What funny tricks do you try on co workers

Posted by Extreme-Acid@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 328 comments

I told a guy at our place some years ago about how deduplication works. I said about how it only backs up the 1s because the zeros contain no data. A few people heard me saying this and backed me up because he didn't believe me. I am sure there are better stories than this around...

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328 Comments

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VarmintLP@reddit

Fetch me the wireless lan cable

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VarmintLP@reddit

Make sure your Network cable is straight. Curves make the data slow down otherwise it flies of the road.

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Jozzahole@reddit

Smashed screen background, hide task bar and desktop icons, remove keyboard and mouse, then enjoy the response. Last person smashed his computer because - it was already broken 😂

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SawtoothGlitch@reddit

I took a screenprint of his desktop, rotated it upside down, made it a wallpaper, hid all the desktop icons and the taskbar after moving it to the top.

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alter3d@reddit

Not really a "trick" but I hide easter eggs in random places. A few of them are really subtle and have remained undiscovered for years. One of our devs found one last year that had been there for 5+ years, and he's the first person to ever ask about it so I'm assuming he's the first to find it. I have an HTTP basic auth prompt that tells people to bring me a shrubbery (Monty Python quote, for you plebians) but modern browsers don't show it, so it's hidden in the HTTP headers. I have a DNS entry for each of our environments that resolves to "these\_are\_the\_droids\_you\_are\_looking\_for". I use it for testing/debugging DNS delegation but it's buried in our Terraform code if anyone ever dug into that section.

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TheFoxesMeow@reddit

I put one at my last work, for the public WiFi policy that you'd have to agree to. Right at the bottom "With great internet comes great responsibilities".

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

I put the konami code on our first website when the company opened... it opened a new browser window and played some silly tune in flash... I don't think anyone ever caught it though

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MrPatch@reddit

They probably didn't browse there with a nes controller so couldn't find start select

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

You'd use the keyboard arrow keys

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andytagonist@reddit

Select is only necessary if you wanted a second player. Otherwise, just start. 😉

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segagamer@reddit

I did something like this on our file server, a simple plain text file about goats and a goat farm. The funny thing is don't remember where I hid the file.

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TheFoxesMeow@reddit

I like to screenshot their desktop, put the picture as the background, and turn off desktop icons. That's a classic one.

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delightfulsorrow@reddit

> I said about how it only backs up the 1s because the zeros contain no data. You got that wrong: It only backs up the zeros because they don't take up much space on the backup media, and anything else is then known to be ones and doesn't need to be backed up!

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DonL314@reddit

We back up to /dev/null hosted on a server in Azure. Then we know our data is safe in the cloud ....

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metromsi@reddit

Yes, zero cloud and no need for payment plan either. Our tier covers zero cloud technology

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lpbale0@reddit

Dude, just run an echo daemon on a bunch of servers and bounce your data around amongst them for storage. Use infiniband and you will be storing at the speed of time

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Consistent_Chip_3281@reddit

Lol thats the black hole folder, im not a linux guy and curious what its story is. Can you explain like im 5 why this folder exists and how its used and specifically would data copied there still be visible on the hard drive using forensics tools?

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Gabelvampir@reddit

You don't even need Azure for this, there's already a service you can buy instead [https://devnull-as-a-service.com/](https://devnull-as-a-service.com/)

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Ha that is actually brilliant

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shetif@reddit

Well, if you back up only the 1s (ones), I bet it's make a whole backup with the rest of the data in /dev/null

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Ah yes genius!!!

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Brennon337@reddit

I know, that's almost as good as using the network as a storage medium by using all of the cabling in the building and just keep passing the data around it

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sir_sq@reddit

This. I do the same thing by daisy-chaining a few power strips. With ~30 power strips I greatly reduced my electrical bills

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amenat1997@reddit

lol I mean it probably would reduce your electric bills. Either go up in flames or pop breakers constantly... So I guess #winning Just joking around. I'm sure you’re joking around here, but I found that amusing.

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Revolutionary-Ad-336@reddit

Just plug a UPS into itself. Infinite power

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Brennon337@reddit

The electric company hates this one simple trick, but they can't stop you!

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OptimalCynic@reddit

You joke, but... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory

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lpbale0@reddit

I always preferred the Williams tube myself

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davejlong@reddit

Just daisy chain some hubs. Then your data will all be on the wire between them.

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arvidsem@reddit

If you use hubs then the data will be duplicated across all the wires, that says free redundancy to me!

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polypolyman@reddit

[It's been done...](https://github.com/yarrick/pingfs)

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Fear_The_Creeper@reddit

> using the network as a storage medium by using all of the cabling in the building and just keep passing the data around it This is actually a thing. [https://www.computerhistory.org/storageengine/edsac-computer-employs-delay-line-storage/](https://www.computerhistory.org/storageengine/edsac-computer-employs-delay-line-storage/)

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SoFrakinHappy@reddit

reminds me of https://youtu.be/JcJSW7Rprio

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Quiark@reddit

You know, one YouTuber actually implemented that. Search hard-er drive

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sli-bitch@reddit

excuse me Good human and fellow IT person, but we are hiring for a senior database data baser and it seems like you data... have some time for an employment pitch? 🥺.... we have an open office space with last gen game consoles right next to the CEO's office. if you're interested in turning your co-workers into your family we're the place for you😁😁😁😁😁😁

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mikkolukas@reddit

Too real 😂 (also, why am I reading it in an Indian voice?)

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madmaverickmatt@reddit

Ha! I didn't even realize it until you said that, but so was I in my head. I didn't even realize my inner monologue could have an accent.

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madmaverickmatt@reddit

Ha! I'm going to use that one day.

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zqpmx@reddit

But 1s are thinner than 0s!

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lpbale0@reddit

Yea, well, when time comes to back up your Q-bits you're going to have to figure out how to store them both, at the same time, and in the same location

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davidbrit2@reddit

It's even more efficient if you use the [ZZZMODEM protocol](https://textfiles.meulie.net/humor/COMPUTER/zzzmodem.txt) with its recursive ARCing.

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delightfulsorrow@reddit

And for security, you can encrypt your backup with [ROT26](http://rot26.org/), which is twice as secure as ROT13 and doesn't add any overhead!

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Inigomntoya@reddit

But a 1 is literally skinnier than a 0.

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Rough_Doughnut_5525@reddit

A 1 is literally just a compressed 0…

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Armando22nl@reddit

A zero takes more space than a one. We do it more efficient, we backup the ones

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Spectator9876@reddit

Dedup only backs up the 1s. Compression only backs up the zeros.

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badlybane@reddit

scotch tape under the mouse. inverting screens printscreen deskop and hide the desktop icons "REally for only those I hate" Run a script that makes the enter key read as something else. New keyboards won't fix the issue.

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

Do they have speakers? I have a random cat facts script... and a couple that try to play the star wars theme... I don't use them to annoy my coworkers, but I have used them to find the physical location of a machine before

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MattAdmin444@reddit

Oh I love this idea. Blare the imperial march (and presumably make it so user can't change volume) and track em down. Our school is turning more and more Google-fied so learning this wouldn't be useful but I may learn irregardless for any future positions.  Powershell I assume?

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

Yessir $song = {While ($true) { sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(349,350) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,150) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(349,350) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,150) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,1000) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(659,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(659,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(659,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(698,350) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,150) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(415,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(349,350) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,150) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,1000) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(880,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,350) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,150) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(880,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(830,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(784,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(740,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(698,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(740,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(455,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(622,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(587,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(554,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(466,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(349,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(415,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(349,375) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,375) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(659,1000) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(880,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,350) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,150) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(880,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(830,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(784,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(740,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(698,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(740,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(455,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(622,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(587,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(554,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(466,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(349,250) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(415,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(349,375) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(523,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,500) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(349,375) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(261,125) sleep -milliseconds 5 [console]::beep(440,1000) }} try { $null = start-job -name may4 -scriptblock $song " A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.... " [console]::ForegroundColor = "Yellow" " ________________. ___ .______ / | / \ | _ \ | (-----| |----`/ ^ \ | |_) | \ \ | | / /_\ \ | / .-----) | | | / _____ \ | |\ \-------. |________/ |__| /__/ \__\| _| `.________| ____ __ ____ ___ .______ ________. \ \ / \ / / / \ | _ \ / | \ \/ \/ / / ^ \ | |_) || (-----` \ / / /_\ \ | / \ \ \ /\ / / _____ \ | |\ \---) | \__/ \__/ /__/ \__\|__| `._______/ ------------------------------------------------" [console]::ForegroundColor = "Yellow" $stanza1 = " It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. ".ToCharArray() foreach ($char in $stanza1){ write-host $char -NoNewline -ForegroundColor yellow; sleep -Milliseconds 125} $stanza2 = " During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet. ".ToCharArray() foreach ($char in $stanza2){ write-host $char -NoNewline -ForegroundColor yellow; sleep -Milliseconds 125} $stanza3 = " Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy.... ".ToCharArray() foreach ($char in $stanza3){ write-host $char -NoNewline -ForegroundColor yellow; sleep -Milliseconds 125} } finally { stop-job -name may4 }

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DonL314@reddit

You forgot "If you can read this, you don't need glasses"

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BoredTechyGuy@reddit

Powershell remoting + windows text to speech = all kinds of fun mayhem.

