Not me, but a school friend of my dad's....
Back in the 50's during my dad's school days there was no such thing as borstal and ASBO's and japery was a part of life, especially at school.

Now one particular school friend of my dad was well known for his practical jokes, but perhaps best known to this day for one quite spectacular jape.

The school dad attended (and also my alma mata) is a Church of England school and regularly has hymns at assembly in the mornings. Every day the rather haughty music teacher would embark on a frantic version of Kumbaya as the finale of the assembly.

Now this prankster was well connected so to speak, his dad worked the quarries and as such dealt in things like blasting caps and dynamite. The stuff of young boys dreams? You betcha!

And now the genious bit. Prankster decides it's time to dip into his considerable stash of small blasting caps to effect his latest plan. What can he blow up? The toilets? The tuck shop? Nah...

He only goes and wires a small blasting cap to the middle C on the piano in the hall...

Obviously word gets out and thus approaches the most anticipated assembly in the history of the school.

The assembly proceeds as normal, then the music teacher sits down for the usual Hymn.

Kumbaya m'lord, Kumbay*BANG*

One destroyed piano, a music teacher with brown pants and 250 hysterical kids.

Best thing is, I don't think anyone ever found out who did it, but it cemented his reputation as the North Wests best ever school prankster.
( TooMuch2AM, Wed 4 May 2005, 11:59, Reply)

Never Piss Off A Techie
I worked as a contractor for an insurance company in Croydon where I fell out, big style, with the desktop engineers team leader. A write twunt he was. Basically, he was trying to make his engineers wear ties to work and me, from my lofty position in the Server-Lan team, was dissing his efforts via e-mail and telling his team that the company dress code specifically said that they didn't have to wear ties if they didn't want to. Eventually had to show this team leader the relevant section of the company hand book before he'd back down. And he wasn't happy.

So, a few weeks later I sent an e-mail around of Clinton with his mouth morphed into and arse-hole and put the caption "I Told You He Talked Shit" into it and sent it to all of the techies - both Server-Lan team and Desktop. Well my enemy was on the mailing list and he of course received a copy. Little shit went straight to Human Resources and demanded I was sacked for sending inappropriate e-mails. As it turned out,the project I was involved in was so critical to the company that I was virtually bullet-proof so no harm was done other than a slap on the wrist but this meant war. And so the campaign began.

At this company it was traditional to assign insulting nick-names to everyone - my self included. As examples here's a few of the old team.

The Nose, Wop - Cockney/Italian network engineer.
Fat-Boy, Cake-boy - my boss
Dances-With-Voles - a rather short engineer.
Swamprat - me, as I lived up North I must live in a swamp.

Now this was all part of the culture in this company. We insulted each other constantly and took the piss out of everything imaginable. You needed a thick skin to work there but it was all done in fun.

So now it was time to assign a nickname to the new team leader. And it was Bungle. (From Rainbow) And then the campaign started. Overnight I uploaded the theme tune to Rainbow to every machine in the company and set it as the Windows start-up sound. From 8:00am onwards Bungle was assailed with "Up Above The Streets And Houses" warbling from dozens of PC speakers all day, everyday. Most of the users caught on that he hated his new nickname and really hated that music so they'd wait until he entered their work area and click on the wav and watch him start to twitch.

Next was uploading various random Rainbow screen savers to the companies PCs - especially the desktop team. As I controlled the policies of the domain he couldn't even remove them. This low-level harassment went on for a few weeks and the name Bungle was permanently associated with this hapless twat. The breaking point for him was when the IT Director himself started to refer to him as Bungle. That's when the psoriasis started. Itchy,puffy,red,cracking skin all over the backs of his hands. So, he started to wear black leather gloves to work and phase two started.... He was now THE HOODED CLAW!!!

