boss got a copy, and thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard...so much so that while I worked for him, he'd play it at our staff meetings.

I tried to get even with my wife. While we still lived in Florida, we were eating at a restaurant and the diner sitting at a table next to ours was getting sick. He got up to go to the bathroom, and didn't quite make it...he threw up all over my wife. I called the radio station, and they called her pretending to be the owner of the restaurant wanting her to pay for cleaning the carpet. She didn't fall for it. I guess she really is smarter than me!

The only revenge I can think of is staying married to her...that'll teach her!

 

[rburg]

The drafting room prank brings back a memory. In high school the "mechanical drawing" shared a room with electronics classes. And we had a classmate who almost everyone kind of hated and picked on. OK, he was a jerk and didn't take the abuse well. That only resulted in our continuing the fun (for us).

So he was working on a drawing. And we found some wire others were using to wind small motors. Really thin stuff. And someone came up with a nice big capacitor. The kind you could charge up and it would really zap you if you weren't careful. So we hid the capacitor under a heater by the windows and ran 2 leads, one to the desk and the other to his chair. Then we charged it in place. No one around for at least 10 minutes. He comes in sits down and grabs the desk to pull himself forward. ZAP! The best part is the thing was discharged. He took it through his butt and hands. But only once. Of course he yelled and screamed (like a little girl). But then no one, including the teacher could figure out what he had been yelling about. The wire was so thin no one saw it. And we didn't get in trouble for that stunt.

Same guy, the next summer was hitch-hiking down the road. Some other guys saw him, filled a water balloon with water (a big one), and handed it to him as they drove by. Knocked him head over teakettle. The bad guys couldn't wait to tell everyone what they'd done. We all had alibis.

The jeep club I belong to had a tradition of bottle rocket wars. The fat guy really got my beer drinking buddy good. Fired a bottle rocket into his car as he was getting in. The guy was so big he had trouble getting up from a picnic table. My friend, the victim, was sitting across from him and took some ribbing about the rocket going off right in front of him. My friend reached in his shirt pocket and lit an old drill bit, then threw it under the table while getting up and running. The fat guy actually fell off the seat trying to escape the up coming explosion. Except the M80 he knew we had was just an old drill bit.

 

[Bekeart]

Planned Great Prank - did not work out ...

Long long ago in a far away kingdom I was planning a great prank ... late 1970s - Springdale AR

Owner of a back porch gun shop had feeder calves in the back pasture.
One of the calves was nearly pure white.
At the time grapes were being grown and processed into juice locally.

IDEA - a PURPLE CALF ...
Several possible co-conspirators - attorneys/sworn officers/loafers/liars

The remainder peels resulted in a purple sludge/slime.
I contacted the grape processor asking about getting some of the slime/sludge.
He was dubious about possible misuse ... and liability.
Offered to have a Sargent of the local PD pick the material up.
That was good enough.

Knowing that some calves had recently been sold ... called owners wife and asked about the white calf.
He was the FIRST on to get on the truck.

It would have been great.
Figure five or six of us could have surrounded the calf and given it at least two coats of purple ....

At least I had a plan ...

Bekeart

 

[peterthefish]

 

[Skeet 028]

I was the Lt on a shift and working one night. The Captain had always been kinda "hard to deal with" to the fitrefighters..So when I was transferred to the captains shift I told him to leave the firefighters alone..they were my responsibility. He agreed to this unorthodox way of working and it was going ok. Went to the TV/kitchen area one evening to get some coffee. HOLY TOLEDO!! the guys were playing softball in the kitchen with baby watermelons. I walked in and it was like deer in the headlights,,,immediate quiet and no movement. Got my coffee and on the way out I just said...WOW!!. I mean there was watermelon and cantalope even on the ceiling. Got over to our office and the captain said he was gonna go get tea. Told him...Tom when ya get over there..don't say a word..nothing..just get his tea and look around say WOW and leave. I didn't think he could pull it off but evidently he did. Left those guys hanging till shift change the next morning. One told me they had spent almost 3 hours cleaning up..It was spotless and shining at shift change. Captain never got fired up as he normally would and he left the firefighters alone... I think he learned a lesson too. Sometimes...men will be boys

 

[madmikeb]

When my step daughter was 7 or 8 one Easter, I was cleaning feces out of the cat box by picking it out with a paper towel. Me being me, and since children are for terrorizing, I was chasing her around the house with a paper towel full of "chunks". After a couple minutes of chase she ran into her room and closed the door.