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

I have not tried this one!

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Syde80@reddit

Swap mouse buttons is another good one. Especially when they come and ask you for help and you just click the opposite button and say it's working fine. I also like plug in a wireless mouse receiver and just randomly move the mouse around from a distance. You can even hide it in your pocket and move it when you walk by and they can see you so they don't suspect its you.

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refball_is_bestball@reddit

I've physically swapped f/g/h around on someone who didn't touch type and it was a rather amusing few hours.

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Syde80@reddit

I have taken this a step further before and alphabetized the entire keyboard

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Ha yes. I only kept my silliness to inside It dept but yeah those are good!

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badlybane@reddit

one time this mouse failed but in such a way that was deviously hard to tell. The mouse button would work but periodically it would fail in such a way the the left mouse button was constantly being held down. It was a generic dell mouse, we were a generic dell shop at the time. I'd swap it in cause it looked like every other mouse. Leave it for a few hours and then swap it back. So many tickets for non reproducable mouse problems.

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Love that. Save the most annoying issues for the most annoying people

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Silver-Ad7638@reddit

I have the opposite issues with generic Dell mice....seen this at least a dozen times where holding the left mouse button down would intermittently flicker, so forget click and drag....50% of the time they'd click and drag files into the wrong folder due to a mouse failure....

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Silver-Ad7638@reddit

Script to randomly choose a lock (scroll, num, caps, insert) to toggle, and randomize the time between toggles. Make it long enough that they think they're losing their marbles. I figure no less than 24 hours, and no more than a week.

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segagamer@reddit

Post-it/tape under the mouse is a classic. I've done that a few times haha

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Diskilla@reddit

inverting screens printscreen deskop and hide the desktop icons You could combine those. Printscreen of an inverted Desktop, then invert it, so it looks, like it is alright.

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RandofCarter@reddit

The most evil 1 that got me was a second Bluetooth dongle tucked into the back of the laptop dock. Every now and then I'd get garbage in put on the console and I couldn't work out what the hell it was coming from. I'd tried telnet,ssh, different encryption. It would happen a bunch of times 1 day then be fine for days. The worst 1 I did to anyone else was telling the new guy we needed to debug the email verifier regex (we didnt).

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OptimalCynic@reddit

When I was an undergrad in halls of residence, I wired up someone's door with a bunch of those poppers. They stumbled out in the morning with a massive hangover and the whole lot went off as they opened the door

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Fuse1on@reddit

>You got that wrong: It only backs up the zeros because they don't take up much space on the backup media, and anything else is then known to be ones and doesn't need to be backed up! Plug a usb dongle thats paired to a mouse and keyboard that you have on your desk and do subtle stuff

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

I have done this it is brilliant

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mjgood91@reddit

If you felt really awful, you could make the script generate a random value seeded from the hardware ID of the keyboard. Then you could "break" different keys depending on which keyboard was plugged in. Bonus points if you also code in a day randomizer as well, and a registry value that tracks keyboard hardware ID changes and pauses the script for a little while when a new one is detected. "I don't get it... Why do my new keyboards keep breaking after only two or three days?"

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mediaogre@reddit

Oh my god, that brings back memories. This one tech kept leaving his workstation unlocked when he went for a smoke. We changed his keyboard layout, inverted his screen, swapped EVERY Windows sound file with a goat bleating, enabled ALL the notifications and hid the Bluetooth speaker behind a bunch of shit at the back of a cabinet.

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Eagleshard2019@reddit

A tiny piece of scotch tape covering the pins on a fellow engineers ethernet cable. Couldn't work out after half an hour what the issue was, cut the cable in half and replaced it.

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TeacupSchnoodle@reddit

I taped a pic of Rick Astley to the bottom of my coworker's mouse.

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AcanthaceaeOk3321@reddit

We had an entry level tech who thought he knew everything, just one of those people who just got on everyone's nerves. Every time he left his pc unlocked and unattended I would load up the old but classic windows update prank site. Used to get all mad sitting there for up to an hour waiting for it to finish... Would close it as soon as he went to go for a coffee or something. I miss that guy, but for this reason only. https://fakeupdate.net/win10ue/

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infered5@reddit

I wasn't your guy specifically, but I was that guy. Sorry to all who interacted with me.

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segagamer@reddit

Oh mean, hahahaha

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madmaverickmatt@reddit

A couple of years ago, one of our engineers wanted to try out Windows 11. He asked me to install the new version of Windows on his computer. I found an emulator for Windows 95 that actually would run, and run in full screen. I set it running on his computer, maximized it, and left a post it telling him that the upgrade was done.

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madmaverickmatt@reddit

One time I took the trackball out of a trackball mouse, it was one of the Logitech ones from about 10 years ago. The one with the blue ball. Anyway, the guy whose mouse it was knew it was me that did it, we used to play pranks on one another all the time and he comes storming into the IT the office and pronounces "Where's my blue ball?" My boss looks over at me, gets up quietly and says " I don't want any part of this", and then just walks out of the office.

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laguna314@reddit

My favorite is when people set their desktop to family photos or pet photos etc. I make many copies of the photo, and change a minor detail of the photo with paint or photoshop; something small but noticeable like adding a mustache. Then I'll set the background to point to an album of all the copies of the picture. Have it change at like 3 minute intervals so that at some point throughout the day, their background will show the mustache for 3 minutes. Takes time for them to notice, and when they do by they time they can point it out to someone it's gone!

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madmaverickmatt@reddit

That's awesome!

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

That is genius

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matek11523@reddit

We did that to a coworker who was really into trains. We added minor details like pedo bear, dick constellation on sky etc. Took his two months to notice.

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runningntwrkgeek@reddit

Omg. That's awesome!

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madmaverickmatt@reddit

When I was much younger I worked at a school doing IT. We had a teacher who did not actually know anything about technology, but he was teaching a technology class (dont ask why for some reason IT studies fell under the history departments per view). Anyway, he would come and ask us questions that the children asked him, and he would convey the answers back. Our lead technician at the time was not exactly a people person, and was prone to sarcastic responses. One day the teacher comes in and asks us "where the internet is?" It's a valid question I suppose. Anyway, our lead technician without missing a beat points to the network closet and says "back there". Technically true I guess. The teacher promptly went back and told the students that the internet was in the IT guys closet lol. Mind you this was 20 years ago. I don't know when the IT Crowd episode came out with " the box", but it's basically that story only our own lol.

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capn_kwick@reddit

Call me old-fashioned but if someone starts doing pranks at work and I can identify who is doing it, their ability to login to anything stops. Yes, I **am** the sysadmin.

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Sajem@reddit

I must be old fashioned as well. Most of the shit these people are bragging about * affects productivity * may be seen as unauthorized use of a computer * may be seen as creating a hostile workplace * may be seen as harassment

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MagicianQuirky@reddit

I get it... obviously anything routine or frequent but not even the occasional switcheroo? Nothing light hearted? Buddy of mine - we had a workplace rule that nothing could be attached to the walls above the cubicle. He tied an inflatable unicorn to his standing monitor - the head of which sat majestically above the cubicle wall but not touching or attached. Just a little zest or pep in the day, a little laugh here and there.

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Sajem@reddit

I'm no longer in high school, I'm no longer in college or university. I'm 6-7 years from retirement, I get paid a decent salary with decent benefits. I'm a professional in a corporation. I behave like a professional in a corporation Yes, my colleagues and I joke around and give each other a bit of shit, but we have work to do, we admin for approx. 1000 staff over something like 60 sites, we have *work* that needs to be done and we don't need to spending time fixing some prank just so we can be productive for the day. If people want to get into pranks then either go back to college or go and get your rocks of with their friends in their own time.

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eta10mcleod@reddit

Damn you must be fun at parties...

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Sajem@reddit

Don't conflate personal time with working time. Parties are personal time you idiot.

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eta10mcleod@reddit

Thank you for calling me an idiot. Now I know what was wrong with me all my life and can finally die in peace.

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segagamer@reddit

I hope I don't end up as cold as you.

