Petty Sabotage
Well I've pulled my share of cruel pranks on people who I thought deserved it. Not all of these were sabotage per se, but many were. And they amused me while satisfying my vindictive sense of justice.

One of my marks was a coworker who had deliberately gotten me fired from my job. We'll call her Julia, that being her name and all.
Why did Julia do it? I dunno. She seemed, from my first week on the job, to be disgusted with my incompetence (and, in all honesty, I was incompetent; it being my first week on the job and all...).
Well, Julia happened to have been listed in the phonebook. So I was able to get her address and phone number.
So what'd I do to the bitch? Well, I picked out a dozen or so cheap paperback novels that I had laying around the house, and left them laying scattered around NYC with the same message scrawled on the inside cover. It read as follows:
"If lost, please return to Julia (her surname, her address, her phone number). This book possesses immense sentimental value. Large reward if returned."

Then there was my asshole roommate Sam. Sam was antisocial and borderline agoraphobic. He was also cheating me on the rent.
Well, after I found out what he was doing, and before he knew I knew, I went into the bathroom, pissed on his toothbrush, and replaced in on the toothbrush rack.
The really funny part is that I told him, months later, what I'd done. He refused to believe it & went right on using it, w/o washing it, as far as I know.
This all happened during the recession of the 1990's in the US, btw. This was why I was forced to take a telemarketing job. A telemarketing job that offered very loose supervision. Loose enough that I was able to leave messages on probably more than 100 answering machines in one night, informing dozens of strangers that I was Sam, and that even though they didn't know me, I had something vitally important that I needed to discuss with them.
According to a mutual friend, Sam's phone rang off the hook for 5+ hours. And the dumbass at no point took it off the hook.

Then there's my mom. Before reading this story, understand that my mother was quite abusive toward my brother & I (I tell you this not to garner sympathy, but to look like less of a prick for what I did to her).
Well, after one of the screaming arguments she baited me into every few months through most of my teens, I sat down in front of her stereo & turned it on. She has the radio running.
I set it on CD before any music could play. I then set the volume past 11, to EARS WILL BLEED. Then I set it back to radio. I heard just a second of music before turning it off. It was loud enough to shake objects in the room. And would still be, when turned back on.

Those are only a few of them. I may post more later if any other amusing ones occur to me.

btw, no apologies for length or width.
(Evil Sausage, Sun 8 May 2005, 22:24, Reply)

Dicing with a locker
This was ages ago ('89). Sleeping quarters in the army barracks, 6 soldiers in one room, most likely one of them a complete bastard. And the one in my room the victim of one mean prank. Each soldier had a locker for his army stuff and personal belongings. This locker was meant to be kept in perfect order (every single bit of your army equipment in a predefined spot, we are talking German Army), since there was an inspection every now and then. The strange thing about the locker was that seeing it from the front you could not tell which side was top or bottom. So the simple trick was to turn it upside down (hence the name dicing with a locker) and put it back into place. From the noise we could tell there were some bottles in it. From the smell it was beer.
Took him quite a while to get everything clean and back into place.
.... no worries, we received our fair share of punishment. 15km walking in full gear, just to remind us what we were really here for.
( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Sun 8 May 2005, 20:44, Reply)

somewhere on here...
Someone mentioned sabotaging gas lift chairs. I did it last night to my boss' chair. He came in, sat down, sank, got up, swapped chairs and promptly shouted at me for being silly.

My response to this was to sabotage both chairs tonight.
(Predatory Sock, Sun 8 May 2005, 20:33, Reply)

Those were the days..
Even faster than putting a magnet on the cassettes (at least for the Armstrad CPC464) was to manipulate the data recorder itself by readjusting the reading head with a little screw driver. Kept a friend (CPC newbie) of mine swapping 20 tapes before hinting that every now and then one would have to readjust the data recorder in order to keep it "on track". Childish really ...
( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Sun 8 May 2005, 19:57, Reply)