We started to wear black fedora hats and bandanas in the server room and would leap out from behind racks in the server room at him and cackle madly.... After a while he stopped coming in. Then I uploaded wavs of Penelope Pit-Stop's "Help! Help little old me!" and Muttleys sniggering laugh to users machines and the users were clicking on them every time they saw him and he finally cracked. Nervous break-down and off on long-term sick for the rest of my time there. And I didn't feel the slightest bit guilty, only a warm contented feeling of a job well done...

That'll teach the bastard to try and get me sacked....


I remain, as usual,
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Wed 4 May 2005, 15:47, Reply)

Autocorrect again i'm afraid...
So many people seem to have missed an oppertunity. One that i took some time ago.

We Picked the guy who looks at the keys as he types.

He was a slimy and needy guy who kept on mailing colleages asking if they want to go for coffee...

*Re-set Autocorrect to replace "coffee" with "semen".*

Quick messages don't require proofreading.

Result. It was funny and a private joke between a few of us until he arranged a big meeting and mailed around 30 people with this appology....

"I know it's a long meeting guys, but semen and biscuits will be provided"
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Wed 4 May 2005, 12:57, Reply)

exploding blender
I worked in a bar in a hotel in Blackpool, and we had cold shelves all along the back that used to need defrosting once a week, or we couldn't prise the Special Brew off of them, so it was our practise to flick the mains off to the bar area once a week at teh end of a shift, like 3am, so the shelves would defrost. This would turn off all electrical equipment in the bar. I did this one shift end, and then went and turned the blender on (no power, remember) and STUFFED it with plastic cocktail decorations and shredded paper.

Next morning, at around 10:10, as I was still zedding due to being on late shift I was awoken by my best mate on the phone, who was on early shift.

'BASTARD!!!!' was all he said, then hung up.

Weeks later, we were still finding little bits of plastic giraffe in the most improbable places in that bar.
(RichardInSydney would like to know why teh date & time is, Thu 5 May 2005, 11:28, Reply)

Service Station Tills
Whilst young and stupid my friend and I would amuse ourselves on the ancient tills we used at a certain BP Service Station.

We quickly discovered how to change the names of any product, having been given the access key by a painfully naive manager (who never made the same mistake again).

We renamed loads of everyday items, sniggering as they flashed up on the tillpoint in front of bemused customers.

Looking back, they weren't all that funny, but a few I remember converting are:

Beef and Onion Crisps - "Bunions"
Salted Peanuts - "Salty Nuts"
Sanitary Towels - "Jam Rags" (please forgive me)
Cigarettes - "Bifters"
...and my personal favourite...
Milk - "Cow Juice"

And that loud pop you hear is the destruction of my b3ta virginity.
(.click, Wed 4 May 2005, 16:38, Reply)

Testicles
Got a bloke drunk and bet him that he couldn't get both his bollocks into a marmite jar (standard sized jar).

This is an easy feat, one simply pops them in, one at a time.

Unfortunately there isn't room for both a plum and a digit, negating the chances of removing said testicles.

Nothing makes Lord Manley happier than watching a grown man's face as he holds a claw hammer and contemplates smashing the glass jar which houses his gonads.

as here

See?

Obvious.
( Lord Manley of Ven www.justgiving.com/manley - please?, Wed 4 May 2005, 14:23, Reply)

One I didn't come up with but wish I did...
Someone on campus got hold of some university headed paper. They printed out letters and delivered them do all 120 houses on campus announcing that there was a hoover inspection and could students bring their hoovers to the admin block.

The next day, the campus was filled with students carrying hoovers around.
(Hagis, Sat 7 May 2005, 16:55, Reply)

Petty AND Pedantic.
I like to change signs that are incorrect, either in their spelling or grammar. 'Niteclubs' are the worst, what with their 'Laydeez Nite Tonite' etc.
Recently I sent back a letter posted to me with all the errors highlighted in red pen. I am still awaiting a reply...
( CaroWallis, Wed 4 May 2005, 20:43, Reply)

