Funny Prank Ideas - Mess with Co-Workers

The image above is clearly a good example of a very good and elaborate office prank, although it is pretty cool, I'm not going to focus on these complex and time consuming pranks, instead I'll just let you know of those really quick ones that you can do when your co-worker goes to the bathroom but has the ingenuity to let the computer unlocked.

This one is a real basic prank, that you can pull to someone other than a computer expert, otherwise you will just look silly. Just go to the computer desktop, click the left button, than arrange icons by and finally unchecked the Show Desktop Items, and there you have it, as simple as that. What this option does (like the name suggests) is show/hide the desktop items, so now that you unchecked that anyone who uses the computer will not be able to see any desktop items, rest assured we are only hiding them, not really erasing any.

Since we are starting from the bottom, this is still a very basic prank, all it does is auto-hide the task-bar, and works well until the user sends the mouse to the bottom of the screen, and in that case the bar will go up again, still it is a good solid small prank. To make it work you have to left click on the taskbar, then you select properties, and then check the Auto-Hide task-bar; it is as easy as that, personally i wouldn't use this one just on it's own, but it is a good add-on prank to a bigger one.

This one is a lot more elaborate, and becomes very frustrating for the pranked, so how do we freeze the desktop ? Easy, just use a fake, and let the user think that he is seeing the desktop. To make this work you have take a screenshot of the user's desktop (press the print-screen key), then you go to your favourite image editing software (you can use paint also), and paste the copied content to a new image, save it and use it as the desktop wallpaper; now to make it work you have to do the first two pranks we talked about (Hide desktop items, and auto-hide task-bar), this way the user doesn't see any change (because we took the screenshot showing icons and task-bar) when in fact he is only seeing a background image. Now sit back and watch the pranked try to click on desktop items and use the task-bar, depending on the skill of the person in can take a lot of time to figure this one out, i have seen people reconnect mouses and even call the software manager to try and reinstall windows, so don't let the thing escalate too much.

Now I'm going to focus more on hardware pranks that are just as easy to do, first off we have the mouse induced failure. If you ever looked closely to your mouse you certainly saw a little hole in the backside that has a little sensor in it (optical or laser) or if you have an older model it has a removable ball, this sensor or ball is the only way the mouse knows he is moving, so if we can tamper with that we can disrupt it's movement. If you have the optical or laser you have to use something to cover the sensor, a sticker will work perfectly or even a stamp, just make sure you cover it, as for the ball mouse, even easier, just remove the ball, or if you want to keep the mouse with the same weight (the ball is heavy, and the pranked could notice it straight away) just put the sticker the same as you would with the optical and laser mice. Having done this we have just disabled any mouse movement, as the sensor / ball will not be able to detect any movement, since the sticker is not moving. Now watch the despair of the pranked trying to figure out what is wrong with the mouse.

This one for me is the hardest one to detect, even the master TI, will have trouble with this one and will take some time to get around it. All the other pranks we talked about have one thing in common, you have to see the screen to actually have any feedback, now what if we kill the screen ? All computer screen have brightness options, older models have analogic controllers, newer ones have an on-screen menu, so all you have to do is put the brightness all the way to 0, now you can only see a black screen, very similar to the one you get when the monitor is off. I know this sounds really simple, but trust me, this will be the last thing the pranked will check (if ever). What is even more disrupting is that all will be working, even the monitor led will show it is on, and this will cause panic to the pranked person.

Now that you have some insights on what to do, you can pick up all these pranks, and combine them in one big prank that will make anyone pull hairs for quite some time. Just keep in mind one thing, not everyone reacts lightly to pranks, so if this is the first prank you trying to pull to your co-worker or friend, try to know if he/she has the right attitude towards this kind of stuff.

Have fun using this, and in the end laugh with your pranked friends about it.