Sabotage in Religious education class!
Back in t' day when we HAD to take R.E. as part of our school week, we were asked to come up with a religious themed board game (presumably to get us to do SOMETHING r.e. related besides asking the teacher if you can be re-incarnated as a carrot). Anyway, once said games were completed (drawn onto A3 bits of coloured sugar paper) we passed them on to other tables to play. Imagine our horror when our 'get ghandi' game returned form the girls table with flowers drawn over everything!! SO to return the compliment, we turned every single curved surface on their one into a comedy cock! Beautiful flowers became 8 knobbed mutant flowers and a wonderfully drawn horse had its nose turned into a todger!!!! Bitches complained and we got held back and recieved a right bollocking.........god it was worth it!! :)
( Victor Meldrew, Sun 8 May 2005, 19:35, 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)

petty and fun
My brother used to be a geek. He used to enjoy stamp collcting and collected old oor wullie annuals (if your from scotland youl know). I was bored once and stuck his oldest oldest expesive stamp on his rare valuable collecters oor wullie album. He threw me down the stairs after that tho.
(StrangeKristine, Sun 8 May 2005, 19:08, Reply)

moving house
a while ago my mum was going to move house. my friend and i had some pornographic playing cards that we got each other for a joke xmas present.
my mum informed me that the estaste agent would be comming to view the house the next day. the house should be tidyed.my sister was staying at a friends that night.
my friend and i stratigicly (sp?) placed these cards around my sisters room.
the estate agent looked very scared.
my mum wasnt best pleased...

guess i should do all the sorry for length/spelling/boringness of this
(ThePony, Sun 8 May 2005, 19:00, Reply)

Not me, but a mate
on finding out that his girlfriend had cheated on him while she was at uni (several times) proceeded to cut up all her clothes (She was a fashion design student and had many items of clothing)
Not only did he cut them all up, but he cut each one into roughly an inch square. It took him hours.
She had nothing left, no underwear, coats, shoes nothing, only the clothes she was standing in.
( Hankster, Sun 8 May 2005, 18:23, Reply)

Never piss off a BT engineer
My dad told me that he was once working for a big company in the city laying phone cables. The dude who owned it was a big rich Jew who used to smoke fat expensive cigars. My dad did a whole lot of extra work and the boss said he'd see him alright at the end of the week. At the end of the week all this guy gave him and his mate was a cigar. And when the old man got outside he realised it had been half smoked and there were even teeth marks in it.

Every other day for a couple of weeks my old man nipped into the basement on his way into work on his bike and snipped the wires of the switchboard circuit (back in the days when companies had switchboards). This had the added bonus of him being sent in to fix it, since it was in his area. Which meant he could spend all day scrabbling around under desks trying to 'fix' the problem, while really looking up ladies' skirts.

Which, I believe, is also relevant as a neat skive.
(poomypoo, Sun 8 May 2005, 18:22, Reply)

My failed attempt at anarchy
Downloaded the Anarchists Cookbook, or something claiming to be called that, back in the days of pirate BBS and 33.6k modems. One devious scheme involved dismantling a 3-1/2" floppy disk, filling it with match heads and nail polish remover, then putting it back together. The idea was that when the disk began to spin, the match heads would spark, the polish remover would ignite, and the computer would be destroyed.

Nabbed a disk from a fat bastard everyone hated, performed the surgery, and slipped it back to him the next day at school. I was in computer class when he put it into the machine. There was no explosion, but the disk, which had become sticky from the polish remover, refused to come out of the drive. When the teachers managed to get it out, about half of the label remained in the drive.

I suppose it was a success, since they needed to replace the machine. But they didn't blame fatty for it, and he never burst into flames. Pity that.
(ZugZwang refuses to update his profile., Sun 8 May 2005, 18:07, Reply)

noisy housemates
At uni I live with 5 other girls (nightmare) in a house with cardboard walls.

One of them (not a great friend of mine, it has to be said) has a boyfriend who visits at weekends and every Saturday night without fail, they go out and get completely rat arsed. At about 3 in the morning they come back, shout at each other for 2 hours and then have loud sex. EVERY WEEK.

Recently I have taken to quietly removing the toilet roll in the morning before my housemate emerges, knowing that the inevitable hangover every week gives her the shits something dreadful. Petty, but oh so satisfying!
(im_a_cuckoo, Sun 8 May 2005, 17:20, Reply)