A warm tingling feeling in the nether regions
I was living with my mate and his girlfriend in Glasgow. Should be a laugh, I thought, they're both up for a good time.
Little did I know before I moved in that the girl was sex mad. She would talk about sex all the time, constantly have her tits out to show us (the boyf found this amusing), but the worst thing was that when we went out, she would go into the lounge and pleasure herself with her vibrator.
Not that bad, I hear you say.
Yes, but she would leave it sticking to the couch, or on the coffee table. The last thing you want to see when you're tucking into a plate of sausages is a large, pink, glistening vibrator looking at you.
My revenge?
Some cotton buds, some Tiger Balm, and a light coating on the vibrator.
Strangely, I never saw her little pink friend again.
Sorry about length, I'm new to this game.
( gadjie, Tue 10 May 2005, 13:06, Reply)

post natal bladder weakness
Whilst pregnant with our son (Hi, Oscar!) my wife was evil. For the last four months, nothing was ever right, everything was uncomfortable and I had to do everything for her or else my life would be misery forever. Like every doting husband should, I complied fully and put up with it all. Until after the birth.

After the birth, she developed a sudden 'bladder weakness' which meant that she wet the bed nearly every night for about three weeks...well, until I started to feel for bad for pissing on her and making her think she was incontinent....


Okay, so you wanted sabotage, not revenge, but hey - they're kinda related! Sorry, I'll do better next time...
(downhill without brakes . It was the worst day of my life, Wed 11 May 2005, 12:57, Reply)

Short stick genius
A friend of mine used to work as a boat builder in rural Berkshire. The owner of the business was a pompous old fart with a walking cane, panama hat and braying voice who'd waltz in every monday, swan around for about three hours generally annoying everybody there, and then bugger off for another week.

During every visit he'd disappear into the back office with the manager for an hour or so to go over the accounts, leaving his hat & cane on the desk outside. Each time, my mate would quickly take his cane, remove the rubber stopper from the bottom, then take it over to the lathe and skim a millimetre or so off the end. Pop the stopper back on the end, back on the desk, and not a word said.

You may think that somebody wouldn't notice a millimetre missing off the end of their walking stick; and indeed you would be quite correct. However, as he did this pretty much every week without fail over the next couple of years, the owner's monday visits gradually evolved into episodes of high visual comedy as his cane slowly got shorter and shorter.

He was walking leaning over at an angle of about 20 degrees before one day he began taking his cane into the meetings with him, casting suspicious glares around the workshop before he went in...
(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Mon 9 May 2005, 12:06, Reply)

I've seen your picture down at the suckatorium
Me and a mate at work were having a practical joke war.

Somehow we found out down the road there was a gay club called the suckatorium. They even had a website. As part of our screwing around during working hours, we had posted our pictures on hotornot.com, so I had this picture of him wearing a cowboy hat. I told him I was going to get a gay mate to go to the suckatorium to put a "Wanted: nice well hung stud" message on the physical bulletin board in the building with his picture and mobile number on it.

Haha, he laughed. Of course I couldn't get anyone to go post the picture, but I could get someone to call him up with a falsetto voice and pretend to be interested, stating they saw his ad down at the suckatorium, and were interested in a little backdoor action.

After the anger died down, what did he do, of course, storm on down to the suckatorium to take down his picture that didn't exist. He even had to pay $20 to get in for the privledge. He said he checked all the rooms in case it was somewhere else.

He said he saw things in there no straight man was ever meant to see, and claimed to be shocked.

After I finished up there, about a year later I ran into him. Turns out he'd just come out of the closet.

So if you want sabotage, I sabotaged a mates heterosexuality.
(Kaer, Fri 6 May 2005, 8:18, Reply)

more magnets
I put hard disk magnets in my boss's lunchbox, and then threw it at the 16ft high metal ceiling in our office. He had to stand on a REALLY high stepladder and bash it with a broom to get it down!
(Joey[kins], Thu 5 May 2005, 19:12, Reply)

self satisfaction
I sabotaged my chances of appearing on the “best” front page of a web site, by not posting until rather late on, hence not giving people enough time to click on the “I like this” icon. Also the response I posted was shit, giving people no reason to click on the “I like this” icon. mission accomplished.
( sits back smugly, as his dirty little hand disappears down his grubby little pants)
(Jeeves, Wed 11 May 2005, 10:41, Reply)

Ahh, PC Hijacking
My previous job had a great crowd of people on the work floor (the programmers and testers), toilet humour a plenty and counterstrike matches at lunchtime, but it also meant you couldn't leave your pc alone for 2 mins without locking it.

