Best pranks/stunts pulled on friends or co-workers - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: WattsThat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 02:07:00 am
content: In an effort not to hi-jack thebubble wrapthread, thought it might be good therapy to start a prank thread, documenting (hopefully) harmless but creative ways you’ve returned the favor to a friend or coworker for their annoyances.Our purchasing guy was a real car nut. Always drove a late model Ford land yacht. Never a speck of dirt on it, oil changed every 3k miles or less, I’m sure you’ve known someone like that. After a few too many of his pranks, myself and two other engineers had enough, it was payback time.We got foot long piece of 1 inch cast iron pipe, stuck large ball bearing that just fit in the ID and secured it into place with two end caps. It rolled nice and slow with a good deep clunk when it reached either end. We got into his car (left open in those days) and placed it under the carpet under the drivers seat.We got about a week out of it. It was really hard to keep a straight face every morning when he would try to explain the noise and when it occurred. We finally had to come clean when when he started threatening to take it to the dealer to complain about his new car with the clunking noise. It took him about a month to cool off but we had much better relationship afterwards.

author: sokoloff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 03:02:51 am
content: My dad's a Mercedes nut and while visiting him a few years ago, I borrowed one of his cars and picked up a slow leak in a rear tire. It was in the tread surface and thus easily repaired with a spaghetti plug, which I went to the store, bought, and showed him how it worked, even though he was a little skeptical.Next morning, the same tire is flat again. "See, I told you that wouldn't work!" Closer examination revealed the tire had two nail punctures and I'd only fixed one of them. Fixed the second one and left the car alone with success overnight.He was still monitoring the tire pressure daily to see if there was still a slow leak.The day we left, I let 10 psi out of that tire in the garage, said nothing, and went to the airport to return home.He emailed the next day complaining about how the tire was going flat again and that he'd already called the dealer an hour away to see about getting the tire replaced. I had to explain through my laughter what was really going on. That was probably 8 years ago and he still jokes about it.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 03:19:24 am
content: we managed to convince one of our collage lectures there was a fault with the overhead projector as every time he touched the screen the RCD tripped,lesson changed into a practical demonstration on fault finding, a thorough inspection of the projector and a test on the rooms electrics didn't find any faults so lesson resumed only for the trip to go again next time he pointed at the screen.The sniggering around the class finally gave the game away and my plug with a switch wired across neutral and earth was confiscated.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 03:38:24 am
content: One of my favorite tricks back in the day was to wait for someone to forget to lock their PC when they went to lunch, then open a browser window or some other window, take a screenshot and then set that as the wallpaper. One day it was the viagra website in a browser window and we sat around trying to stifle our laughter as he repeatedly clicked on the close button, went into task manager trying to kill the browser, then proceeded to reboot THREE times before he finally figured it out. There were about 10 of us in a big room and everybody was dying trying not to laugh.Another classic office prank I liked was to connect a USB extension cable to their tower and run it under the cubicle wall to an extra mouse or keyboard on the floor under my desk. Then move the mouse around when they're trying to do something or peck a random key each time they try to enter their password.Oh and swapping keycaps is always fun on keyboards where those are easily removable. If it's something like the N and M or S and D it isn't immediately obvious at a glance. One guy we even told about this prank and he said it wouldn't work on him because he doesn't look at his keyboard when he types. Well a few days later I did it to him and that afternoon I heard him calling helpdesk to say his password wasn't working and he got locked out of his PC. Turns out one of the keys I swapped happened to be what his password started with so he'd look down at his keyboard to type the first letter.Outside of work I think my favorite prank was printing up a funny or embarrassing bumper sticker and putting it on my friend's car. On one occasion a long time friend of mine had a history of pulling pranks on me so I put a bumper sticker that said "I Masturbate" on his truck and he drove all over town the next day before a girl he was meeting up with noticed it and said something. Just prior to that a group of guys in a big lifted truck kept pointing and laughing and he thought it was because his truck was smaller than theirs

author: Mark19960
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 03:51:00 am
content: Putting electrolytic caps in the sockets on someones workbench in the lab so when they came in and turned on their gear... BANG.Along with the fake insects like spiders attached to fishing line that you hung down in front of people in deep thought

author: ivaylo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 04:44:32 am
content: Wire a coworker’s motorized desk to a esp8266 running a web server on the office net such that everyone with the URL could move it up/down. She thought it was possessed.

author: basinstreetdesign
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 05:13:34 am
content: Back in electronics class in grade 11 (yes, I really took electronics in high school, but then that was 1966) we would charge electrolytic caps up to 300-400V and then leave them lying around for someone to put away...In residence at university there were always guys who would do standard stuff like locking a student INTO his room by jamming his door with pennies so tight that the knob would not turn, ortaking the mouthpiece mic out of his phone, orshort-sheeting his bed, orif he fell asleep drunk then gently lowering his hand into a small bucket of warm water would make him pee.The most evil of prank at uni I ever heard of was to get one of those "big bertha" garbage bins from the bathroom, fill it 2/3 with water (must have weighed close to a couple hundred pounds) then drag it over to some poor saps door and lean it up on that door so that it would stay there and the water was just at the lip. Then knock on the door and walk away. When the mark opened the door the water could not be stopped. His room would be flooded to a depth of 2-3 inches.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 02:57:36 pm
content: Obviously, pranks that have considerable (say 1%-ish) possibility of death, serious injury, traumatization of the victim, or a large-scale damage to properties are the most funny ones, and anyone disagreeing or pointing out the dangers is a party pooper.