Very petty, but amusing
I did volunteer work with a charity that provides activities for special needs youngsters, and we were out on holiday in the new forest for a few days.
In the cabin we all stayed in there was a CD player, and everyone had brought their tasteless pop compilation CDs with them. Needless to say I got rather fed up of the shite music (things along the lines of the Cartoons - *shudder*) and all the special people dancing and running around like nutters.
Anyway, I discovered Radiohead's pyramid song lurking on one of the compilations, and discreetly set it to play on repeat. It took amusingly long for any of them to realise what had happened, and for a good few minutes they all carried on jumping around, but somewhat slower than before. It was as if I'd discovered a speed/hyperactivity control for special people!
(moik, Sun 8 May 2005, 15:56, Reply)

cnut teachers
quite possibly the best bit of sabotage we did at school, (aided by the head of chemistry) was to take about 10 cans of shaving foam, and dunk them in liquid nitrogen for about 30 seconds and then pealed the can off of the now frozen shaving foam.....
cue the arsehole teachers crappy car sitting well hidden amongest the other teachers' cars, and with the cunning use of a coat hanger, opened the door, and hid all of the frozen blocks of shaving foam in his car, under the seats, in the glovebox, in the door pockets and in the boot.
Being a rather warm day, it didnt take long for the foam to thaw out, and the pressure to build up inside the car. Watching the arsehole go to his car after school and the sudden explosion/shower of shaving foam cover him, and the inside of his car.... p r i c e l e s s ! !
(Herr Oberfeldwebel Steh auf oder stirb auf die Knien..., Sun 8 May 2005, 15:51, Reply)

Oh yeah, same (ex)fiance
wanted *all* her possessions back, but i knew they would be in storage at her parents house for a year or so.

Vacuum Cleaner + cat food = something that makes me smile every time i think about them trying to work out the smell.

More revenge than sabotage? Nah a bit of both.
( ogwen69 has returned from Reddit, Sun 8 May 2005, 15:06, Reply)

What do you do when you find out your mate has been porking your (soon to be ex) Fiancee
www.b3ta.com/questions/virginity/post25292/ seems a good way to do it.

Story was made up, pic was not. Ah the joy of emailing the link to his sister!
( ogwen69 has returned from Reddit, Sun 8 May 2005, 14:52, Reply)

some of my school computer sabotage
creating autorunning word macros so whenever people load word either:
1- 40 smiley face buttons are added to the toolbar
2- the office assistant points out that the IT technician is a cunt
3- the beep function is used to make the sound of a falling bomb, and a small dialog box saying 'boom' pops up
inserting garbage into the word autocorrect function, e.g. every time someone types 'a' it is corrected to 'aardvark'
dragging all the logon windows right off the corner of the screen so no-one can find them
turning the brightness and contrast on all the monitors down to zero
creating folders with a special character in the name, so that when anyone tries to open or delete them they are told the folder doesn't exist
noticing that to edit the school intranet site you just need to stick "/staff" up in the address bar, and spreading this knowledge among the imaginative people of my year
( the wub - guide onion for the blind, Sun 8 May 2005, 14:46, Reply)

Orangeberry Jelly
Had this really evil foster mum once. So i made shite loads of orange and strawberry jelly poured it into every pair of her shoes (she only owned 5 pairs) and then emptied out the freezer and put her shoes filled with orangberry jelly in the there!!! Hurrah she complained about me and i had to leave YAY for orangeberry jelly!!!
(Bhougal...hang me upside down from a banana tree and call me BERTTIE BHOUGAL>>>Oh Yeah...!!, Sun 8 May 2005, 14:27, Reply)

Sleeping over at a friends house once
i found some 'private' poleroids of the dudes parents in one of the books on the bookshelf, we had this friend Kevin who everyone thought was a bit of a twat (a ginger one too)

So i stole the pictures and balanced them lightly in his coat pocket

morning arrives and as he swishes his denim jacket around like the arrogant wank he was all the dirty pictures of the Chris' mamma went flying about.

She was ugly too
(Jenovaschild, Sun 8 May 2005, 14:08, Reply)

smoke-y fire-y
Remembered another one. A couple of weeks ago, sat around smoking weed and being bored, my friends decided they had a vendetta against this one lad who'd grassed them up to the police some time before.

He was due to come round and so action needed to be taken. After some deliberation we noticed that one guy had been cutting off match heads and had a huge pile of them.

Hmm.

Proceeded to roll a short joint, containing a slight amount of hash, but mostly tobacco and a large quantity of match heads. We burnt the end to make it seem as though it was half-smoked then waited til the lad turned up.

'Spliff mate?'

He sat there smoking it, we sat there with our dopey grins, a girl next to me videoing him on her phone.

A minute later, the entire joint burst into flames that shot right back to his lips, never seen someone scream so loud or move so fast. It was, to put it one way, fucking hilarious.