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Sajem@reddit

How does that make me cold?

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Tetha@reddit

Mh. We have loads of these. shell scripts riddled with lolcat, cowsay, figlet/toilet/boxes, snarky command line arguments and sarcasm. Having a rainbow cow telling you you need to pass `--yes-i-really-want-to-fucking-delete-all-of-this-data-in-db-foobar` so the script wipes the db makes me smile. That's harmless and simple fun, like a unicorn balloon. We have some of those as well, as well as various construction toys and a collection of blow-up swords and axes :) We've been joking: If we're ever forced into a dress code that forces suits, we're getting neon, rainbow coordinated, polka dotted suits. I might chalk my hair accordingly as well. But at the same time, we're the central and core operations team of a sizable SaaS platform. If the wrong DB stops working, a couple hundred customers and some 10^5 FTEs at those customers cannot work anymore. Maybe that's where the volunteers at emergency services in the team shine through, but fucking with the ability of team members to go from mellow boring afternoon into SLA-ticking, money-dropping crisis mode within minutes is a serious no-go in the team.

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SandyKittens@reddit

I use system messaging through powershell to make a pop-up on coworker screens that says "I'm a spooky computer ghost." Pretty tame but it makes me giggle

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Mental_Act4662@reddit

Not IT related. But when I worked in Fast Food. We could convince the new guys that every morning. They had to take a trash bag and go into the walk in and collect the air as it was bad. Another couple guys we told them to take a yard stick we had and measure the water in the toilets.

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Turbulent-Pea-8826@reddit

None. Not risking losing my job.

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Thorvindr@reddit

If you might get caught, you're doing it wrong.

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montyplexed@reddit

Annoy-a-tron hidden in a vent. They all went nuts trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. The older guys couldn't hear the tone, so they thought the others were drinking at lunch or high.

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Thorvindr@reddit

I miss ThinkGeek.

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Ill_Tempered_Techie@reddit

I've done various but one in more recent memory wasn't actually a co-worker. My son had asked me to install a game on his PC for him. We joke around and play pranks on each other quite a bit. After installing it, I replaced the shortcut with an almost identical one which pointed to a powershell script. When he pressed it, it made some message pop up on the screen whilst Rick Rolling him, before Launching the game. He laughs, but then complains, asking me to fix it. I tell him I've no idea what he's talking about and tell him to show me. What he didn't know is the last part of the script, changed the shortcut back, so he was unable to replicate it. What he also doesn't realise is there is a scheduled task that will change back again in about a month.

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GotThatGoodGood1@reddit

When we worked on the office there was a coworker who would change our background to a funny photo, always the same one, it was his calling card.

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SayNoToStim@reddit

Define "coworkers" I did IT work in the Army. I was attached to an armor btn for a bit. Everyone carried Common Access Cards, which obviously abbreviated to "CAC," and thus the CAC/cock jokes were pretty commonplace. PCs all had CAC readers as a form of 2FA. For shots and giggled we told the tankers that CAC readers were virtual access gateways.

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PickUpThatLitter@reddit

My favorite trick is making coworkers disappear by automating away their jobs…

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gaz2600@reddit

I keep automating my job but I just get more work

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CHEEZE_BAGS@reddit

the whole point is you dont tell anyone and pretend like its still taking you the same amount of time. all while you goof off.

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Happy_Kale888@reddit

By scrolling reddit...

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Spectator9876@reddit

I automate so I can get deeper in the comments

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winky9827@reddit

I see you're into penetration testing.

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rosscoehs@reddit

I see you're into penetration.

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ScarletPanda99@reddit

I see you’re in

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NoLoveInPorn@reddit

I see you’re

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zappchance@reddit

I see you

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_haha_oh_wow_@reddit

ICQ

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TechMonkey13@reddit

Be gentle please

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ScarletPanda99@reddit

- My home lab when it sees me taking Sec+ courses

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aes_gcm@reddit

The feeling of slipping inside a network is indescribable.

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johnyakuza0@reddit

Automate how? VBA? Power Automate? Like how?!?!?

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gaz2600@reddit

for me, powershell and 3rd party services

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johnyakuza0@reddit

Automate how? VBA? Power Automate? Like how?!?!?

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

I have worked at so many places that refuse automation as people will lose jobs. I left because of this silly attitude. I imagine those managers go home to their wives who spent all day beating clothes against a rock in a river, then swept the whole house with a broom and walked to the local store to collect locally grown produce.

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DaHick@reddit

So I am an actual Automation & Controls Engineer, I automate processes (and repair, rebuild, reprogram, you get the idea). I took a 4 year job at a compant that made the base for paints. So I was going to automate the delivery of the different liquid chemical through different controlled valves that feed through a volume delivery meter. Truly not a hard job, nor a bad idea (They where suffering from operators scrolling on the phone rather than paying attention to the delivered volume recipie). Get it all set up and ready, valves bought, aligned with the process engineer when, where and how we were to install them. Go present all this to one of the VP's. First meeting prior to build-out, got a hard no. Can't risk people think we are automating there jobs away, can't risk the human interaction element. These have to be automated & manual valves, and the have to be where the operators can observe. That f'd my (expensive) valve purchases, my (expensive) automated delivery meter upgrades, and the place where both Process and & I had agreed all that would be cheapest & quickest to install. The whole reason they wanted this done was improved reliability of product and less losses. And the operators would have -loved- to have more screen time rather than standing in a hot, sweaty, uninsulated, no-hvac controll room. Finished my programming, threw the solution over to process (as I had blown my budget at that point), washed my hands and walked away.

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Ah that must be so frustrating

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kevvie13@reddit

You didnt sell your design?

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DaHick@reddit

I sold my time, thats the way my said of the industry works. They do requirements - I build it to fit.

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mrpoops@reddit

I love when people tell me how impossible it’s going to be to automate their shit.

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zer04ll@reddit

You automate your managers job and then have a meeting with their manager about how you can save them money by getting rid of a manager and promoting you instead for a marginal increase in salary vs replacing said manager.

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S0ulWindow@reddit

But they play golf together and you get a good natured chuckle plus the undying enmity of your boss.

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zer04ll@reddit

yeah I mean you have to have hobbies or interest that match managers and c-suit its how you cross the line and yes being good at golf will get you promoted in so many business its not funny. We have an "ok engineer" (Structural Engineer so real engineers) that is only around because they are almost pro level at golf and every contractor wants to play with them.

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michaelpaoli@reddit

I keep trying to automate my job away, but they just keep giving more and bigger stuff to automate.

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MasterIntegrator@reddit

AHAHAHA same. "I dislike you in particular....you are now my project"

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xboxhobo@reddit

I automate a lot of shit but I haven't made anyone lose their job yet. Shit maybe I'm a fraud.

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Mental_Sky2226@reddit

Does it have to be the automation that made them lose their jobs? Because I’ve done both I just don’t think they were related

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Art_Vand_Throw001@reddit

My playa.

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unclesleepover@reddit

I’ve tricked quite a few people with the fake windows update websites. You just have to hit f11 to make it fullscreen and be creative with any secondary monitors.

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Jdgregson@reddit

I consistently go to work, don't mess with other people's things, interact with coworkers, and then go home. Using this trick I have convinced them that I am somewhat normal.

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WaldoOU812@reddit

We also had a habit of changing our IT assistant's background to "Unicorn Man" when he left his computer unlocked, just to teach him not to do that. Kinda tame, but don't google that at work, btw.

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WaldoOU812@reddit

Way back in the day, I worked with a really good friend at a 1,200-room downtown business hotel as a food & beverage admin asst. We didn't have much of a budget for IT (the owner was a fossil who hated computers), so my friend, the beverage manager, always had to borrow someone else's PC to do inventory, scheduling, email, etc. Since his office was five floors down from the nearest PC in the executive offices, this was especially obnoxious, so when the IT guy finally managed to get a recycled PC for his use, my friend was ecstatic. Since I helped the IT guy pretty regularly, he had me set up the PC for my friend and I spent about 15 minutes with him setting everything up, and since he told me he needed to get his scheduling done for the six different restaurants in the hotel, I left a floppy disk in the drive and showed him how to save his documents. I also told him to make sure to reboot his computer when he was done for the day, as this was an older PC that needed to keep system resources free. Anyway, he calls me up the next day (later than I expected) to say that he had rebooted his PC, but now he was getting this error message; "non system disk or disk error replace and strike any key when ready." I then ran him through five minutes or so of "troubleshooting," and finally told him, "I'm so sorry, Kris; it sounds like your computer has a virus." I then tell him that the IT guy had recycled this PC because it had been infected and that we \*thought\* it was cleaned off, but the disk was clearly wiped clean and we'd have to rebuild it. Kris was absolutely devastated, and tells me that he spent eight hours working on those schedules, as well as his inventory and some other things, and he can't believe it's all gone. At this point, I'm barely holding it together, but I manage my best, "I'm so sorry, Kris. I'll come down later and grab the PC so we can reformat it." We then end the call, and I lost it. After about ten minutes of laughing, I call him back, but he's not answering. I ended up going down to his office and then searching the hotel to find him, just so I can explain that the PC is just booting up off the floppy and failing, and all he needs to do is pull the floppy out and reboot. I was lucky he didn't punch me in the face, but then he had a great sense of humor and after the initial shock, he laughed his ass off about it, and actually related the story to a few other people.