author: 25 CPS
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 03:52:32 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 31, 2020, 03:38:24 amI used to do something like this in the high school computer science room. The room was filled with these Tron 386 PCs that had Windows 3.1 on them and I'd screenshot Program Manager and set that as the background, then move the actual Program Manager window off screen into one of the corners, then grab the corner of the window with the mouse and drag the rest of it down into the corner so all that was visible if you looked closely was one pixel in on of the corners of the screen. Then use the keyboard shortcuts to exit Windows which would cause it to save the last used position of the window hidden away down in the corner. The next person to load up Windows on that machine would have it come up exactly as I left it with the screenshot background Program Manager sitting there and the actual window hidden away. That was always good for confounding people especially some of the less computer savvy teachers the place had.More recently in the working world, calling the maintenance shop number from an internal phone's always been good. "Hello? Is this tech support? It isn't working!" And let the person stuck answering the phone crash and burn and freak out. I'm surprised that one works. I guess instinct kicking in as opposed to asking what isn't working, where isn't it working, etc. I also set someone's computer's login sound to crickets chirping several weeks before he retired.Quote from: basinstreetdesign on July 31, 2020, 05:13:34 amIt's interesting what changes in 30 years. They had an electronics class in high school when I went through in the mid-1990s but I never took it though. A friend of mine a year or two ahead of me did and we were talking one day and it came up. I forget the exact question I asked but it was something to do with capacitors and the friend said that he didn't know because they weren't allowed to use them. That's when I decided not to take the electronics class figuring it couldn't be that good if you weren't allowed to use capacitors when you stop and think about what that does to the range of circuits you can work with. Compare that to using capacitors and at vacuum tube B+ voltages as well. Fast forward almost another 30 years now and I don't even want to think how much more watered down it's gotten.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 04:41:36 pm
content: Newbie operators in the cleanroom. Since we had many chemicals in in use like silicontrafluoride , isopropanol and others.... it was easy to 'invent' new chemicals.If newbie shift supervisor in nightshift showed 'attitude' ( pressurizing the techs to fix the machine faster ) we used to 'deflate' them a bit by telling them .if you want it faster : help us. we need a cannister of ilektanminol from the warehouse. so they would try to run off and get it for us. The warehouse guys knew about this one and that stuff was invariably stored in the most inaccessible place with pallets of other stuff in the way.now, ilektanminol in itself is funny ... i lekt an min ol : he licks at my a..Or in the chemistry sophomores class : tell him you found a small bottle with a brownish liquid. It shows the formula C-H-O-C-O .. and watch then go in discussion about how that can't be . The oxygen atoms wouldn't bond like that. Then take out your little bottle of CHOCO brand chocolate mlik , take a sip in front of them tell them it tastes really nice though and then walk away ...

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 06:28:33 pm
content: Back in the 80s I worked in an electronics shop (mostly components sales, semiconductors, resistors, caps, wires etc.) selling over the counter.Behind the counter there were plastic boxes with relatively large polyester caps, IIRC 220 nF, 470 nF, 1 uF, even 2.2 uf, all 400 V rated.One day a couple of us charged all the caps in one of the boxes to 300 V, carefully replaced them and waited for the unsuspecting (and unpopular) colleague to make a grab into the box to serve a customer.The fireworks of sparks and the screaming was overwhelming. So was the telling-off from the boss...

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 06:47:23 pm
content: I worked at a repair shop where we did repairs on warranty returns of cheap consumer stuff like clock-radios & cassette recorders for the importer.Much prankery was aimed at me, typically stuff like 10uf 10v caps inside the mains plug of my soldering iron, or slamming the bench when I powered something on, so I decided to get subtle...This was back when mains stuff in the UK didn't usually come with a plug on ( obscure historical reasons), so we had quick-connect type blocks on the bench to connect the mains to them (think crocodile clips in a box).I took the fuse out of my colleague's one, and put a 1N4007 diode inside the fuse, so it looked normal from the outside, but when you connected something like a clock-radio, the DC would saturate the transformer and blow the internal fuse inside the transformer.Took quite a while for anyone to figure out what was going on...

author: DrG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 06:49:23 pm
content: Well, it is probably not what you intended, and certainly more impressive than I could ever be part of, but I can't help but be reminded of the 1982 MIT prank of putting the phone booth on top of the building - of course it could ring. *dang* they don't make nerds like they used tohttps://webmuseum.mit.edu/media.php?module=subjects&type=popular&kv=147&media=26

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 07:04:30 pm
content: Quote from: 25 CPS on July 31, 2020, 03:52:32 pmI would do the same thing in a different way. I would take a screenshot of the desktop, edit it to remove all but one desktop icon, and then set that as the desktop wallpaper with the real icon moved to a safe place. So now the desktop looks completely normal, except one icon is completely unresponsive and cannot even be selected, but everything else works.

author: dave j
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 07:41:24 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 31, 2020, 03:38:24 amBack in the days before numeric keypads gained cursor keys as an alternate function, swapping the 123 and 789 rows was always good for causing confusion.

author: DrG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 07:56:43 pm
content: Well, not quite at the MIT level...I remember sometime in maybe 1987, I had a VAX terminal on my desk, as did most of us (loved me some kermit). In everyone's login file was a call to a cookie service - a little fortune cookie was delivered through a random choice in a database. I managed to replace my supervisors cookie file with one of my creation. As you might have guessed, all of the fortunes praised me and encouraged raises and promotions for me. I didn't get those (because of the prank) but did get some smiles...followed by a "Now fix it"!

