5 Easy Ways to Prank Your Coworkers on April Fool’s Day

This year, April Fool’s Day falls on a Sunday, saving millions of coworkers from embarrassment.

Well, the joke’s on them, because April 2 counts as April Fool’s if April 1 falls on a weekend! I just made that up, but it’s official. I’m writing this on a day when I normally don’t write blog entries so that you can use this weekend to prank your coworkers.

There are lots of ways to prank someone, but I believe in these cardinal rules:

  • An element of misdirection (although they’re funny, I don’t really count is as a “prank” when you simply fill someone’s office with cups of water or sticky notes, that sort of them. No one is fooled by that. They’re simply inconvenienced)
  • An element of confusion.
  • No hurt feelings or physical pain.
  • No major inconvenience.

Based on those rules, I offer you 5 very easy ways to prank your workers on Monday. You might need to go into work on Sunday or very early on Monday to do these.

  1. Turn the volume up on everyone’s computer speakers to surprise them the next time they turn on their computers or play music.
  2. Put a small sticky note on the bottom of everyone’s optical mice covering the laser. They’ll be fooled for a few minutes for why their mouse doesn’t work (it’s the best if you can fool someone who is really tech savvy).
  3. Leave someone 20 voicemails of you breathing heavily into the receiver. The glory of this is that they have to listen to all of the voicemails in case there is a real one among them.
  4. When someone has everything minimized on their computer so that only their desktop is showing, hit “print screen” and then copy and paste the image into Paint. Open the image in full screen mode and minimize the real taskbar at the bottom so the person thinks they’re looking at their actual desktop, and yet they can’t click on anything.
  5. Go to VistaPrint and make a giant magnet like this one that my coworker pranked me with a few months ago. Put it on the passenger side door of your coworker’s car and see how long it takes them to realize it’s there.

If you try any of these or pull another prank this Sunday or Monday, let me know in the comments section!

 

4 thoughts on “5 Easy Ways to Prank Your Coworkers on April Fool’s Day”

  1. If you do the sticky note on the mouse —- write on the sticky note “April Fools” that is my favorite of the ideas listed. I wish I worked in office with other people — I would definitely go into work on Sunday to accomplish that ‘trick’

    Reply
    • Ah, it’s too bad there’s no one you can get. I like the idea of writing “April Fools” on the sticky note.

      Reply
  2. As a prankster myself, I think knowing your audience is the most important key. People are different and what would bring one person to tears laughing may infuriate, inconvenience, or embarrass another.
    For example, I have filled an office with 1000 water cups. He grabbed his belly and had such a hearty laugh that he teared up. He even appreciated that I had to tidy his office a little in order to make room for more cups. Later he came to me chuckling with a small piece of scotch tape with a black sharpie dot on it, asking “Was this you?” He couldn’t figure out why his mouse wasn’t working.

    I have filled another person’s office with 1000 balloons. This person would have been furious if it were 1000 cups. She stays busy and is always on the go, so cleaning anything up would have been mean. Still to this day she talks about how much joy working in a room with colorful balloons for a week brought her.

    I also worked with a man who would get outraged at the slightest technology issue like a printer jam, so putting a black dot over scotch tape on his optical mouse would have resulted in language.

    I could go on and on with my examples, but this is me defending my 1000 cups and saying different pranks work for different people and a good prankster knows how to read their target and come up with the most suitable prank.

    Reply
    • Jodie–That’s a great point. That really should be Rule #1: Know your audience. Well said. I still don’t really consider the balloon/cup ideas to be “April Fool’s pranks” per se (again, no one is fooled by them), but they certainly fit into some sort of fun category. Let’s see, the dictionary says that a prank is “a trick of an amusing, playful, or sometimes malicious nature.” What you did is amusing and playful, but it’s not really a trick. You didn’t trick him into thinking his office was full of cups…his office WAS full of cups. 🙂

      Reply

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