Most memorable was the time the only girl in the department left hers unattended for 3 minutes, and everyone else on the floor received the following email:

"Hi everyone, I just thought you'd like to know that me and my boyfriend tried anal sex for the first time last night. I quite liked it, but he said it made his arse hurt."
( Weetobix, Wed 4 May 2005, 16:07, Reply)

Chewits
a guy I used to work with had the annoying habit of "cheekily" nabbing a bit of food from me if I happened to be eating close by to him. He mainly did this with crisps, but also with sweets. To begin with I let it pass, but it turned to hate pretty quickly. On one occasion, he invited himself to a whole finger of Twix, and this caused me to snap I suppose. Although I wanted to tear his face off, I realised it might get me the sack. Instead I purchased a packet of Chewits on my way home, sat down in the kitchen that evening and very craftily sliced each Chewit in half, scooped the middle out and filled it with chilli powder. I melted each sweet back together slightly, so as to keep the chilli powder in, and then re-wrapped the lot. It took fucking ages. Was worth it though, the next day I left them on my desk and the greedy git scoffed the lot before realising something was wrong. That taught the bastard.
( Fictional Emma, Wed 4 May 2005, 14:39, Reply)

ladies bits, and the accidental sabotaging of
I once managed to hospitalise someone by irritating her chuff with fairy liquid. And in a non-filthy way too. You see, once, when several of the girls we lived with went out on the lash, Letch and I, being skint, sober and more than a little nasty, urinated into every toilet in the block (there was only four, we weren't urine supermen) and didn't flush them. We instead emptied washing up liquid into all the cisterns. And waited until several pissed up women came back, dying for a slash, moaned about scruffy bastard blokes not flushing, and then flushing and immediately sitting down to wee. The annoyance of these lasses when the toilets bubbled up from between their legs was only countered by one of them having to be taken to hospital when the detergent irritated her "lady-garden" which swelled up (to probably elephant-like proportions, but I can’t be sure) and became very, very painful.
But it was funny at the time. For everyone who heard about it to her immense displeasure.

Apologies about the length, language, amount of comma’s and stuff.
( fr13day has everything required to be a Penguin, Wed 4 May 2005, 18:26, Reply)

A virus!
Many years ago, when ICL computers were, for some unknown reason, bought by every school in the land, the computer department got a rude awakening one lunchtime from the none-too-bright library assistant screeching "It's got a virus! Don't touch it!".

After much head scratching by the useless people at the computer department and running of various antivirus programs, the quarantined the PC and took it to their office for full examination.

Minutes later, another PC went down with the same problem. Then another. After frantically checking all the computers in the IT room they discovered that they had all been infected, and the computer bods couldn't fix it however hard they tried. Even low level hard drive formatting wasn't working.

The school were on the verge of calling in consultants of stupid amounts of money when I had to own up to what I had done.

I'd pulled the keys off the keyboard and moved them round.

And *nobody* had noticed.
( doctordoctor I feel like a pair of curtains, Wed 4 May 2005, 11:51, Reply)

Friends letter
Found this beauty in my friends car, so I posted it on the interweb.


That will teach him for leaving important stuff lying about.
(Danage, Wed 4 May 2005, 19:44, Reply)

When I was in student halls, back in the nineties,
I bought about fifty blocks of clothes dye and went round putting them in every toilet cistern, so that every toilet flushed in a different colour.
No idea why, just boredom I think.
( Zuowan, Wed 4 May 2005, 13:46, Reply)

Muhahaha!!!
I worked for Staples when I was a student. When I left (difference of opinion... bastards) I rigged one of the display PCs to play Chumbawumba every single time it was switched on. I rigged it so that if you deleted the MP3, it would replace it next time it rebooted. If you removed the mp3 player, then that would also be replaced. It wasn't amazingly complicated, but not a single person there knew sod all about computers... despite trying to sell them to the public.