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cfmdobbie@reddit

One of our secure doors used to wedge so the maglock didn't quite engage. I worked out how to spot this while walking up the corridor, and often gave a short three-note whistle as I approached. Told one of my coworkers we had installed a whistle activated door lock. He believed me for ages...

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cisco_bee@reddit

1. Take screenshot of desktop. 2. Set said screenshot as wallpaper. 3. Hide desktop icons. 4. Profit.

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_haha_oh_wow_@reddit

Create a smol dickbutt sticker, place over optical sensor on mouse of vacationing coworker.

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Quib-DankMemes@reddit

Got this from my boss, IT in hospitality so we have computers in areas guests have access to like around reception. People have a bad habit of walking away with their computer unlocked so I like to email their department group saying they're going out to buy doughnuts, what does everyone want?

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mystonedalt@reddit

I used to tell C-levels who "wanted hooked up" with "the faster internet" that I put their IP closer to the gateway.

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bojangles_dangles@reddit

Copy a "You've Been Hacked" video into their startup folder.

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urabusPenguin@reddit

Remotely setup a scheduled task on their laptop that's triggered by a successful VPN connection event. The task would then run a PowerShell script that used the SpeechSynthesizer Class to announce that the system was overheating & was going to explode, then begin counting down from 10 to 0. It would repeat zero three times and then say that this was a test of the emergency system.

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ballr4lyf@reddit

Not me, but a previous peer’s story. Peer had a coworker, let’s call him George, who had a problem leaving his desktop unlocked. Sat directly outside of the CTO’s office and his monitors were clearly visible. My peer’s prank was creating a scheduled task on George’s computer that would open Solitaire periodically throughout the day. So every time the CTO walked out of the office and saw George’s monitor he’d see an unattended computer with Solitaire open making it look like George was goofing off.

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rcook55@reddit

Uh, my 'george' just played Solitare until he was fired. Seriously. Guy in accounting decided he was done but wasn't going to quit so he literally played solitare on his computer in frond of God and everyone for over 3 months until HR felt they had an airtight case to fire him.

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Maleficent-Garage395@reddit

Plot twist: George was in fact goofing off, just not at his computer.

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rcook55@reddit

I've opened up wired keyboards before wireless were totally common and unplugged the cable internally, then put it all back together. Bought several hundred ping pong balls and rigged them up so that when they open a cabinet or, even better an overhead 'flipper', the balls fall out. Remotely operated fart noise makers so that when you open a file drawer it makes a fart noise in a different part of the cube.

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Steve_78_OH@reddit

This is somewhat different to what you're really asking for I think, but at one job, whenever someone would leave their computer unlocked I would go and set their wallpaper to something like My Little Pony.

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thepfy1@reddit

Take a screenshot of their desktop Set it to be their wallpaper put all the shortcuts into a folder. Watch them wonder why nothing happens when they click the icons.

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hellphish@reddit

I used to go a step further: rotate the screenshot 180 degrees, go to the display settings and rotate the monitor 180 degrees. Now they have a "normal" desktop but the mouse cursor is upside down and inverted.

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lovesredheads_@reddit

For extra points... move the task bar to the top and set it to disappear automatically. In desktop settings set the icons to invisible (better then moving into a folder)

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Fluffy_Rock1735@reddit

🤣🤣🤣I did this one to my supervisor while I was in the air force. He called me an asshole!

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runningntwrkgeek@reddit

I sent an email as a coworker to payroll saying they'd like to donate 3months of salary to a particular non profit. Payroll was in on it and responded about how nice they were. I've posted funny statuses on Facebook. I've done the desktop shortcut. Now I'm onto the idea of moving personal items when I walk into an office building that's unlocked and the door isn't monitored.

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PacketFiend@reddit

I would send an email to the whole company announcing their intent to bring homemade lasagna for lunch the next day. I actually got a few lasagnas out of that, and people started locking their workstations. I've only ever worked in smaller orgs though, this clearly wouldn't work for a megacorp.

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Steve_78_OH@reddit

Oh yeah, that reminds me. I also sent a few emails to our boss (from my coworker's email, obviously) professing their undying love.

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Hahaha yes this is precisely what I wanted. Back with windows 95 you could right click the start menu and select close then you just have a taskbar. A few times setting brightness and contrast to zero and wait and watch, that was one of my favourites.

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Fear_The_Creeper@reddit

One of my coworkers was doing something on his PC that required him to come back after an hour or two an hit the "N" key. I swapped his N and M keys. He would walk into his office, hit the wrong key while standing up, go "huh!", sit down, and touch type the correct key. Every couple of hours. For three days. Finally he noticed that everyone in the office went quiet whenever he walked up to his PC and the jig was up. Another fun trick: come in early or stay late put a small post it note on the bottom of every mouse in the department. I included smily faces.

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Texkonc@reddit

Leave computer open: email to it teams that lunch is on them

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FrknTerfd@reddit

I rigged up an airhorn under our shared desk that was triggered by the phone rigging. I'm told it worked as intended.

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19610taw3@reddit

Isn't that how compression works :D

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punklinux@reddit

Years ago I worked in an office where there was one poor DBA who the team was essentially bullying. They used to mess with him by disconnecting LAN cables and USB peripherals \*just enough\* so that it looked connected, but really wasn't. They also kept stealing his chair, swapped the M and N keys on his keyboard, and other shit like that. I didn't do these things, but I thought they were hilarious. While they were "harmless" pranks, he was the only target, and eventually, HR got involved with a slap on the wrist towards our team. I have never felt good about pranking since then.

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Newbosterone@reddit

Phone phone: When the CEO was traveling, one of the desktop support guys would go in his office and make calls from his desk. Coworkers or the Help desk would see “VIP - CEO” on the caller ID. He’d ask for status on a non existent project, ticket, or tell the person he’d heard they were doing a great job. The CEO’s admin figured out what he was doing and had the CEO call him and razz him. He thought it was a coworker getting him back until he got a meeting invite from the CEO “to discuss phone etiquette”. Spent the day thinking he was going to be fired, only to be told “that was funny, but knock it off”. The phone admin created a test extension. You dialed it, hung up, and 30 seconds later your phone would ring. We found the number and made prank calls. Ring Ring “Hi boss! No, Jim’s not at his desk”. Jim looks over the cubicle. “I saw him heading for the bathroom with a girlie magazine. He’s been in there a while. Probably rubbing one out”. Jim looks panicked. “Yeah I’ll tell him”. Looks at Jim “Boss says not at work, Jim”.

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shoesli_@reddit

At my last job I wrote a script in our RMM system that toggled caps-lock with random intervals. It could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours between toggles. I ran it on one of the owners computers. He cursed for a couple of days until he finally replaced the keyboard. Of course I stopped the script to make him think it fixed the problem. After a couple of days I activated it once again, and he ended up smashing his keyboard to bits (as a joke) We had a good laugh when I told him about it

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I_COULD_say@reddit

Coworker uses speakers for teams. His Alexa can hear me. His house is somewhat automated. You can probably guess where this is going.

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Newbosterone@reddit

I worked for a woman named Sara. Siri interrupted her meetings more than once.

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artekau@reddit

We flip the windows desktop upside down if they leave their PC/Laptop unlocked while they go somewhere.

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codename_1@reddit

when i was in hs you could hit ctrl+alt+arrow key to flip the desktop. best part, it worked on the login screen. a bunch of kids got in trouble because it must have been them because they where the last user logged in.

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segagamer@reddit

It's an Intel Display control panel keyboard shortcut. I disabled that shortcut on all the PC's we deployed lol

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

That is part of the cyber essentials toolkit I think.

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SpeedsterGuy@reddit

I have a jar of pennies. I will pick a random co worker and hide 60 pennies in their work space. I'll hear pennies dropping for sometimes a whole month. It's the best. The Copper Caper, The Penny Pirate, etc.

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MurderManTX@reddit

None. I'm trying to work. Pull some shit on me and waste my valuable time and it's over man. In IT, I gotta keep everything working or the business falls apart.

