I’m not interested in “pranks” where someone is victimised, harmed, or upset.
Tell me the funniest harmless pranks where everyone involved can laugh and nobody feels bad.
A recent favourite was the most simple. Someone in my office photocopied a paper clip, then put the copy back in the paper feed. My desk was beside the copier, so I got to watch them look everywhere in that machine for the paper clip.
something harmless my dad likes to do when hes walking with a group of people and is in front is walk to the side and pretent to examine something. causes a whole group of people to go walk over and look. and go nuts when they dont see anything.
There’s a similar thing you can do - if you’re in a room of people, just start chuckling to yourself about nothing. Keep doing it every so often, and all going well, the whole room will be in uproarious laughter for reasons they’re entirely unaware of!
Stick a small piece of paper under the mouse of a colleague, covering the laser sensor and watch them go crazy trying to figure why the mouse doesn’t work. Bonus point of the paper is the same colour as the mouse and it’s hard to see.
When I was in high school, each department had a bunch of shared laptops that could be usedfor occasional lessons. They all had touchpads, but the school did also provide mice. They also had USB ports on the back. So of course you try to slyly plug your mouse into the laptop of whoever is sitting opposite you and just nudge their cursor astray every so often
Someone was lightly victimized in this, but no one was upset and it was all in good fun.
Years ago, my buddy taped an air horn under his boss’s chair. We worked in a bullpen and the boss had a fishbowl office in the corner. He came in and sat down and of course it went off. Boss fell out of his chair, everyone stopped working, and everyone’s morale was super high the rest of the day, especially the boss.
The boss had never felt like part of the team. Most of us had worked together for years and we all played light pranks on each other. He came much later. It was the first time he really felt like one of us.
This was one I did to a buddy years ago but he still says it’s the best prank pulled on him ever. We had each other’s apartment keys so we could walk each other’s dogs.
He had gone out drinking and playing poker with some friends. I knew he’d be coming home drunk. I got into his place and took every single light bulb out. All the lamps, all the ceiling fixtures. His fish tank. The little one in the fridge. Every single one. Then I took his futon mattress and put it in his storage shed and made up the frame like it was all ready for bed. Then I took his couch cushions too. Fed and walked his dog and went home and locked all my doors and windows and made sure to put the chain on the door.
User name checks out
Heard of rather than seen it.
My dad started a rumor that a coworker kept jello in her desk. Just mentioned it from time to time and let it be. Time goes by…
One Monday morning he goes in early and reignites the rumor.
When the coworker arrives there’s a crowd outside her office. She’s annoyed and throws open all her desk drawers to prove her innocence… and finds her file drawer full of lime jello, one unpeeled banana in the middle.
If I recall right she laughed until she peed herself.
The drawer was large enough it took my Dad most of Saturday to fill it. And most of the space in our fridge.
Edit: There was also a time my dad and I rented a small trailer and took some stuff to the dump.
I always loved this as we would look around and see if there was anything worth scavenging and bringing home.
But no, nothing interesting.
On the way home I turn to my Dad and say “Let’s tell mom and sis we found a moose head.”
They believed us, we go out to the trailer and I’m opening it slowly to reveal that it’s empty… and a prior renter had spilled some red paint in the bottom.
My sister screams “IT’S STILL BLEEDING” and runs inside.
I could’ve never predicted it would go that well. I’d of course meant a mounted moose head. And this was in Florida, where I’m fairly sure there are no ‘fresh’ moose.
I got my friend a job at my company. He met one of my coworkers, a guy we’ll call Frank. I told him Frank has led a very interesting life (not a lie - he has). I said before becoming an engineer, Frank was a male escort. And that he probably shouldn’t bring it up because I don’t know if that’s common knowledge in the office. I quickly forgot I even told him that.
A couple of months later he made a joke to me about it and that’s when I told him the truth: Frank was a Presbyterian minister for years. He was never a gigolo.
I hide gold coins (but any kind of fun token will do). Who doesn’t like a finding a gold coin?
It started when I used to do leprechaun cosplay. When you do that, you inevitably will get asked where your gold is hidden, so I got a bunch of cheap plastic coins to hand out when I got “caught”, or to “drop” if chased. For the heck of it I started slipping them in my friends’ bags and costumes while they were out.
Eventually this lead to hiding them in peoples homes when I visit, and reverse pickpocketing friends: pockets, purses, hoods in winter so they will fall out when they flip them up to go outside, behind wall art, inside a skein of yarn someone is knitting from…
I think my biggest get was slipping one into a theater director’s shirt pocket while they were talking to someone else. And the biggest surprise might have been one I put in an attic ladder hatch so that it fell out when they went to go up there months later.
What I do really often:
Coming from behind, I tap someone on their shoulder, then move around the other side to say Hi.
Take a full screenshot of the desktop, then edit the image so you flip it upsidedown (180). Now, put that image as the background for the computer, and hide the taskbar, and any desktop icons. Lastly, update the monitor setting so it is upsidedown (180).
For the user, it will seem like everything is normal, but when they move the mouse, it will go in the “opposite” direction (as monitor has been flipped).
To help them solve to fix it, the easiest is to flip the mouse around upside down, and move it around like normal.
I used to offer customers invisible change when they paid in full but no tip
There’s a cantankerous old git we drink with in my local and I have the PIN to his phone. Once I installed Grindr on it (didn’t create an account), so now all I have to do is let him “catch” me with his phone unlocked and he can spend days trying to figure out what I did, but as I did nothing he never finds it.
His wife and daughter annoy him as they live with him, and he gets irate at WhatsApp group chats that are too chatty. So I got his phone and created a WhatsApp group for his family, then posted “I love you” to it. He didn’t discover it until the next day and was fuming.