Every morning when the computers were started up "I GET KNOCKED DOWN!" would blare out.

It took them a week to find a solution to this problem... which was to disconnect the speakers. Problem solved...

Until a few months later when that model was sold on to some poor unsuspecting member of the public for roughly twice what it was worth... they got a call complaining that the computer wouldn't stop playing this bloody song!

AAaahhhh... Revenge is sweet.
( Beastie is doing science with his arse, Wed 4 May 2005, 12:32, Reply)

harmless fun.
I squirted oil on rod hull`s roof then kicked a football at his tv aerial.
(widdy, Mon 9 May 2005, 14:24, Reply)

We used to have an Italian Boss...
And everyone loved him.
The canteen at work gives each employee an item of fruit daily... keeps us fit and ahappy you see.
Now... our Italian boss would toddle around saying "Cíao" and being swish and cool, and happily helping himself to a random apple or bannana from someone's desk. We didn't care... we loved him.
Bring on his replacement.... Not Italian. One day he found out that the Italian guy used to steal fruit and suddenly he started doing it too.

We regularly transport our fruit from canteen to office in our underwear, and watch with glee as he chomps into apples that have been intimately carressed by our man-cannons.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Wed 4 May 2005, 12:04, Reply)

Ratings booster
A friend and I regularly sabotage the blog of a guy we went to school with and haven't had any contact with for 15 years.

For instance we both spent about 5 hours pressing F5 to boost the hitcounter on a photo of his ugly wife with a couple of fat slappers, so he's now wondering why that particular photo has been viewed 34621 times while all the others have been viewed only 2 or 3 times.

He has no idea who we are or why we are doing this to him... To be honest, we have no idea why we are doing this to him either.
( dr_fonz, Wed 4 May 2005, 11:45, Reply)

"Sexy ladies' clothing"
About two years ago, after finishing high school, I read an old paper that I wrote on the invention of the camera.

The passage started normally:

"George Eastman invented the Kodak Camera in the early 1900s, inspired by his entrepreneurial spirit and his love of art...
AND ON THE WEEKENDS HE WOULD TAKE PICTURES OF HIMSELF DRESSED IN RATHER SEXY LADIES' CLOTHING."

My brother had added that sentence without my knowing. I had turned it in, and gotten full marks. Apparently teacher's don't read papers.
( Digeridude Lord Wellington's Beef Trapeze, Wed 11 May 2005, 7:28, Reply)

another one springs to mind,
This would have been around 1977 or 8 (yes i'm that old) and our maths head teacher had been a right twunt... so..

He drove an old vauxhall viva, and back in those days the bonnet catch was on the outside.. we had previously (in the metalwork room) made up a little steel box about about the size of a large "household" matchbox... we had a hole drilled in the top that would take a spark plug, and proceded to half fill the box with petrol, and a tiny bit of sugar.... then we sneaked into the car park, and opened the bonnet of his car, we strapped the tin down firmly to the head, and took a spark plug out, and plugged it into the box... we then closed the bonnet, and legged it.

we heard the bang at 3.00 on the dot.... unfortunatly, the sugar made the burning petrol stick like napalm to the sides of the engine bay, and only for the quick thinking janitor who was walking past, the bugger could have been burned to death in the car, as he had fainted with the shock of the bang...

lucky for me I was already moving house that summer to a new town, (hence the bravado involved) but as it happened the local IRA got the blame (we didn't know he was a part time soldier, did we) Mind you, in a strange twist, the other two lads went on to work in the army . and from the odd letter and emails I get, have turned into very respectable members of society... I wonder what happend me then?
( TBL I posted this on, Sun 8 May 2005, 19:10, Reply)

Surprise!
At Uni, all of the flats had individual bedrooms, with individual locks. And peepholes in the door. The kitchens also had locks on them. Opened by the same key that opened your bedroom door.