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ClumsyAdmin@reddit

* The infinitely ejecting CD drive script, absolute classic * Using xeyes to throw a giant eyeball on a coworkers monitor while they're in the middle of samething, same with cairo but for other images

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ovdeathiam@reddit

I've used windows speech synthesizer to speak to a user while he was afk and working from home. The voice said quietly "I know what you did".

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debunked421@reddit

None...being in IT has crushed my soul. My favorite though was. GPO the put up a windows background of like e bazillion icons snd removing the start button making it insanely difficult to do anything. We did this to one of the guys in our engineering room and out of dead silence you could here this guy yell. "You mother F*@kers". It prob wasn't that funny but the way he said it so loud when there wasn't another noise cracks me up to this day when I think about it. Now that I'm experience just the common problems that frustrate users is joke enough on them and humor to me. Kinda funny to see someone who doesn't understand tech get super anxiety when their endpoint takes a poo.

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shaggy7705@reddit

Random desktop p*rn pics if you didn’t lock your screen. Screen inversion Fake blue screen Lock Screen background.

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GoogleDrummer@reddit

Years ago it was me and a desktop admin/helpdesk guy at a client. We typically had headphones on all day for reasons I'm not going to go into. On April 1st I used PowerShell to remotely send voice commands to his machine. He typically used YouTube for music so he thought it was just YT messing with him, until I made the voice prompts more aggressive and specific to him. He eventually turned around to say something about it and I was bright red from holding in laughter; he figured out what was going on pretty quick after that.

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TKInstinct@reddit

Show them what they've been doing on the internet all day and see how nervous they get.

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asedlfkh20h38fhl2k3f@reddit

One time I stuffed a little paper into the laser hole, then put a sticky note over that, then unplugged the mouse. Coworker friend comes back to his desk, mouse doesn't work, sees and removes sticky note "haha very funny", still doesn't work, sees the cable is unplugged and plugs back in, still doesn't work. flips mouse over again and sees the little debri of paper lodged into the laser hole. Mission accomplished.

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knoaha@reddit

Le fameux alt f4

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tHeiR1sH@reddit

Dvorak keyboards on April 1st. Tell them they’re part of a pilot group.

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aes_gcm@reddit

I typed on Colemak for a few years until it was too much of a struggle to make it work through Citrix.

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AnonEMoussie@reddit

There used to be a way to use imagemagick and a squid proxy server to invert pages, and text on web pages. We would set it up so the newest help desk tech would resolve to it. And then tell them that they probably plugged their monitor cables in backwards.

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illforgetsoonenough@reddit

It was called upsidedownternet

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aes_gcm@reddit

Another thing ruined by HTTPS.

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antiduh@reddit

Back in college we'd use procmail to pipe your email through jive.

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DifferentSpecific@reddit

Had a fellow admin who claimed he could not be stumped. Dared me to try to find a way to do something he couldn't diagnose/fix. Started by using a tiny amount of Scotch tape on 1 of his network pins. Had link lights but couldn't log in. He thought it was a bad cable and swapped it. Then I told him what I had done. He thought he beat me but.... I went into login properties in Active Directory and took 15 minutes randomly out of each hour that he could log in. So it was never at the same time on the hour. He would be working away, then suddenly everything network related stopped. After about a week of this he finally gave up and asked me what I had done.

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Footmana5@reddit

Oh why would anyone do that, thats asking for war lol

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Ha that is lovely. Sounds like fun all round

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Mister_Brevity@reddit

I don’t know if training users that they can’t trust their IT staff is a winning move

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Footmana5@reddit

We like to laugh once in a while at my job.

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runningntwrkgeek@reddit

It helps if you have a good relationship and can joke around.

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Other IT guys

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VarmintLP@reddit

Not mine but some people in germany or luxembourg like to prank / trick the newbies but to also teach them not to beleave everything immediately and be less naive. How? Well, they ask their disciples to fetch them a box of "blaues auge" / black eyes. - This should teach them to ask what those are if they don't know. Also normally the guy in the storage will be nice enough to not punch them. Well nowadays it's also for legal reasons. Or can you go pick up a box at the store across town? When the guy leaves the guy calles the store and asks the guy to put a few heavy things or bricks in a box and hand it to the guy. Then the guy carries it back. - This should teach them to think if they need something to transport the box. Like a car or a pully wagon. Or it fails and they just hate their boss for a while

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thevacancy@reddit

Screenshot the desktop, then hide taskbar and all shortcuts.

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Frothyleet@reddit

Sometimes when people ask me certain types of questions, I tell them that Greg probably knows the answer (this works best if you don't have a Greg in your org). Yeah man, just go to teams him. First initial, last name -Oogle.

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CoffeePizzaSushiDick@reddit

Sheep.ex

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systemjargon@reddit

Many years back in that role, but ranging from HP Voice over, some crap wallpapers but steam wallpaper studio evolved so you can animate jump scares, ip phone ring tones and barbie girl as the tone or the blue song etc. Scripts that used to open on login to play the window sound of Rick roll, or open all c windows subfolders at once, vbs reloop pop ups of "your system doesn't recognize your mouse" and watch them try many different mice or unplugging, big screens on wall playing bella ciao theme or nyan cat 100000 hours, MDM phone wallpaper of shiny egg plants, redirecting Facebook at midday hours to a FBI takedown notice (mega upload era). The above was on good jest Co workers who could take a joke. Previously in the 90s net msg or net send * was the fad. The worst I've seen go wrong was a keyboard shortcut go wrong and raise bollards on a car via the security desk PC. Car lost its exhaust, cats and mid pipe and needed to be towed away.

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Der_Orwischer@reddit

For everybody searching for a current version of net send \*: If you've got the Powershell extensions for Active Directory installed you can use the following script: Import-Module ActiveDirectory $ADComps = Get-ADComputer -filter 'name -like "*"' $msgstring = "Never gonna give you up" $time = 300 $hostlist = $ADComps.DnsHostname foreach ($comp in $hostlist){ echo "Messaging $comp" msg * /time:$time /server:$comp $msgString }

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shammahllamma@reddit

Net send in batch file in an infinite loop was hilariously evil

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Wow. Net send! Yesssss I have plugged a wireless mouse in to this annoying guys machine and just gave it a tiny wiggle when he is in excel. Such a pleasure watching him go mad.

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endfm@reddit

>Net send got kicked out of tafe for sending the msg to every single computer in the early 90's.  i turned around and a mate put a \*  thanks!

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sznyoky@reddit

A few years ago the team I was working in had a script to initiate the tunnels we needed to reach network resources. At one of the chances I had, I added a shutdown -r now to the script. He was busy for a while but quickly learnt to lock his laptop when away

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Commissar_Matt@reddit

This was slightly malicious, but a few years ago, on night shift, some colleagues decided to disable the nic via powershell on another colleagues pc at a remote site. He promptly broke a patch panel trying to fix his issue, not realising what had happened before giving up and switching to another device.

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SolaceinSydney@reddit

USB->bluetooth dongle (the tiny little ones that barely stuck out of the usb port) plugged into the back of a computer, paired to a mouse and/or keyboard. Wait till the target starts to work, and start playing with the mouse and keyboard. Type ominous messages like “you are the chosen one” Stop when it support comes by to look at said target

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Newbosterone@reddit

Late-nineties: spare wireless mouse plugged into a coworker’s machine. Listen for the typing to stop, then slo-o-ooowly drag the cursor down the screen. After the third or fourth time, he calls everyone over to watch. Offer helpful hints- “you’ve got mouse gravity set too high!”, “try changing the battery”, “did you turn it off and on again?”

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stonerflea@reddit

I swapped my colleagues mouse buttons around because he would never lock his screen when away from his desk. I had to go see the boss on bullying in the workplace charges. Only did it because we were both dealing with a customer who had his mouse the other way around THE SAME DAY and the guy still couldn't work out what was wrong.

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wowmuchdoggo@reddit

Yesterday a dev called to fix something in azure for d365 and Had some powers hell he got off stack overflow. It was only adding a reply-url to a page but as it was running convinced him it was deleting the production DB lmao.

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Newbosterone@reddit

Powers hell is the best typo today.

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borekk@reddit

I used to tell the receptionist I was testing new video phones (before iPhones were a thing) and would describe what she’s wearing to help me “color correct” the picture quality. In reality, I was just standing at the other end of the hallway on a cordless. She thought I was funny and introduced me to her daughter one day and now we’ve been married for almost 20 years.

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LadderOfChaos@reddit

Funniest thing i heard recently was some coworker who asked if she can download some hard disk space like she downloaded RAM previously.