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 08:35:15 pm
content: Quote from: DrG on July 31, 2020, 07:56:43 pmBack in those days I managed a VAX 11/780, and it was discovered that the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet was going to crash into Jupiter.So, I changed the login script that normally just gave the current time and said when you last logged on with something like this :Welcome. It is 9:15 PM, do you know where your Shoemaker-Levy 9 is? OH NO, it is going to crash into Jupiter in 37 days 14 hours and 23 minutes!------------------Another one was in the dorms of an engineering school. Some guys from our floor shoved an envelope filled with shaving cream under the door and stomped on it, spraying the stuff all over a few feet inside the door. My roommate dashed out the door and saw the culprits running rown the stairs and out of the building, so we knew we had a few minutes to retaliate. They had left their room open! I had made a little bit of Nitorgen triIodide and had it in my dorm room. We smeared it all over the light bulbs, doorknobs, and places where you put your hand to open dresser drawers and closet doors. The stuff was exploding for weeks before they had managed to set it all off. Nitrogen triIodide is quite harmless, but makes you jump every time you set a bit of it off. (A contact explosive.)----------------------At another school, they had a carrier current AM station with transmitters in each cluster of dorms. Program audio was distributed through dedicated phone lines. We got keys to the phone room and rewired all the program audio to go up to my dorm and then back to the common feed. We took over their feed and started playing mothers of invention (Frank Zappa) and all sorts of stuff that they were not allowed to play. Eventually, the culprits were mostly identified, and brought before the campus judcial board. 4 of the 7 members of the board were in on the prank. One of them was a pre-law student, and observed the J-board bylaws said anyone who had knowledge of the incident or relationship to those involved "SHOULD" recuse themselves from the hearings. He pulled out Black's law dictionary and started recitng the specific legal definition of the word "should", meaning specifically that the person does not HAVE to do so. That was pretty much the end of the case.I probably have a few more war stories.JonJon

author: Messtechniker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 08:42:15 pm
content: Never tried it but should be effective and simple:Popping chewing gum as soon as someone switches on some gear.Should nicely frighten the life out of the victim.

author: Circlotron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 10:45:41 pm
content: I think it was Bob Pease that told the story that one of this colleagues was always boasting of the great fuel mileage he was getting from his car, and he would check it daily and regale the office with the numbers. Eventually the guys came up with a plan. Some days they would drain some fuel from his car, and other days they would put that same fuel back in. Had him going for quite a while as to why his numbers became so inconsistent.

author: Sceptre
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2020, 11:07:16 pm
content: Many years ago, I was a coop in a small lab at a large organization. Staff members sat at two desks, and I usually sat at one of the two adjacent benches. A friend from high school asked me to make a flashing beacon for the model rockets he flew. I went to Radio Shack and bought an LM3909, copper clad, and a small bottle of ferric chloride etchant. As luck would have it, there was a perfectly-sized graduated cylinder in a utility room at work, so I decided to take the etchant and board to the lab to do the etching. I set the graduated cylinder containing the board and solution on the bench. The staffer who sat next to me arrived for the morning and expressed concern about the hazardous chemical mere feet away from his desk. I assured him that it would not be there for long, and that I would not spill it. As I worked away on whatever task I had that morning, an idea came to me.I always brought my lunch, and they usually went out. Around noon, I went to the utility room, emptied out the solution, rinsed off the etched board, and washed the graduated cylinder three times. Back in the lab, I poured some root beer in the graduated cylinder and placed it on the pull-out shelf on the nearby desk, then ate my lunch. When the concerned staffer returned, he was aghast and demanded that I remove the noxious chemical from his desk. I picked up the graduated cylinder and drank from it.Unfortunately I could not contain myself and started laughing a few seconds after taking a drink. But it was still great fun.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 02:46:13 am
content: When I was working at a fruity computer store years ago, one time out business sales guy was out of town for a few days, and while he was out, we shrink wrapped everything on his desk (plus plastic wrapped the chair and desk). But I meanevery single thing. Every single pencil, pen, and paper clip was individually shrink wrapped. So was every scrap of paper left on the desk. The phone had the handset and cord wrapped individually, and obviously the keyboard and mouse. It was pretty epic.Another time, we built an elaborate pulley system to which we attached a manager’s keychain that he’d forgotten to take home. It was rigged such that when he opened the door to the office, the keys dangled at chest height, but once the door was released to finish walking towards it, the keys would be pulled up to the ceiling.Finally, another prank (which I sadly cannot take credit for) was when another manager forgot her keys, so they first scanned a picture of the keychain into the computer, then went down to Build A Bear Workshop and had them sewn into a bear’s belly. Then they photoshopped the keychain photo to look like an x-ray and printed it out so that the bear could hold the photo showing what’s hidden inside. 😂