One day, a mate swapped the lock on a flatmate's bedroom door for the one on the kitchen whilst he was in the shower. At the same time, he took the peephole out and turned it round.

Result? Anyone could now unlock this guy's bedroom, without him knowing. But also spy on him in his room.

You can probably guess the rest....but here goes: wait for flatmate to start having a wank, which you can see through the peephole, gather the rest of the flat together, quietly slip a key into the lock, and 1-2-3-SURPRISE!!!
(Steve The Monkey, Thu 5 May 2005, 15:00, Reply)

Nobody got it...
Little brother and I, sitting in his room. I was about 15. Mum walks in, I point at him and say, completely out of the blue, "You broke it!"

She looks at both of us, and says "Broke what?"
"Nothing!" he says.
She asks again. "What did you break?"
He keeps denying, she thinks he's lying, and I'm on the floor behind the couch passing out laughing. A few minutes later I can breathe again, and they're still yelling at each other.
I try and tell her that he didn't break anything, and she turns on me like I'm covering for him.
He's still confused, trying to figure out what he broke.

Good times. They both fly into a rage if I accuse either of them of breaking something now.
(jimkopelli, Thu 5 May 2005, 5:09, Reply)

Real life B3TAing
I worked at boots the chemist before I went to university, many moons ago............. I would regularly get pissed/stoned at work, and because I was a self stacker/ stock blokey I worked on my own in the evening no-one ever knew how off my face I was.

Once I was making a display with cute little teddies that held letters, you know the ones. The next day I went in to collect my wages and my supervisor turned round jokingly and said
'I saw that display, naughty boy, don't worry I've changed it'

My memory slowly coming back I went down stairs to see the following display

A * S * T * A R * D * B

Which was funny enough in itself, except they hadn't even noticed the lower shelf reading.

W * E * T * C * U * N * T

The display was left all weekend for all the boring conservative Cheltonian folk to see.

I love booze, it's so inspiring
(you're all a bunch of twats anyway, Wed 4 May 2005, 16:12, Reply)

Geek *and* psychological warfare.
Geek *and* psychological warfare.

This is a little complicated and the success rate low. If you dont know what SQL is, look away now.

I used to work at a SQL development company. We pronounce SQL as "ess queue el". Some pronounce it "sequel". I don't know the correct way and don't much care.

We hired some serious SQL developers, as we were crap. In the first meeting with them, we had decided that whenever we mention SQL, we were to pronounce it "squell" - and make it look like we always said it like that.

The first mention, and we managed not to even titter, all the new guys looked a little strange. We held their gaze. We said it again, all in the context of the work we were discuss.

That was stage 1. Psychologically it works like this:

New guy hears "squell" and thinks the following:

"oh my god they call it squell, everyone knows its SQL. I've been doing this for years, I'm an expert. Hang on, this is my first day, if I correct them on something so fundamental, I'm going to look like a twat. I'll stay quiet"

Stage 2.

New guy starts to use the term squell in the meeting. Stage 2 accomplished if no one reacts/titters/laughs.

Stage 3 - the best bit.

The new guy starts properly and meets the rest of the staff - importantly, they are not in on the joke. He establishes himself and starts work. At some point, remembering how "they say it round here" he will use the term himself. The existing member of staff now thinks:

"He's a new guy but I know he's an expert. I could have sworn its pronounced 'sequel' but I'll defer to him, after all, he's an expert. I won't correct him because I dont want to upset the guy. I will now refer to SQL as Squell. "

At this point, the staff member uses the term to the new guy, thus reinforcing his own thoughts.

This will then escalate until everyone uses it.


Note: You can of course use any sort of term that fits in. It just works nicely with SQL.
For example, the unix vi program. "vee aye" or "vye" or "Vee" or anything.

Apologies for length. Ha ha not really.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Mon 9 May 2005, 16:27, Reply)