Added bonus in watching him pass on every joint he was offered that night and looking nervous when people gave him cigarettes.
(sporky, Sun 8 May 2005, 13:24, Reply)

not so petty really
i used to know a guy who worked in the cloakrooms of a nightclub. unbeknown to the discodancer who proudly staggered out with a new mate on thier arm, theo had spent the night finding condoms in folks wallets and piercing them with a safety pin.
(symmetrycat, Sun 8 May 2005, 12:54, Reply)

revenge
My best friend-turned girlfriend decided she prefered another guy, so I told everyone about our "exploits", sabotaging her reputation as this good little girl and sending her slightly insane. Good, fucking bitch.
(youthink, Sun 8 May 2005, 12:27, Reply)

turkey turkey turkey
When I was nine, my mother and I moved in with her new partner, who was a rich, fat, loud, dirty, hairy, smelly, greedy malfeasance of a man.

He knew I liked the muesli. He didn't want to share the muesli. He actually -hid- the muesli on a shelf above my eye level, behind the oats. But I found them.

Festering dead bush turkey in the back yard, full of squirmy things, which I chopped up into little pieces and mixed into the muesli!

Not bad for a youngin...
(notmother, Sun 8 May 2005, 11:59, Reply)

Christ, yeah.
Calmed down in recent years. But the ones that spring immediately to mind...Pissing in the cocksucker Junior Partner's tea at the estate agency I was inslaved into for an entire year.(With the Senior Partner's knowledge and blessing).Until he peered into it one day and said "Have you spat in this?".Somehow lost the heart after that. Plus cutting a colleague's 'Def Leppard' cassette halfway through the width of the tape and winding it on a few feet. Next play, cue twanging snap. Fecking hate pompous shallow rock...And if a customer at the Tattoo Studio at which i am receptionist is REALLY cocky and unpleasant with a particularly dull and unoriginal design, I make sure he/she/it is booked in with the artist who has a serious hangover/family problems.They ALWAYS put their full weight on the tattoo machine when in a foul mood!Not wise to piss them off.Maybe, I haven't calmed down at all...
(blahblahblahsodoff, Sun 8 May 2005, 11:40, Reply)

I drew all other my sister's 'GirlsWorld' thing
in permanent pen. She extracted her revenge very subtly. She had a good punch for a 10 year old.
( the wild elk Freeing excellence affects reality, Sun 8 May 2005, 11:10, Reply)

I remember
Ages ago in my old school it was fairly common in the canteen at lunch time to unscrew the lids of the salt and vinegar shakers and leave them resting on top. So when anyone went to shake salt/vinegar on their food off would come the lid and out would spill the entire contents of the shaker.
(therocker, Sun 8 May 2005, 10:49, Reply)

Old fangled
E-mail has brought a lot of new possibilities at work, but also closed some off. In my day (erm, I'm 32) it was memos. And you would put them on your manager's desk if they needed reading out at the weekly meeting. I left one on her pile which she read out. It informed the team that BT were dealing with static on the phone lines, so they would be blowing high pressure air jets down them. If the phones rang between 11 and 11.30am, staff were to answer them but then hold them at arm's length with the receiver pointed away.

It required laughter and incredulous stares from staff before she realised that there was something wrong.
(DamoUK, Sun 8 May 2005, 10:28, Reply)

I used to know a girl...
who at the age of six thought she could get away with drawing on the walls if by writing her brother's name next to any pictures she had drawn.

Her brother was 14 at the time.
(Fishy_Queen, Sun 8 May 2005, 10:25, Reply)

sabotage
as a whole, the year 12 class i graduated with had a pretty decent relationship with the principal, and as such we had made an "agreement" as to what would be tolerated on muck-up day and what wouldnt

muck-up day went off without a hitch, the morning being full of relatively harmless fun, with teachers feeling sorry to see us go and commenting all day on our high maturity levels

cue to a week later when yr 12 exams are getting underway and a very large, very well drawn penis is dicovered scrawled across the middle of the school oval, drawn in dead grass. round-up had been used on muck-up night to give students time to make up alibis before the round-up had finished its work (round up being weedkiller of course)

cue to the schools annual "melbourne cup day" (school is in victoria) festivities, where all photos taken of the events had to be photoshopped to remove the massive cock from the background ;)

a group of year 7 girls had to be told by the teachers that, for them, the front oval was out-of-bounds as the teachers couldnt stand to see the girls naively playing around, and sitting on, the year 12 handiwork which the girls clearly didnt recognise
(dawa, Sun 8 May 2005, 9:03, Reply)