Friday Five: 5 Awesome Office Pranks (That We've Actually Done)
Whether you work in a small business or a large business, office pranks are always a great way to infuse some fun into your day. Here at Dynadot HQ, we've done a couple of different office pranks - with the most recent one we pulled off being just yesterday! After being inspired by yesterday's prank, I decided to highlight it - and a few of the other good ones we've done - for your enjoyment! Happy Friday!
1. Decorate Someone's Office With Their Face
This prank happens to be fresh in my mind. This is mainly because we did it yesterday for our President Todd's birthday. We wanted to do something fun that would make him laugh and we just happened to have a great headshot of him from our company directory. It is such a great headshot, in fact, that we decided to wallpaper his door, desk, computers, chair, and even his keyboard and mouse with it. We also made a "yellow brick Todd" that lead to his office from our front door.
This was all done in secret while Todd was out to lunch on his birthday after careful planning by our team that morning. After we got the text that he was on his way back from lunch, we got ready with the video camera to film his reaction (which you can check out on our YouTube page) - priceless!
2. Fill Someone's Office With Balloons
After one of our team members was out for a while last year, we wanted to come up with a good way to welcome her back. We thought the best way to say welcome back would be with balloons - lots of balloons! Although we didn't fill her entire office with balloons (those things take longer than you think to blow up!), we did managed to get a good chunk of it filled. She, of course, loved it!
The only draw back with this one is it really does take a lot of balloons and a lot of time to blow up all those balloons!
3. "Update" Someone's Computer Background
The classic background prank of course is to take a screen shot of everything and then remove all the actual icons on the person's desktop. We haven't done this in the office (yet), but we have some background "updates" shall we say. After I had someone log in for me while I was out, I came back to a lovely background of Nic Cage looking fabulous and Nic Cage as that creepy baby. An excellent selection as you can see!
In fact, this is still my background today! And Todd's background today is, of course, himself - updated for his birthday yesterday.
4. Have Everyone Change Their Chat Picture To The Same Person
We recently discovered that one of our team members had done some modeling in the past. We discovered this because he had left the pictures on a hard drive that we were using for a project. In our office we have a chat that we can use to easily communicate with everyone, including our China and Canada offices. Since our chat allows everyone to have a picture of their choice, we figured this would be the perfect opportunity for a prank. We got everyone to change their chat picture to a different picture of him modeling and then waited until he noticed. I admit it was a bit of a confusing day since everyone's picture was of the same person that day, but in the end he - and everyone else - thought it was hilarious! We pulled the same prank yesterday for Todd's birthday except this time everyone had the exact same picture (though as you can see some people made it their own), making things even more confusing - and hilarious!
5. Post Nic Cage's Face Around the Office
You may have already heard of our love for Nic Cage (we used to have an entire wall devoted to him that you can see here), which is why it makes sense that he would be the focus of this next office prank. Last year, his picture popped up all over the office - behind people's monitors, behind the cooler, above light switches, on walls, and even on windows! As you can see the picture that was used is one of the more excellent Nic Cage pictures due to it's creepy wide eyes staring at you. It's the perfect thing to be looking over your monitor as you work!
Bonus Prank:
Attach your mouse and/or keyboard to someone else's computer to freak them out! This did actually happen in our office (and to me, in fact), but it wasn't actually on purpose. After we got one of our new hires set up with his computer, he decided to clean his keyboard. What he didn't realize was that it was still connected with my computer even though he was in a different room. As a result, my computer started going crazy - things were opening and closing, things were flying across my screen, and random letters and numbers were being typed on my screen! I had no idea what was going on. After a minute or so I got up and walked around the office to see if anyone had any idea how to fix this bizarre issue and that's when I noticed our new hire was cleaning his keyboard and we both realized that it must've been connected to my computer. He had no idea and we both had a good laugh. In fact, I wish I could've gotten a video of my screen!
This post was written by Robyn Norgan, who wants to hear what other awesome office pranks you've tried (and we should try next)! Tell us about your awesome office pranks in the comments!