At this point I quickly washed my hands, got a clean paper towel and unwrapped a couple small chocolate Easter eggs. Then I sprung my trap. When she came out of her room the chase resumed. After a couple more minutes of chase, I stopped, rolled my eyes, started laughing like a maniac and popped the easter eggs into my mouth.

The look on her face was absolutely priceless, and she hasn't forgotten it to this day. (She's 35 now).

As far as I am concerned it was the epitome of my parenting.

 

[soFlaNative]

Couple of techs were checking a limit switch on a clarifier drive last week. Elevated tanks around a centrally located distribution box connected by concrete walkways transitioning to diamond plate over the tanks. They were squatting over the box not paying attention. Too perfect. I launched off the concrete down to the diamond plate landing on one foot. THOOM!
Rarely have I been so creatively cussed.

 

[EQGuy]

There was a small machine shop in the building I used to work in. We had an arrogant machinist working there who thought the world revolved around him. He kept a pan of kitty litter in the hall way outside his shop which was right next to the lunch room. It stayed there for several days. One morning as I was leaving for work one of my cats left a fresh deposit on top of her litter pan. A light clicked on in my head and I got a small plastic baggie from the kitchen and picked up her leavings with it. When I got to work I carefully placed it in the litter pan next to the machine shop. Everyone was looking around for the cat and the litter pan disappeared that day.

 

[EQGuy]

While I was in the Army I got some cannon fuse. I wrapped masking tape around a piece of cardboard about the size of an M-80. I attached a very short fuse, lit the fuse and threw it in the shower which was occupied to capacity at the time. I never saw my friends move so fast. After some discussion they decided to let me live after they saw the humor in it.

 

[walkinghorse]

Practical joking is subjective, and often not received well especially by the target!
I am not a fan of it, and having been around construction sites almost all of my life, have seen attempts cause injury and or hard feelings. Several instances ended up with people being removed from the site, to avoid serious retribution injuries, and in one case an arrest, conviction, and some jail time. Not everybody takes practical jokes well, and in the old days, a different crowd. The starter often does not know when to quit or keepmit light and funny as some of those previously posted are. When women started showing up on construction sites so called practical jokes really started in earnest, and never were funny. In todays world who knows what would happen?
Grumpy leaving now!

 

[Salty RI]

A friend of mine at work took a winter vacation for two weeks, I went into his office and put a open can of sardines on the radiator, and closed the door, when he came back two weeks later and opened his door, the stink would have knocked you over, he blamed everyone but me , this was about forty years ago and I know to this day he is still looking for the guy who did it. after that he had a lock put on his door.

 

[EQGuy]

When my step daughter was 7 or 8 one Easter, I was cleaning feces out of the cat box by picking it out with a paper towel. Me being me, and since children are for terrorizing, I was chasing her around the house with a paper towel full of "chunks". After a couple minutes of chase she ran into her room and closed the door.

At this point I quickly washed my hands, got a clean paper towel and unwrapped a couple small chocolate Easter eggs. Then I sprung my trap. When she came out of her room the chase resumed. After a couple more minutes of chase, I stopped, rolled my eyes, started laughing like a maniac and popped the easter eggs into my mouth.

The look on her face was absolutely priceless, and she hasn't forgotten it to this day. (She's 35 now).

As far as I am concerned it was the epitome of my parenting.

Madmikeb, you are a man after my own heart. My hunting partner’s son was 12 or 13 when we pulled this stunt. I brought a box of Welches Junior Mints along while we were deer hunting. I waited until I found a pile of fresh “deer sign”. I pointed the deer sign out to my friend’s son and told him we would demonstrate the fine art of reading sign. I had palmed a couple of junior mints and pretended to pick up a handful of droppings and place them in my mouth. I chewed them making sure he saw the contents of my mouth. I stated that in my opinion they were 3 hours old. My friend then pretended to pick some up and then chewed on some mints and told me they were much fresher and the deer was most likely very close by. His son was absolutely horrified until we let him in on the joke. He is now 40 and that is his favourite hunting story.

 

[Chuck24]

I just drink my blue Gatorade out of a Windex bottle.