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 03:16:57 am
content: When I was working in the IT department of a very large company, pranks were a weekly occurrence.There was one particular guy who was a frequent target, we often changed the caller ID on his desk phone to humorous things so whenever he made an internal call, the other party would see our handy work and awkward questions would be asked.On a number of occasions, we also modified his Outlook email signature (since we all had local administrator rights to every machine). At one point, he got the shits and attempted to lock everyone out of his computer who had local administrator rights (including himself). To this day, I still don't know how he managed it, but he borked his entire machine which required a complete re-image to fix.More recently, whenever someone leaves their computer unlocked and leaves their desk, we would bring uphttps://fakeupdate.net/win8/in a web browser set to full screen. Hilarity would ensue when they return, swear and curse because of the unfortunate timing and wait for updates to complete that inevitably never do. ;-)

author: Sceptre
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 03:17:57 am
content: I once worked for a company where pranks were part of the culture, tacitly allowed by management as long as they weren't destructive. When a particular VP was on vacation, his minions got together and covered his office doorway with drywall, plaster, and paint. It was a really well done job, with no seams or ripples showing around the patch. We were all anticipating the epic hilarity that would ensue when the VP discovered that his office was gone. The surprise was on all of us, however, when the CEO fired him that morning.

author: Mr.B
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 04:24:13 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on August 01, 2020, 03:16:57 amThat is just gold.I am going to use that this week...Love that pressing enter emulates a BSoD.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 05:35:04 am
content: I once managed to convince a colleague that aluminum absorbs oil. He was doing some DIY molding, used an improvised milled aluminum block as a mold and used some oil as a separator, or something, to be able to get the part out better. But it either leaked out or something.When he told me about the missing oil I nodded knowingly and said: "Yeah, understandable, aluminum absorbs oil." with a deadpan expression. He didn't believe at first, but I managed to convince him of the 'fact', thanks to my deadpan expression and matter-of-fact tone. The thing that really sold it was the "I assumed you knew." bit. He came out of that conversation convinced that aluminum absorbs oil and was weirded out by the 'fact'. A few minutes later he came back laughing "Dude, you totally got me!" and we both had a laugh about it.Quote from: Benta on July 31, 2020, 06:28:33 pmWhat's the problem? You sold precharged caps. It's an extra service.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 06:45:57 am
content: Quote from: Mr.B on August 01, 2020, 04:24:13 amThat image of the cracked LCD screen and set their screensaver to it.

author: nali
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 08:20:45 am
content: Talking about cars. A colleague bought a new Ford Escort RS2000 and would not stop banging on about it. So one day we poured a cup of engine oil on to the tarmac underneath making a nice puddle and a trail out from under the engine bay. We made sure we all left work at the same time just to watch the priceless expression on his face...

author: borjam
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 08:38:34 am
content: Three in a row, in 30 minutes.Victim: my sisterHer tire was flat and I offered to change it. While I was jacking it up I suggested her to go to a garageto have the wheel checked just in case I did something wrong. As I don't have a driver's license I told herI am not licensed to replace tyres, so she would be in trouble if the wheel somewhat failed. (strike 1)While lowering the car I recommended her to move away from the firing range just in case a bolt was shotat high speed due to the weight of the car. (strike 2).After finishing the job, while heading back home, I told her I remembered that she should try and start the engine.As she was aware I had pulled two pranks already she was wary. So I explained there is an effect called "engine vertigo"that might happen when the car has been tilted for several minutes. There she went and started the engine that, obviously,worked (strike 3).The funny thing is, she fell for them three times in a row. And being my sister you can imagine she knows me very very wellAnother one, this one was 35 years ago! I was the lighting and sound technician for a theatre company. We had an opening on Sunday and Itold the director I was going mountaineering on Saturday. On Sunday some of the crew went to a radio station to be interviewed aboutthe opening and meanwhile, to the astonishment of the radio guys, I was bandaging my hands. So, I appeared at the theatre with bothhands bandaged. I told him I had an accident, it wasn't serious but my hands were out of order. So, he had to sit at the lighting and soundcontrol waiting for my instructions.The play begun and I poked him in the shoulder, and I showed him how I was removing the bandages. He almost killed me, although at thesame time he felt an immense relief! The funniest thing is, several months ago he overheard me telling an actress that I was intending topull that prank the opening day. But he forgot!

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 09:56:40 am
content: Pot their car keys in clear silicone gel . . .If you've ever had to rework a module potted in the stuff, you'll know just how obnoxious it is to remove.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2020, 04:20:25 pm
content: Quotedone the same to a mates new motorbike,but with an added bolt in the puddle of oil.Another one was drawing a line with a pencil down the body of the spark plug

author: 25 CPS
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2020, 12:33:29 am
content: I almost forgot about this one from a summer job in high school. It was a small operation, just three of us, myself and another student plus the employer who had two computer systems. One was for production work and didn't run Windows and the other was for administrative stuff and was a brand new Windows 98 machine. I added this to his autoexec.bat file:Code:@echo Hi Ray!It didn't get noticed and I thought it was a bust of a prank. Months later, long after I forgot about this, I got this angry shouting phone call about how [Other Employee] was sabotaging his computer. On and on about how the other guy was sabotaging his computer and finally after asking what had been done to it, he told me the computer had been changed to say, "Hi Ray!" on the screen whenever he started it up. I had to choke back laughter on that and told him that if that's all that had been done, the computer was still in fine shape and not to worry about it. I found out from a couple of other friends though that they'd also gotten these angry venting calls about the computer being sabotaged and apparently he called the other employee who'd by then quit and only got further enraged when the other guy denied everything. It was priceless.