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davidgrayPhotography@reddit

I remind them that they're at work. I guess that's a bit TOO cruel though.

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radioactivpenguin@reddit

You have to make sure the 1s aren't too pointy and puncture the 0s causing a network clog. Switches are put at the top of racks so gravity helps the 1s and 0s get to the servers faster.

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Ganthet72@reddit

Long ago, when I was a Support Tech I didn't feel like replacing a user's heavy CRT monitor right before my shift ended. I told her image problems were an "electron surge" and they should clear up by morning. If not, I'd replace it tomorrow. She bought it and I replaced the monitor the next day. Also, one April fools day I put a sign on the copiers that they were now "voice-activated". I was fun listening to people telling the copier "make two copies" all day.

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maevian@reddit

These days I just tell the user that I was almost going home and that I will replace it tomorrow morning.

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Newbosterone@reddit

Make a couple of copies with a paper clip on the glass. Put the sheets back in the paper tray. Watch people go nuts trying to get the paper clip out of the copier. HP printers used to have an escape sequence that set the LCD message. I used to set the printer to say “FEED ME CHEESE” or “INSERT QUARTER”.

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Shazam1269@reddit

Some nitwit recycled a bunch of paper that had a page number at the bottom, and I ended up trying to figure out why tf Word was printing page numbers when there weren't any. That was fun. It was my nitwit boss (think Jen from the IT Crowd) who was always printing crap by accident or forgetting that she printed anything at all.

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

>Make a couple of copies with a paper clip on the glass. Put the sheets back in the paper tray. Watch people go nuts trying to get the paper clip out of the copier. Devious, I'm going to do this one day...very soon

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linoleumknife@reddit

I think even more devious would be to put the sheets of paper with the paperclip back in the stack randomly. So someone makes 10 copies and only 1 has the paperclip. I'm pretty certain I would go insane tying to figure that out if it happened to me.

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

So shall it be done!

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Ganthet72@reddit

That paperclip trick it beautiful!!!

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marklein@reddit

Draw dickbutt on the glass with dry erase marker.

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Robert_Vagene@reddit

Managed to do the "voice activated" MFDs as well. The thing that really sold it was a brand new office, with brand new hardware. 1200 people rocked in on Monday to these new MFDs. Got the mail room girls on on the gag, but everyone else was not. Hilarious for a few days

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Haaaa I have seen the voice activated one before. That will never get old. There was this girl who said she thinks she needs glasses. Her monitor was very unhappy. I changed it for her when she was on lunch and she was amazed.

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professionalcynic909@reddit

[Hacker.leisink.net](http://Hacker.leisink.net) when they leave their screen unlocked. Hilarious with non tech-savvy collegues.

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pppjurac@reddit

Put a thin piece of tranluscent PVC plastic into monitor port then plug monitor back in computer. Something similliar was what our Electrician Head did to final year electronic trainees: put a small piece of insulation into connector , then plugged connector back in and in three different places on old CNC . Those poor SOB spend entire eight hours trying to troubleshoot it. Yes, our Head Electrician was a prankster but a bit of asshole too.

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Planar7@reddit

I've had an annoyatron (cricket noise currently) in a coworkers office for TWO years now...she can't figure it out. The best part...she has moved offices within the building three times since I did it and I have moved it each time and she is no idea what it is!!! I about lost it when I saw her contact Office Admin and had the bug spray people come out early! lol! I'm not sure how much longer I can go without saying something...

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catwiesel@reddit

I wish I had time to eff around like that...

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EncomCEO@reddit

Best thing I ever did was install BackOrifice from Cult of the Dead Cow on a coworkers machine 20 years ago. I’d randomly open the CD tray remotely and knock shit over on his desk, then generate Windows error messages apologizing for the mess.

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Testnewbie@reddit

We had the classic things like don´t bend network cable too much or else the bits will fly out on a hard turn and we have data loss. Or you can´t pull that cable up 90°, it´s too steep and our connection doesn´t have enough power to push the bits up. So if you really want to get up there with the cable, we better limit the data throughput, so the bits don´t fall back down and build up a 'bit clot' that will completely block any data transfer and we have to replace the cable. The latest invention was, "Don´t stay between the access point and the machine, there is heavy data transfer ongoing and free flying data might hurt you. I am not sure if I should laugh or cry because we had just one single girl who called us out on bullshit. All the other youngsters actually believed us and tried to tell her not to question us. Well, turned out, she was not just right, she actually had the spine to call us out. So extra points for her not being a 'YesGirl'. :) Do you actually label it like that?

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johor@reddit

When I got into the office this morning someone had pulled the power cable out of my machine. I love my team.

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EEU884@reddit

We have done plenty over the years. If they leave their workstation open do a screenshot and save it as background, hide icons and watch them reboot their PC multiple times and check the mouse because they think the machine is unresponsive. Tape over the bottom of the optical mouse. secondary mouse plugged into the back of their machine to mess with them. Throttle the MAC of their device on an AP so they have internet connection but nothing loads.

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legolover2024@reddit

Fish under the floor

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DarrenRainey@reddit

Screen melter is a classic, set up a script to randomly trigger it or if they have x program open for too long.  Plug in a wireless mouse and bump it at random or a keyboard and press a random letter every so often.  Change their home page to some jump scare

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TPOf8RC@reddit

That's like the old Dilbert where Wally tells the boss he can save disk space by using smaller fonts.

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AntranigV@reddit

Listen to SSH connections using DTrace and randomly cutting them off using tcpdrop(1) 😂

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ChatGPTbeta@reddit

My first job in IT was a small Computer repair shop. I was 17 I think. There was an alpha male technician there that got angry very quickly at every badly behaved computer that a customer brought in. So I downloaded a picture of a BSOD and then found an application to created a screensaver from it, and then set it on his office PC. I never told him and he never quite understood why the BSOD vanished when he moved his mouse. Hope he still has sleepless nights over it

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iama_bad_person@reddit

We have a mandate against pranking co-workers now. Back when I was HD (10 years ago) one of my co-workers had a random music audio file play randomly during the day because I left my computer open. It played when I was on the soft-phone with the CEO, and I had to hang up on him and call him back after restarting. GM of IT was not happy.

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sorderon@reddit

The legendary 'blue screen of death screensaver' always creates panic, as does screenshot the targets desktop, then moving all the icons somewhere else, then placing screenshot as the desktop background.

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Plenty-Wonder6092@reddit

Setup a script so when you press spacebar it types spacebar. :)

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Boolog@reddit

My team leader once pissed me off so much that I put a script that whenever he would try to open Chrome, IE would open instead. Don't fuck around Domain Admins 😉

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Haaaaa

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nefarious_bumpps@reddit

As an April's fool joke I once painstakingly switched all the keycaps on a keyboard and swapped it onto my boss's PC. At another job I ran a ducky script on a coworker's PC to remap all the keys. Have also changed the keyboard to Russian Cyrillic. Installed the Sysinternal's BSOD screensaver on colleagues PC's numerous times, and had it pulled once on me before I knew about it (I spent 4 days trying to "fix" my PC before I noticed the Sysinternals Easter Egg). At one job it was common practice to sit down at someone's system when they walked away without locking it and send email to the entire department inviting people to free drinks after work. I once spent half an hour at a server's physical console just slightly nudging the mouse every time a coworker tried to click something via a PCAnywhere session, before he gave up and came down to the datacenter to "replace" the bad mouse.

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ryotwarloutret48@reddit

Haha, that is brilliant! Reminds me of the time I convinced my co-worker to reboot their computer by telling them it had a virus and was controlling their caffeine intake ?? Can't wait to try this deduplication trick on my team!

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Keep us updated

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patjuh112@reddit

Physically swap f and g key

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

That is cool. They will email you telling you to fo guck yourself

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thebeckyblue@reddit

fo guck yourselg

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Haaa yes sorry

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

>fo guck yourselg ftfy... erm i mean gtgu lol

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patjuh112@reddit

Your comment just landed 😂😂😂

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patjuh112@reddit

Did it three times starting 27 years ago and nobody actually figured it out till explained, was just really hilarious

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AugustusShneefer1@reddit

When I still went into the office I would leave post it’s on my monitor that said like “P@ssword123” on my monitor and wait for someone to get mad about it

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

The messing around is the only thing I miss about working in an office with people. But I think that is what held me back.

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JackalopeJumpRope@reddit

We had a game where you'd poke a coworker in the side while they were speaking on the phone "well you might need toOOOUUUUAAHHHH check". It's a hilarious game until it happens to you.

