New Era

So begins a new chapter in my life. I have officially separated from my former employer and have embarked on a new career as an environmental engineer. Sure there will be some things that I miss such as the practical jokes we would play on each other at the office. I have decided, for your benefit, to describe some of the jokes we used to play on each other. These may not be as funny as some of the pranks Jim plays on Dwight in The Office, but they produced some good laughs in their own right. I will also admit that I was not always the culprit in these jokes, but sometimes the victim. I have divided the pranks into categories:

Rubber bands

-I used to love to sneak up behind certain people that were, let’s say “jumpy”, and fire a rubber band right past their head and have it hit their computer monitor. Unfortunately, the velocity I liked to use for firing the rubber bands had a linear effect on the accuracy of my aim.

-Sometimes I’d try to knock over a coworker’s cup that was used to store sunflower seeds. When I succeeded, there was usually a plethora of seeds that needed picking up afterwards.

-Then there were the random targets I’d try to hit. This wasn’t so much of a prank as it was more of target practice. I always felt bad if the target happened to be someone’s arm or head.

Computers

-If I remember right, this is the joke that started it all. One day I was messing around, and found out how to rotate the computer screen display. Although simple to rectify if one knows how, it was a nasty trick if you didn’t know how to correct it. When the display was upside down, if you pushed upwards on the mouse, the mouse would go to the bottom of the screen because that’s where the “top” of the display was. The first time I did this, I happened to call in sick the next morning, and later found out that my “victim” sat at his desk for an hour or two trying to figure out how to fix it.

-Another prank that was fun to do is get random photos of coworkers, photoshop their heads onto funny pictures, and email the new-and-improved pictures to everyone else in the office. Let’s just say that I was a victim of this more than once.

Telephones

-Our phone system had this intercom system, where you could go straight to someone else’s speaker with out having their phone ring or have them answer. Needless to say, if someone got caught napping at their desk, they had a rude awakening.

In conclusion, these may sound lame to some of you out there, but a good joke or prank can lighten almost anyone’s work-day, just make sure the prankee can take it.