author: BurningTantalum
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2020, 05:03:09 am
content: Nali and MadHippy: Great minds think alike: many years ago I had a chum who was a mathematical genius but when it came to practical matters we decided that he had 'ExoVision' and could not visualise what was inside anything solid. His pride and joy was a BSA B33. One day I was walking past his house with another friend. We had visited the local hostelry and were transiting to the next pub. The bike was sitting on the driveway, so I asked my friend if he had some old engine oil. We staggered off to his house to fetch a gallon can of it, and proceeded to lean the bike over and pour about half of it into the joint of the head and barrel fins. It cascaded down like a black champagne fountain. Shambling off tittering we promptly forgot about it until a few days later I passed by and saw my chum amid a heap of tools and the head off the bike. "Bloody head gasket has gone..." he whined. My friend and I swore on our lives never to tell anyone what we had done. Not sure how he imagined 2 litres of oil could come out of the head gasket...BT

author: aargee
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2020, 05:30:34 am
content: Never use the toilets at a Chemistry Block at a Uni, one prank was to paint all the toilet seats with dilute silver nitrate.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2020, 09:37:03 am
content: Best prank I helped pull on a co-worker was when he brought his old (antique-ish) phone from home to put on his desk. One with a dial instead of push-buttons. He declared it no longer worked. Working at a telefom related company we had a whole bunch of parts that would fit in it so one day when he was away we fixed the phone and connected it to a telephone line. When he was back we rang him. He was flabbergasted when it started ringing and even more surprised there was someone at the other end of the line.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2020, 09:56:32 am
content: Quote from: nali on August 01, 2020, 08:20:45 amIt's a Ford FFS, oil leaks are part of the design !I should know, I've had a few of the things !Several decades back when twisting spanners on small motors and mostly before the days of them new fangled CDI's and such ignitions we would charge points ignition caps with ignition cap testers and lob them at 'mates' for them to catch.You got wise to it pretty quick.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2020, 10:01:40 am
content: Quote from: nali on August 01, 2020, 08:20:45 amNow most cars have air cons its common to see a trail of drips on the ground that leave you thinking "is that condensate from the air con, or is my coolant system leaking?".

author: n5al
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2020, 11:04:06 am
content: Not completely on topic, but I was reminded of an unusual event...I knew a component manufacturer's rep, who bought himself a big, fancy Cadillac to impress his customers and carry them to all those "free lunch" meetings at the local restaurants. Free food is good!However, there was something wrong with this new car. Every once in a while, you would hear a "clunk" sound emanating from the car. This sporadic sound usually happened while the driver was making a sharp turn.The rep took his car to the dealer, but they couldn't find anything wrong with it. He drove it around for a few more weeks, but the occasional noise persisted. So, the rep returned to the dealer for a second look at the problem. Fortunately, on this second visit, he got a sharp technician who managed to find the problem.The technician noted that the annoying "clunk" sound was coming from the vicinity of the passenger-side, rear door. The tech detached the interior door panel. Inside the door, he discovered a screwdriver dangling on a length of twine. A note attached to the screwdriver read, "I Hope This Drove You Crazy, You Rich Son-of-a-B**ch".Some anonymous assembler, at the Detroit factory, just wasn't a happy camper.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 06:37:16 am
content: We played a prank on a conspiracy-theorist electronic engineer from Bulgaria. He was a little aggressive, so you knew your limits.On one occasion a good colleague of mine named Greg (who sat in the next cubicle to the Bulgarian) was chopping wood on a Saturday when a chunk of timber hit him in the face, causing a severe black eye, cuts and heavy bruising to the nose. We were good friends out of hours and he visited me on the Sunday. We hatched an evil plan to fool the Bulgarian. Greg would come to work a half hour late on the Monday morning. So before Greg arrived on the Monday, when the Bulgarian asked where Greg was, I told him he might not come to work today because I had bashed his head in on the weekend by delivering several hard punches to his face in response to Greg saying a rude word. The Bulgarian was a little perplexed, but continued to work. When Greg finally rocked up to work bruised and bandaged, he sat down at his cubicle. The Bulgarian looked over the top of the partition, saw him, and then quietly sat back down without saying a word. For about 10 minutes the Bulgarian was frozen - hands on keyboard not moving a muscle, staring at nothing in particular on the screen, not saying a word. Gotcha! After 10 minutes, he looked over asking Greg why I had bashed him. We then told him the truth. The Bulgarian took it OK and was relieved that I was not a nutter (or so he thought).But you have to be careful of pranks and stunts in the workplace. At one large corporation, there was a forklift driver who was showing off doing donuts in his forklift. The edge of the forklift hit a bystanders foot, taking a large chunk of the flesh from his heel. Not good. The incident was covered up.

