Practical Jokes on Co-Workers? 430
leprasmurf asks: "Here I sit with Administrative rights to a public computer at work, and I'm trying to think of how I can have fun with my co-worker's profiles. I'm running low on ideas. I've done the 'copy 50 million folder shortcuts to their desktop' one and if he forgets to lock his terminal one of these times I'm going to do the print screen and hide all his icons one, but what else is there? Surely there are some harmless pranks an administrator can do without resorting to downloading programs for assistance. Any suggestions?"
Schedules (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's what you can do (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so sure about this... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not so sure that baiting someone who has an underdeveloped humour gland is particularly attractive. In some countries it's regarded as harassment, and consequently frowned upon.
It's much more fun to play the trick on someone who can see the joke...
Re:Honestly, haven't you ever played a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just looking through some of the comments...
Using VNC to take over someone's computer seems popular. From a user's perspective, this says, my IT staffer can and will take over my computer at any time. He can spy on what I am doing without me even knowing it... and he will for his personal amusement. Ha Ha very funny.
Someone suggests recording a cellphone ring as the new mail sound and letting the prank go on for 3 days during which the victim would frantically search through the cell phones in his desk. Any prank that occurs witht he frequency of email and goes on for 3 days is just abusive.
Same guy as above pulled a prank on a girl who was afraid of her boss. He recorded the boss saying her name and added a reverb and made it her shutdown sound. When she was working late the last thing she heard was his voice quietly calling her name and this (according to the guy) sent her running. That is just not even remotely funny.
I think practical jokes do have a place in the office, but most IT jokes aren't funny for the victims even in retrospect. They are just abuses of the power granted to the IT staff. If you are going to play an IT joke on someone, you should make sure it is possible for the victim to play the same joke on you. That is the main difference between joking with someone and picking on them.
Re:Schedules (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, yes, you're very clever.
Now perhaps you should pack your things and follow him out the door, since either
There are appropriate ways to deal with people who don't do their job properly. What you describe is not one of them.
I have to say... (Score:2, Insightful)
Mail fun (Score:5, Insightful)
At a past job, we had a trouble ticketing system that would generate email reports to each person watcching a ticket whenever there was a mail or web driven transaction on that ticket. For test purposes, we had an "acme" queue that sent mail traffic just to the developers & a couple of good-humored people in other departments. One ticket in the acme queue, which refused to die over the course of a year, was a rude demand for one of the web monkeys to bring in pastries for everyone. Whenever someone was testing something with the request tracking system, they'd more often than not attach their test to the coffee rolls ticket, and this guy would be reminded AGAIN that he hadn't brought in snacks for everyone yet.
Then fun part was when it was realized that the ticket could go not just to person@company, but person+coffeerolls@company, person+cake@company, person+cookies@company, person+coffee@company, person+cappucino@company... etc. We got it so that whenever someone replied to the ticket, this guy would get about a hundred copies of the message -- and since the system had a tendency to allow duplicate or triplicate messages under some circumstances (e.g. a person hit "reply to all" instead of just "reply to sender"), this guy would sometimes get two hundred copies of each message.
That was fun.
Other pranks involved using mpg123 on a server sitting under a someone's desk in a different room so that, out of the blue, his computer would start playing "The Muppet Show" theme song. For more fun, because mpg123 instances can run concurrently, we'd have 20 instances of the song running simultaneously, out of sync with one another.
For fun with people using OSX, you can use osascript to get the machine to use Macintalk to speak arbitrary text out loud. This worked well with a long running shell script that would speak out a random quotation from the fortune command, sleep from five to thirty minutes, then start over again.
And of course, VNC is a barrel of laughs in & of itself.
Other obvious ones include removing the ball from someone's standard mouse, removing the receiver for someone's wireless mouse, or the batteries, swapping the mouse & keyboard plugs on the back of a computer, scrambling what order wires are going into the back of a KVM switch, hooking up a wireless mouse to a computer where the person usually uses USB, and randomly move the mouse from a nearby cubicle, etc.
And of course, VNC just makes all the pranks in the last paragraph that much funnier.
---
It's easy to argue that wasting time with such stuff kills productivity, and maybe that's true. But it also did wonders for morale, as long as the target for the pranks would rotate around in a more or less fair way. Plus, the ingenuity that went into some of these pranks spilled over into coming up with novel approaches to things that people were supposed to be doing. People learn by playing from a very early age, and -- within limits -- I think that having a playful workplace can lead to a creative workplace, and ultimately can lead to more innovative work.
The trick is to be mindful of the line between being creatively playful, and wasting time in a destructive way. If someone thinks the pranks are going too far, they have to stop. If a deadline is approaching, the work has to get done. Know your [collective] limits, but that said, have fun too :-)
Re:I find... (Score:4, Insightful)
Practical jokes? (Score:5, Insightful)
1st - do no real harm. No screwing up ppl's email, files etc. No wasting more than a few minutes of time - must be undone easily.
2nd - even if it's targeted at your colleague, your boss must be able to laugh at it. Coz if the joke doesn't go as well as planned your boss may get to know about it.
3rd - the target has got to be able to laugh at it soon after.
Otherwise it's not joking/horseplay, it's just being an arsehole.
So pick your targets well, pick what you are going to do carefully, and pick the RIGHT time to do it (messing about with autocorrect when someone is trying to do a tender submission is NOT funny, other times they may laugh).
It does reflect on your judgement and competence. Get it all right and people will remember with a grin on their face. Get it badly wrong and maybe you should start looking for a job elsewhere, or go for counselling/advice on social skills.
You don't go around trying to tickle a stranger on the bus, or even an acquaintance, and then say you're just trying to make them laugh.
If you're the administrator, you are in a position of greater power. Unbalanced power between joker and target = harder to maintain funniness. Target has to feel a degree of safeness in order to properly laugh afterwards (not nervous laugh). You need to be even more careful. If you muck around the wrong way it's just like having The Boss saying "You're all fired"... "Just joking". Haha. NOT. Or the CFO making your salary slip show funny numbers. Haha NOT. Or the security guard pretending to shoot you with a shotgun. Haha, NOT.
Remember the tickle concept- the ticklee only laughs if they feel safe, comfortable with you tickling them. Otherwise it's _harassment_.
Last but not least it's safer (and usually funnier) to not use the power you are granted by your job/position in order to play a joke on someone. Otherwise people may feel you shouldn't be entrusted with that power. Your superiors may not want to give you more power either. So you want to get promoted? Higher pay? Haha. Not.
Re:Honestly, haven't you ever played a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Basic rules of humor.
Street urchin lobs a snowball at silk hat. Funny.
Silk hat lobs a snowball at street urchin. Not funny.
Users hoax the IT guy. Funny.
IT guy hoaxes the users. Not funny.
Re:Mod parent way up (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry you think I need to get over having a sensible attitude at work.
I'm all for having a laugh -- my team-mates and I frequently do -- but the things described just weren't funny. Abusing privilege and/or ripping someone for a cheap laugh that they won't share isn't being friendly or having a bit of fun, it's just nasty and unprofessional.