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

I love this

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Unblued@reddit

I had a user discover the puzzle game feature in VLC, so he turned it on before going home for the day and I got a confused call from the guy on the next shift. I had a coworker who was looking around the settings menus of a Cisco VOIP and found a ringtone that just plays a woman's voice asking *are you there?* on a loop. He would occasionally mess with new people by changing it when they weren't looking and calling their extension to make them think they had unknowingly had someone on the phone.

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OniNoDojo@reddit

Old school, but we had a guy on staff who was SUPER arrogant so we messed with him a lot. One that stumped him for weeks was we changed his host file so all Google domains went to ratemypoo.com

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

That must be so fun, annoying that guy who annoys everyone else

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Moral_Abatement@reddit

I had a coworker (a sales guy) that was playing solatare with the volume cranked up all the time. I wrote a batch file to close it then scheduled it to run every 10 minutes +/-3 minutes to avoid a pattern. I would be sitting there hearing flip, flip, flip, bling repeatedly then he would say Dang it! It did it again! He was fired 2 months later we found out he was starting a competing business.

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H00ston@reddit

create a batch file that enters random gibberish code that does nothing into CMD before closing itself and change it's name/icon to look like their browser shortcut

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Midnite135@reddit

Remote registry to switch the mouse buttons left and right click from a remote machine. Schedule task to flip it back and forth every few hours for 5 min or so. Works wonders because the issue isn’t on the machine itself where they will be looking and doesn’t give them a long enough window to troubleshoot. Group policy to give them a longer password requirement. More password history retention, less time before expiry. Just enough that they may not notice for awhile. My coworkers and I play dirty.

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MethanyJones@reddit

Back in the day when token ring was a shielded twisted pair a bit slimmer then a garden hose and had this wall connector... https://preview.redd.it/8tczghngznlc1.jpeg?width=1729&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24cd252de719be624ee3568915f3c92fd0d1d4bb (Picture depicts a shielded twisted pair to RJ45 adapter. The original cable would've had a similar connector. Anyway I'd tell the new guy that the token sometimes gets stuck and you have to disconnect from the wall and blow it out with canned air. Or if I hadn't used the canned air story and the user was away I'd ask them if they disconnected the PC from the wall. Then I'd suggest that maybe the token fell out. "It's a little blue thing, look on the floor."

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bs0nlyhere@reddit

Not me but one of my users actually… they’re a master at photoshop outside of work. This department has about 40 people and the type of work they do leads them to be very close so they hang out a ton off the clock. This has led to some incredibly hilarious (and nearly inappropriate) screen saver gimmicks.

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shammahllamma@reddit

I was working on some test Lua code on freeswitch, to call and connect two numbers via an enterprise sip trunk that allowed pushing any caller ID, while listening to a coworker in a shared space complain about tax time and IRS woes to another coworker. Rang his desk phone as “IRS Investigator” and listened to a string of expletives as he asked loudly how the hell they got his work number.

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homepup@reddit

Had a user who kept bending network cables so to get him to be more careful I overheard a coworker telling him the reason for not bending them was because the 0s were slippery and could make the turn in the kinked cable but the 1s were stiff and couldn’t make the turn. It surprisingly worked and he made sure not to bend the cables anymore.

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bolunez@reddit

This guy named Jerry used to always steal my parking spot. So one day after with I hid behind his car and when he went to get in, I pranked him to death with a tire iron. You shoulda seen the look on his face.

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mediaogre@reddit

My network admin friend and I were doing some asset decom. Out of a small pile of Cisco 1700 routers, we took one, opened it up, tucked a Palm Treo in it with some music playing softly, put the case back on, buried it in the pile and called for one of the level 1 techs to come help. We just went about our “work.” When he narrowed down the general area (it was very low music) zeroed in on the pile and dug out the possessed router, his eyes got so wide. My friend and I acted all freaked out and panicked and said it could “only be the Russians with a dormant self-powered firmware hack.” We had him going for way too long. We were truly awful.

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thegreatcerebral@reddit

Coworkers or ppl in general: When I worked at CompUSA our paying extension was like 801 or something like that but the extensions were in the same 8xxx scheme. So when a call would come in and we would put it on hold for someone from the sales floor we would call over the paging system “person x you have a call holding on xxxx”. They would then walk to a phone and call the extension to grab the call. So it was common while it was busy to call over the intercom “person x you have a call on eight, zero, one, five” making sure to say it smooth as if it were and extension. Well if you were lucky the entire place was treated to that person picking up the line and dialog the intercom and you would get “hello” followed by something 😂😂😂 Random people I have 3: 1) I convinced a group of people that you had to work for the airline industry or TSA to be able to open an account at Pilot’s Bank. 2) I convinced a few people that the speed limit signs with the border were suggested speeds only as they were the same as the yellow ones that you see near curves and corners that those were yellow to indicate a curve/corner was coming up. The ones without the borders are the ones that are the real max speeds. These were adults that I got with that one. 3) I convinced a group of people that 5/3 Bank was really a hidden meaning and was named after the 3/5 compromise. Those not in the US, the 3/5 compromise was from the early days of the country and there was an argument as to how slaves were to be counted for purposes of population(for purposes of government representation) and taxation. The compromise was that every 5 slaves would count as 3 people. To this day I still think this was my favorite one that I came up with.

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Inigomntoya@reddit

Find an unlocked computer. Email their group and the entire IT department asking for donut requests

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182th@reddit

Used to do this until a policy came out prohibiting using someone else’s email. Resignation email to the CEO might have been the straw that broke the back on that one. ha!

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lovesredheads_@reddit

Back in the BNC network days with T connetors i broke off the pin in the T of a coworker. The ring still worked so it was only his device that stopped working. He went and changed out the network card. No dice He reinstalled NT 4 from floppy of course. Still no dice. He was getting a coworkers pc to try it I switched the T for a working one He took the working pc back to the coworker I switched the T again. He tryed fiddeling with all kind of settings. No dice while he was getting a coffe. I switched T again. He went nuts He to this day does not know while it did not work

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cowprince@reddit

Sit/stand desk after hours raised to the maximum. Then save each of the 4 settings down only .1, except the last one, that one is as low as it goes. Additionally if you didn't lock your computer before leaving your desk, you learn quick not to do that here. Any number of things occur. My favorite is hiding everything and putting a blue screen background on their desktop.

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Eagleshard2019@reddit

Downloaded Imperial March and copied it to my coworkers C:\temp directory, set a scheduled task to run a script that played it as system whenever she logged in.

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ExpressDevelopment41@reddit

When I was on the helpdesk side, we used to call our new level 1s from one of the break rooms. HD1 - "You've reached Gopher on the help desk, how may I assist you?" Me - "This is Dr. Spencer, I'm having some issues in the third floor break room. What's the code to use the microwave?" HD1 - "The code, sir?" Me - "The code. It's asking me to input a code. I need it to heat up my lunch. Can you help me?" HD1 - "Can you try pressing 6-0-start?" Me - "Oh hey, that worked. How long will it take to preheat?"

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that_one_guy_v2@reddit

alias ls='sl'

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doglar_666@reddit

The best trick I've found is to document everything, so when someone asks me for help, I tell them to go RTFM.

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skiitifyoucan@reddit

Trick link to goat se when speakers are on.

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

I didn't think the orginal goats had audio... discharges on the other hand oohhahhhdhh that was pretty disturbing...

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skiitifyoucan@reddit

Haha It said “hey everybody!! I’m looking at gay porno!!!” or something like this. Why we had speakers on our work computers I don’t know but it was the early 2000s haha.

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

I remember when it hit... that, tubgirl, hai2u... lemonparty... all the og stuff... and more... oh god steak and cheese... 2 girls one cup... I could go on but to be safe i'll stop there... btw discharges had had the video of the goat \*shiver\*

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rayskicksnthings@reddit

When we were in the office I’d unplug someone’s keyboard and watch for 10 minutes 😭

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vc3ozNzmL7upbSVZ@reddit

none, i think pranks are stupid

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aferrelli@reddit

Had a guy who always asked for help when he had to troubleshoot something. Was exhausting. One day set a firewall rule that blocked DNS for 2 min then back on for 5 and kept repeating. Then we took bets on how long till he asked someone for help. Lasted about 9 minutes before we started getting the panicked texts. Let it go for about an hour then dropped hints till he figured it out. I know it's kinda mean but he did learn that day to not be afraid of the firewalls.

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therewulf@reddit

Small construction company with a controller who handled IT, but she really knew nothing about IT. And this was before I started. One PM took another’s keyboard and moved all the buttons on his number row left one. So instead of the ~ key being first, the 1 was first. He couldn’t figure out what was going on and had to get a quote out, so he called the controller. The prankster did NOT want the controller to find out it was a joke so he came clean to the other PM and told him to say a reboot should fix it, but it still makes me laugh seeing this older lady trying to figure out the issue.