author: Mazo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 08:08:57 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on August 07, 2020, 06:37:16 amIn Bulgaria we have a saying:"Бии за да те уважават".Translates roughly to Fight(as in being physically aggressive ) to be respected.So you got some respect points

author: newbrain
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 08:21:32 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on August 07, 2020, 06:37:16 amAh, yes, our old friendKlaus.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 10:42:16 am
content: A colleague of mine was powering on a new development kit worth some thousands of pounds and was not sure whether he had the polarity right as the AC adapter was missing. I scrunched up some tin foil behind him and made a pop sound, and he panicked and grabbed the off button.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 11:20:23 am
content: Quote from: BurningTantalum on August 04, 2020, 05:03:09 amAround here the cardinal rule is that you don't touch someone's car or bike.

author: hans
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 01:29:49 pm
content: At my first intern company, we pranked our operating manager with a "high tech" Ding Dong Ditch. It was a small company with an open office space, a meeting room, and 2 separate offices for the technical and a commercial/operating manager. The operating manager was most concerned with receiving customers and certain letters (trolls/scammers sending registered mail with fake bills to small companies), so he wanted to keep a close watch on the mail and front door to handle that. Of course, his office was farthest away from the door, so that didn't really help.. further worsened by a malfunctioning door bell of the old office place..It broke a few weeks before I started my internship, so my first task was to fix it. Being an old rental place, the electrical panels was a mess with 0 documentation. So eventually we gave in and bought a battery-powered wireless doorbell that could be attached with some sticky tape on the door frame and inside. Great; door bell fixed. Let's get back to work.Then one day, both managers were out of office for an external meeting, so we tossed the idea: what protocol is that door bell using? It's probably some 433MHz OOK radio, and since we had several IoT boards that also used 433MHz radio's.. well, how hard can it be? Some quick spectrum analyzer and oscilloscope sweeps later revealed the "magic code" that was transmitted by the button unit to the alarm unit in order to ring the bell. Great: let's hard-code the magic code into a PIC microcontroller, and of we go.So come next day.. everyone is back into the office again. A colleague had this board on his table, and it would send the magic code every time he would connect power to the board. Of course, the COO was keen on handling door matters, so checked a couple times when the "bell" rang... no one there. Becoming more confused every time, he eventually took off the button unit and removed the battery, and the door bell would still rang (of course). At this point it was very hard to hold the laughter, so we gave into the prank.Being a small company tight on finances, the first question he asked was: how much engineering hours did this cost us?!

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 02:08:00 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on August 07, 2020, 11:20:23 amCo-worker would pretend to let the air out of my tires. The lunch/break room had nice big windows where you could see out to the parking lot and it was a small company so you could easily see your cars. While we were at lunch one day he walked beside mine and kneeled down and took off the valve cap and pretended like he was letting air out.So a couple days later when he was back at his desk I walked over while twirling a ratchet, sat a big bolt on his desk and walked away. Come lunch time we watched as he went out to his car and looked everywhere trying to figure out where the bolt had come from.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 02:15:16 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 04, 2020, 09:37:03 amReminded me of a phone prank on the Bulgarian. He was a FPGA programmer when we were developing a PABX phone system. Our office of about 70 people used the same system for user testing which was also connected to the public telephone network, but our development machines were electrically disconnected from the office and the PSTN. Effectively they were stand alone PABXs with a few feature phones attached - once for each engineer's desk typically. One day another engineer switched the RJ11 cable that was connected to the Bulgarian's office phone into the back of one of the phones on his development system. The engineer called the phone extension from his desk. The "isolated" phone rang once. The Bulgarian looked at the phone, thinking there was a bug in his development PABX as around that time he had some issues with his XILINX FPGA. A minute later, it rang it again. Same thing. The Bulgarian started checking a few lines with an oscilloscope. A minute later, it rang again several times. He picked up the phone and said in a quiet voice "Hello?". I remember the engineer sitting next to me broke down in hysterical laughter, so much so that tears were running down his face. I have known that engineer for many years and had never seen him crack up like that in uncontrollable laughter.

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 08:29:56 pm
content: Quote from: n5al on August 05, 2020, 11:04:06 amThere's a well-documented story of this happening on a Ford product, might have been a Lincoln. There was a large nut on a string in a door. it was found by the dealer, and sent up to Ford management with the VIN number. It was supposed to have been QUITE a moment when the line manager walked up to the guy who assembled the door that day (they had extremely detailed records of who did what when) and asked him if he had lost anything recently.Jon

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2020, 09:48:38 pm
content: https://youtu.be/NtLpCT5f2CM

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2020, 01:16:15 am
content: Back when TVs still used CRTs, a common prank was to swap the wires of the horizontal deflection coils. One would get a mirror image on the screen.Another in color TVs, was to interchange the RGB signals.

author: n5al
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2020, 05:58:59 am
content: At one of the first companies where I worked (I don't remember which one), an engineer had designed a rack of equipment and was preparing to power it up for the first time. Undetected by the engineer, a technician had positioned himself behind the tall rack. Just as the engineer threw the power switch, the technician started blowing cigarette smoke through the back of one of the card cages. I was standing off to the side and the panic-inducing effect was pretty convincing!======I remember another prank, where I was the instigator....Back in the early 80's, my company had a dedicated Perkin Elmer minicomputer that was used to write circuit board testing programs, for complex logic boards. This minicomputer was set up to timeshare four user workstations. These four workstations were located side-by side, in a common area. The computer was fast for its time, but the actual third-party application software ran noticeably S-L-O-W.The minicomputer and its administration terminal were located in an unsecured room, with the operating system manuals stored in a bookcase. Reading the manuals, I found the specific OS commands to change how the user time slices were divided up. The existing allocation was 25% to each of the four users. The next morning, I changed the time slice settings, so that I got 97% utilization and the other three users only received 1% each.Returning to the workstation area, my three coworkers had quickly detected that something strange was going on. They began complaining among themselves that the system, which had always been slow, was now almost useless. Meanwhile, I was happily working away, with my programs moving along at a lightening pace. My computer bliss didn't evade detection for very long, however, as the others soon noticed that I was the only person in the room who was NOT complaining!

