This may be a bit to geek-childish for some of you.
Read at own peril.

The old office had a bit of a history for pranks. I had seen my fair share of the receiving end, from VP level down to the new intakes. I dont recall what happened, but my VP had stitched me up, rather publicly, like a kipper.

I needed revenge.

I put into motion my childish plan. I sent an email to him late one friday night, which basically explained how he had fucked up, and thank you very much, but he was fired. As soon as I sent it, I logged into the mail server and changed the email headers, before he picked it up, so it appeared like our HR President had sent it instead of me (techs among you; I edited the IMAP file before he checked email).

On his copy of the email, I threw the corporate Board and CEO onto the CC list, as well as edited the sending IP to be the address of our HR Pres's desktop. This gave it some clout on the believability scale when he read it.

I included such gems as "your lack of productivity and mental cohesion with regard to the XYZ project is astounding" "Staff morale has declined since you took over".. "the board are unanimous.. " "outbound email has been terminated, please return all corporate equipment immediately..." "We do not believe a severance package is necessary at this time" (or similar brown trousers time words to that effect).

My moment of choice to strike? During a UK bank holiday weekend. I proceeded to terminate his SMTP email (that's outbound email for you non techs) from his username. Of course, by tuesday he knew the email wasnt real, but the damage was done and he had one sweaty weekend of not being able to get in contact with higher up people (off doing their usual ski/la-de-da/posh stuff).

I near forgot all about it till the Tuesday morning. Shit hit the fan in the office. Some fresh eared grad lad nearly lost his career, till i dragged the boss out and told him it was me, over a calming pint. He went bright red and had the same look in his eye ive seen my dad give me once, that time he was wanting to beat seven shades of shit out of me. At this point, im wondering, have i done something a bit beyond a prank here? Turns out the answer is no. He just got up, left the pub and when i came back to work, it was if nothing had happened.

He didn't prank me ever again.
(shamen Geekius Maximus, Thu 24 Sep 2009, 6:34, Reply)