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therewulf@reddit

I also kept replacing one PM’s mouse with a flight joystick I found at a garage sale. He always threw it in the dumpster but I kept going back and grabbing it just to do it again in a month.

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billiarddaddy@reddit

I leave post-its on their desk in strange hand writing: "Don't forget about Tuesday!!" I switch neighboring chairs. Rearrange things on their desk. Mouse on the left.

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fd6944x@reddit

In security if you leave your machine unlocked you always get sheep as your background.

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Xibby@reddit

Years ago I dropped a PowerShell script into InTune when we were just testing things. Script hooked the voice synthesizer and to read out and in joke. I promptly forgot about it, and InTune introduced a new portal. My script was now stuck in the classic, Silverlight based interface. For quite a while that script ran once on every new laptop enrolled into InTune. Eventually someone did a deep dive into InTune to find it and remove it. 😂

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sneh555@reddit

For Aprils fools joke a few years ago, we put a sign on printers saying they are now voice activated, and video-recorded folks trying to get it to do things by voice commands.

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NoDowt_Jay@reddit

Not my own doing, but a colleague once wrapped everything on a persons desk individually in aluminium foil. We had to dispose of some very old backup tapes, on the massive reels. Before doing so we unrolled them all and wrapped up the whole desk & chair of the same person.

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Hessian_Rodriguez@reddit

In the office we have many TV's on the walls with computers attached giving status for lots of stuff. When a co worker quit, he turned all the TV's volume all the way up (they don't play any sounds normally) and set all of them to play "what does the fox say" for the day after he quit.

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shetif@reddit

Each and every data is automatically saved in /dev/random , you just have to grep it correctly.

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marklein@reddit

Alexa, set an alarm for 8:30AM every day and play Baby Shark. Alexa volume 10.

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da4@reddit

A department head yelled at his team once for something that wasn’t their fault. So I wrote some stupid little script that advanced their system clocks a few seconds at a time, but excluded him. All of a sudden that Friday afternoon, the head’s team all pack up and leave a good 35min early. One remarked how light it was as she walked out. I confessed to it my last day at that agency, he laughed and laughed. Best prank I ever pulled.

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BigChubs1@reddit

Unless I missed it in the comments. I like the classic alt + f4. I would tell them it would refresh the program.

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jmeador42@reddit

I tell them they were just fired, and then yell "Bazinga!"

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LoveTechHateTech@reddit

When people say that they can’t log into something I sometimes say “Oh, I guess HR hasn’t talked to you yet..”

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

This one hits kinda hard... one of our clients hr department would have us disable accounts, and have us break the news for them... we were the most hated it folk out there for this... we had to get the c levels involved to get them to stop that

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Ah that is a little too dark for me.

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gringoloco01@reddit

Old IT guys... Remember the old Control + Alt and arrow keys. Ahh the good old days LOL

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

old? HA I"m this old... ALT+F4 kills all idle processes to help speed up your computer!

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lechango@reddit

batch file to loop each screen rotate command + eject/close CD drive.

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Haaa yes. I can't believe that still works.

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CharlesITGuy@reddit

My old manager and I once put the fake Windows 10 Update website on a colleagues PC, fullscreen. He sat there for a good 20 minutes, just staring at it waiting for it to finish. Me and boss were finding it harder and harder to contain our laughter.

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the_star_lord@reddit

Network going slow? Send the new guy to straighten the cables in the server racks.

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Acrobatic_Cycle_6631@reddit

I used to limit switch port to 5mb and watch them troubleshoot

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Dtsung@reddit

Someone once modified my bashrc on my laptop so my vim/ls all got aliased to something else. I almost freaked out.

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Jenghrick@reddit

Tell them to press the any key

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hamstercaster@reddit

Blue Screen of Death screensaver was a fun prank many years ago.

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kearkan@reddit

I used to work in hospitality. I once sent an apprentice to the fridge for chicken milk.

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budgester@reddit

Sent someone to the post office for email stamps once

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michaelpaoli@reddit

I didn't, but some of my peers at a place I worked, On April Fools' Day they'd get to the office extra early. Then they'd take a bunch of Post-it pads, cut just fairly small bit from the top, then stick that to the underside of folks optical mice, covering the LED and photodiode area, so when folks came in in the morning, none of their optical mice were working.

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markwms@reddit

* Shock mouse on all new employees. * Setting backgrounds with group policy and preventing changes. * Auto reboot script * Once made a fake Craigslist page for a party at an interns house when her parents were out of town. * I chew a fair bit of gum and would throw the wrapper over the cube wall of coworkers to annoy them when they annoyed me. I had a bucket full of gum wrappers at my desk because I'm insane and for really pesky situations would dump that on them.

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dcv5@reddit

Connect a second wireless mouse to their workstation and occasionally move their mouse "on its own"

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naptastic@reddit

Create a file named `--help` and ask them to remove it for you.

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-Mr_Tub-@reddit

We filled one of my coworker’s overhead cabinet with packing peanuts while he was on vacation. He got back and we asked him if he had something that we knew was in the cabinet. He opens it and packing peanuts rain down on him

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gurft@reddit

Convinced a young sales rep that they put ear tags on babies (like baby cows) since they heal so fast and can’t be removed or fall off like a bracelet. Happened to be at a local HIMSS event and the Zebra printer rep 100% backed me up saying they made an ear tag printer. Poor kid believed it for a solid three weeks until he was telling another coworker while I was on the same call and the guy couldn’t keep it together

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iceyone444@reddit

We had a really painful cfo - if he went on a tirade or was abusive, we would lock his account, then by the time he had walked into i.t, we unlocked his account and got him to login in front of us. One tech resigned and handed him a id10t error form - bought him a few drinks at his going away party.

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lazy-parasaurolophus@reddit

full screen never ending windows update spoof in the browser, unplug mouse and keyboard

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er1catwork@reddit

Let’s see… I had an original ThinkGeek “Annoy-o-tron” that I used for the asses… Did the Insert Quarter trick on some HP’s… covered out bosses office in tin foil- everything from the walls to ceiling, even the phone and wall outlets were covered. Sadly, where I work no folks aren’t into jokes much at all :(

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RandomTyp@reddit

giving someone who's new at helpdesk a rasp or file for unused HDMI cables when you only use Display Port and wait if they start to file and how long it takes them until they realise. any shenanigans when they don't Meta-L when leaving their desk (flipping the screen orientation + monitor by 180°, making it monochrome, turning on a subtle color blindness filter that they won't notice until much later, etc.). classic ones "tape on mouse laser", keycap swap, unplugging keyboards or mice, etc. if you're on a linux server which they SSH'd into, SSH into as well and broadcast messages with "wall -n 'message'". but be wary, "w" (just the letter w) reveals all logged on users and their IP address so you could easily be figured out if they can correlate your device to you. folding an origami creature with one of those square papers everyone has at their desk (if it's easy you can do it with a 1/4th size too, plus you get 4 attempts per sheet), hiding it somewhere on their desk and waiting if they notice it. do this during some of their coffee- or bathroom-breaks pretending that there's a pattern to it until they realize there isn't. obviously gets funnier the more you do it, if they keep the origamis

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noOneCaresOnTheWeb@reddit

Overy 10 years ago in an a+ class someone was saying something about it not mattering that all of the username and passwords on the machines were the same and had admin permissions. They thought it mattered when I applied all of the lockdown GPOs to their machine.

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drjtech@reddit

Many years ago if a coworker walked away from their unlocked workstation I would take a screenshot of their desktop, move everything from the desktop to a folder and make the screenshot their wallpaper.

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PrincipleExciting457@reddit

Worked at a place where the initiation prank was put the goose exe in startup. If you’re u familiar, a goose shows up on your desktop and messes with you.

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eisentwc@reddit

i did my helpdesk years at a cybercafe/LAN center and my coworker used to send commands to users' computers to open and close the CD drive rapidly. We'd do it to regulars on slow days and shit was so funny, everyone thought they broke something or got hacked.

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

We had this absolute know it all guy who I did that to. Only once or twice a day, for weeks, sometimes not for days. Reloaded his computer, replaced the drive. I never told anyone it was my way of annoying him because I was new and never heard of high and low ip addresses. Rather than explain he laughed very loud and made me look like an idiot. Little did I know it was a bunch of end user computers on a /25 network.

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EmicationLikely@reddit

> I said about how it only backs up the 1s because the zeros contain no data. Hahahahahahahaha! I love this because at first listen it sounds plausible to the general public. They won't realize it's bs until they're halfway back to their desks and you've escaped. I'm stealing it!

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Extreme-Acid@reddit (OP)

Ha yes please do!!

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