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2020, 09:58:25 am
content: You were too greedy. 17%:17%:17%:49% would have ~ doubled 'your' workstation's speed, and would probably have gone unnoticed for a long time, (or at least till someone else had cause to use 'your' workstation).

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2020, 09:49:35 pm
content: Oh man, so many from which to choose.#1: Back when hard drives were just being offered (only by third parties) for IBM PC's - yes, this was back in the early 80's - a coworker was relentlessly bragging to everyone about how awesome his system was going to be working and how fast it would compile his then-favorite language, Pascal. None of the rest of us were worthy, etc. It was finally too much for a room full of Engineers... a very dangerous situation in which to put oneself!I recruited a couple of guys to work the sting. For the first one, I wrote a telephone script that had him impersonate an employee of the company shipping him the hard drive system. He got an outside line and called back through the switchboard so that our target's phone would give its distinctive "incoming outside call" ring. Partner #1 flawlessly convinced him that he worked for the drive subsystem company and then proceeded to tell him that all was well, his drive would be shipping soon, and that the only glitch was they'd discovered a minor incompatibility with just one application: Microsoft's Pascal compiler.I was watching the victim from across the room and his excitement when he first answered the call from his "vendor" turned to complete dead silence when the bomb was dropped. Then accomplice #1 went for the killshot, and told him that not to worry, THEY had a solution: Their own Pascal compiler which was 100% compatible with his new drive system and would only cost an extra $1K.The victim hurredly ended the call. Accomplice #2's desk was right next to his, and while the victim did his best to hush the whole thing up it was quite natural that his neighbor would have heard the whole thing so he hammered him until he admitted what was going on. Naturally a crowd had gathered at this point, and once he told us that his precious drive system wasn't compatible with his existing Pascal compiler I blurted out "Man, your money's GONE". Everyone else snickered and honestly we pretty much destroyed this guy... he knew he's overbuilt his position and then to have the air let out of his balloon so publicly bordered on cruelty. But it didn't actually cross the line, so we enjoyed every minute of it!To let him in on the ruse, we set the script for the call on his desk figuring that once he read that he'd know he'd been set up. Instead, he thanked his neighbor (accomplice #2) for the transcript of the call! He was so bamboozled that it didn't occur to him there was no way he could have known what was actually said on the other end of the call. Finally we explained the whole thing to him and after a sheepish moment of self reflection, he openly admitted he deserved it. He took it well and toned down his attitude from then on.#2: I was working at a super small startup, just a handful of men and women, in cheap rental office space. A couple of women had the ladies' room all to themselves, while all of us guys shared the one men's room (which was a single toilet+sink affair). The exhaust fan was deafening, such that when you were inside you couldn't hear anything and so you'd mentally drift off with your own thoughts.One of the technicians disappeared into the bathroom and settled in. The doors opened out, so we carefully and quietly removed the hinge pins from the door. We heard the toilet flush, the door handle rattled, and then the door simply fell forward from its top and crashed onto the floor in front of the bathroom. The guy was thunderstruck, frozen in time, as his brain tried to resolve what had just happened to him. Never mind that literally everyone on the other side of the door was laughing to the point of tears....#3: Same technician, same bathroom. He'd been in there a while, and someone pointed it out to the rest of us. He'd been in there plenty long enough to get "mentally complacent". So we all gathered around the door and on a signal, we all pounded our fists repeated on the door for a few seconds. It must have been like a string of firecrackers going off right next to his head. There was a moment of silence, then he shouted "Thanks, it helped!"#4: Another technician, at a different company, assigned to keep our PC's running. I resented this because I didn't like people tweaking my (then-DOS) systems. But he insisted he needed to swap out the power supply on my perfectly working tower. OK, if you insist....He left the tower in place under my work table, managed to get the cover off, and left the power on while he very slowly and very carefully reached toward the motherboard with DMM probes. He was being just a bittoocareful, if you know what I mean, indicating that he was a bit nervous about whatever he thought he was doing.He got one probe in place. Then, just as he touched the second probe to whatever point he was seeking - I clapped my hands once, as loudly as possible, and made a "BZZZZZZZZZT" sound.The effect was astounding. The entire table lifted off the ground as his head jerked up and whacked the bottom of it. He dropped both probes within the case (which thankfully didn't touch anything important). Then he collapsed into a heap on the floor under the table.I was on the floor with him, laughing so hard I could not stand up. He composed himself for a moment, and then admitted "OK, I had that coming".

author: aargee
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2020, 12:30:24 am
content: I did hear that at the last of the Gemini (small cars) on GM Holden production plant here in Aus some disgruntled line worker stood on and crushed a drink can so it formed a circular disk, then proceeded to enclose it in the welded door frame.When the car was delivered, they had all sorts of grief with the customer bringing the care back, every time you would stop or accelerate you would hear a "rrrr-clunk".They eventually replaced the door and cut open the old one to find what the problem was.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2020, 12:33:38 am
content: Quote from: aargee on August 10, 2020, 12:30:24 amThat's the third variant of that story in this thread.

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2020, 12:21:29 am
content: Imagine working with Dave- I'd pay someone to layout a fake brochure, and then send off an order for a print run of "Solar roadways monthly", and then have them delivered to work, "FAO Dave L. Jones"

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2020, 01:32:22 am
content: I remembered another one. Not at work, but still hilarious.We have a close friend who manages the local "county fair", complete with the usual carnival rides area. She gives us a one-day all-access pass to the rides and we chaperone a squadron of 4-5 high school kids who are selected as the fair's "Teen Ambassadors" each year. I've loved amusement rides my whole life and still do, so it's a great deal for everyone. The rides are portable, they break down onto 1-2 tractor-trailers, and get freshly assembled and set up at each fair they visit (county fairs last 1-2 weeks on average).The "carnies" who operate these rides range from super friendly to, um, not so much. We have to be polite to them no matter how they treat us, but it grates on you.One year I was feeling particularly snarky so I came prepared. We finally encountered a carnie that deserved some pushback, so after we got off the ride I scattered a few old, used-looking nuts, washers, and cotter pins around the base of the ride. All carefully selected to be sizes you might find on a ride like that. Then we went off a short distance and waited.The carnie loaded up the next wave of victims and got the ride going. Then he noticed the "spare parts" and absolutely freaked. You could tell he wasn't sure if he should slam the ride down, or slow it carefully, or what. The expressions panning across his face were priceless and very fast. Eventually he got the ride stopped and everyone unloaded. We walked away blue-faced from laughing. Probably the hardest those teenagers had ever laughed in their lives. I have no idea how long the ride was down while he inspected things. (I must repeat he was freaking out over extra parts, the ride and its passengers were perfectly safe the entire time.)Funny thing is, I just saw this trick, perhaps 20 years later, in the movie "Ford vs. Ferrari". I don't know if it actually happened at Le Mans or if it's just a well known gag, but it was beautiful to see art imitate life.

author: BurningTantalum
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2020, 05:26:44 am
content: In the late 80s I spent many months working in Shanghai. My mechanical colleague was called Johnny; he had a sun-tan, porn-star moustache, and a forest of chest hair setting off a gold medallion on a chain. For some reason that I could not determine the local workers did not like him at all, - I had worked in several countries with him and not had an issue before - behind his back they waved their little fingers downwards and called him 'shao ren' which is a fairly bad Chinese insult. I once caught one of them clowning an imitation of him in front of a crowd of hooting colleagues - he had a rice broom poking out of the top of his shirt and a cardboard porn-star moustache glued to his top lip.Johnny's pride and joy was, or had been, a watch that he bought on one of our trips to Hong Kong, but recently it had been driving him mad running fast, then slow, then stopping altogether. One evening he said that the next time it gave him grief he would toss it out. At work he always took it off and placed it on a machine casting where he could see it, so the next day I said to him that if he disappeared behind the machinery I would let the operatives see me bash it about to see what their reaction was. He duly wandered off and I picked the watch up with my little finger and dangled it about, much to the amusement of the grinning workers. I then dropped it on the floor and stamped on it; their smiles froze slightly and they looked a bit nervous. I picked up the watch and put it on the casting then proceeded to bash seven bells out of it with a hammer. The workers backed slowly away clearly thinking the this 'Long Nose' had gone insane, then bang on cue Johnny sauntered round from the rear of the machine. At this point I departed from the script somewhat and quickly thrust the hammer into the hands of the nearest worker. He squeaked like a kid's toy as Johnny glared at him as I pointed to the shattered watch and the cowering worker. Quick as a flash, and before I could stop him, he wrenched off his own watch and placing it on the debris-covered casting proceeded to smash it to bits with the hammer. Johnny looked at me and said "That went 'orribly wrong, didn't it?" and we both burst out laughing, eventually holding onto each other for support. The workers just stared in amazement. Johnny and I went to find a company driver to take us down Nanjing Lu to the nearest jeweller's shop where we bought a pair of the best watches we could see. We presented one to the hapless worker. We were sure that none of them knew why I had smashed up Johnny's watch, why he wasn't angry with me, and why I had tried to frame the poor worker for the crime. After we finished the work our company received a communication from the import export corporation thanking us both for our diligent and skilful work, but adding that the workers did not always understand our cruel sense of humour.BT

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2020, 06:00:15 am
content: I almost forgot about this one. Back around 2004 I worked in an office that had a pair of sinks in the restroom with those sensors that turn the water on when you put your hands under them. The evening before April 1st I stayed a little later than usual until most of the guys had left for the day and I got under the counter and swapped the solenoids between the two sinks so if you put your hands under the left sink the right one would turn on and vice versa. The next day someone sent out an email to the whole team commenting that someone had turned washing your hands in the men's room into an aerobic activity. That night I waited again and quietly switched them back, nobody ever accused me and to this day I've never told any of them it was me. I still snicker when I think about it.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2020, 06:05:14 am
content: Quote from: IDEngineer on August 12, 2020, 01:32:22 amHah!That's genius! I don't know whether I wish I had thought of that when I was a kid or am glad I didn't!