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Workplace Pranks

Not a prank but had a guy who often tried making a helicopter out of a Bridgeport mill.




you needed a box end wrench on top of the machine to change a tool in the spindle.

That would be easy to forget.... I make it a point to never take my hand off the wrench....
 
I worked with a fitter on a shiftwork job and someone on 2nd was wearing my buddy's coveralls every night. He painted up the insides with antisieze on afternoon and got called to the office the next AM. The general foreman attempted to chew him out for the trick but, he pointed out the coveralls belonged to him and asked why anyone else was wearing them. Case closed.
Mike
 
Work place antics were fun! Now I think I could get fired for looking cross eyed at the wrong person..
 
Not a prank but some more stories. One day it was REALLY cold here in Connecticut. Our shuttle was an 86 Voyager with the 2.6l Mitsu. I was returning to the dealership and the thing was sluggish and dieing out. Pulled off the highway and called the shop. Was told to take back roads back, slow down. I was overwhelming the 2.6ls ability to warm up and the thing was freezing up! I was speechless. Made it back without further incident.

Another cold day, we had a retired local who did bodywork on the side. Unfortunately, he had died and we needed to retrieve a 94 or 95 LeBaron four door and bring to another shop 3 miles away. We get there and there's no left side doors! Yup, I drove it the 3 very cold miles to another shop!
 
When I 1st got into General Contracting
we did a lot of framing or plumbing jobs
a big deal was time people spent 'taking breaks'
unscheduled breaks going over allotted break time
5 min.s here & there 15 min.s turned in 25 min.s over all
or a 1/2 hr lunch turned into 45 min.s
& then getting set back up, to get back to actual work
some was real slacking off (the Union way) the slow roll/stroll
walking over to where they stored/placed'
(during reg. work time, not their every 2 hrs of scheduled breaks)
just to get their coffee, a bite of lunch/snack or their cigarettes etc.

Anyway they'd take off their tool belts, dropped on the floor
leave them on the floor,
the general area where they were supposed to be working
then stroll across/walk across the room
or the whole other side of the building etc., wasting work time...

'productive time', like 5 min.s here & there constantly
like 10+ times a day that's an hr lost per day per guy
'it adds up'

So one of my guys a journeyman/lead carpenter asked me
if he could teach some of the slackers a lesson, sort of a razings
he would nail or shot (nailgun) their pouches belt to the floor
where they left them

it was NOT productive, wasted time
but;
the point got across pretty quickly
they at a min., they wouldn't/didn't take their tool belts off
if they were slacking off, not actually working, walking around

we had a safety meeting & my lead guy even warned them

some were too dense to retain that simple information

We had an evaluation study done
they didn't know it was even being done
as to not tip anyone off
IIRC there were some 100+ hrs wasted per pay cycle (IIRC crew of 14)
at the time the billing/bidding rate was like $54 per/hr per man
(their hourly pay rate was like $31.65 an hr + bennies)
over $5,400+ out of my payroll, of nonproductive BS...

I know people don't work 100% or even 80% productive
but it was 'like less than 70%' good evaluations, for a bunch
a few made the whole 'look bad'
with just that type of nonsense,
just to grab their coffee
'or walk over to get a damn cigarette'
(that was a pet peeve of mine, I draw the line there)
just keep em' in your pouches or pocket 'if you have to smoke'

I wasn't a slave driver either, I know what it's like to work hard
sweat & get a job done, in a timely manner & still have a good time
enjoy the job 'somewhat'
but c'mon' man

It was funny at the time
 
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We had roller racking at the beer warehouse I worked at years back, a dipshit I worked with said they weren't rolling well. I sent him to the hardware store to pickup some Gullab-oil. He came back and said the guy laughed at him and they didn't have any. Man that guy was stupid.
I also took a major #2 in the dock shitter, told him someone wrote something about his wife on the wall, he ran in and said he didn't see anything but his eyes were watering and it smelled horrible.
 
We had roller racking at the beer warehouse I worked at years back, a dipshit I worked with said they weren't rolling well. I sent him to the hardware store to pickup some Gullab-oil. He came back and said the guy laughed at him and they didn't have any. Man that guy was stupid.
I also took a major #2 in the dock shitter, told him someone wrote something about his wife on the wall, he ran in and said he didn't see anything but his eyes were watering and it smelled horrible.
That reminds me of this---


:D:D:D
 
In my younger days we had some non english speaking workers at a place I worked. We told them they couldn't get paid until they filled out their masterbation papers. It was quite entertaining watching them demand the papers from the office workers.
 
Had a guy that at the end of shift would blow himself off with the air hose. It got filled with water when he wasn't looking. 100 psi 1/2 hose was a lot of water.

When one of the electrical techs were working on some circuit we would call their pager. Because it was loud they all had then set to vibrate. Always got a jump out of that.
 
Back in London, England I worked with an older guy on shift - afternoons, and nights. We swapped shifts each week, and we had a one hour hand-over together each night at 10pm. That time would be spent relaying the days events, a few laughs and a cup of tea....usually because 'Maurice' would come straight from the pub, and had usually downed 3 pints or so before arrival.

We started this silly Microsoft Word Prompt command stuff.....where the screen would be blank, except for a question - normally "What is your name?" the answers progressed according to the program set....and usually finished with the answer "Don't lie, you've done nothing all day!" This was 1994 - computers didn't have the internet and sophistication they do now......IBM 386 was flash back then.

Our shift manager was a younger guy - claimed he was this that and the other qualified and experienced. Maurice and I knew he was full of ****. The 3 of us managed the running maintenance and repairs of a fleet of electric fork trucks (different types) weighbridges, platform lifts, conveyor systems and doors etc for a huge DC belonging to IBM. We saw some real expensive equipment in there....and the guys driving the hoists were pretty hard on the gear.

I came in one afternoon to start my shift at 2:00pm, and there was Tom, our manager, running around shovelling oil-spill granules around the floor. He called out to me to help....I looked at the mess, and told him no. I could see what had happened, and he was a dipshit for doing so. He has raised the forks on a high-racker truck, and NOT supported the forks with acrow props like we were supposed to. When he released the hydraulic pipe at the top of the mast from the manifold plate, the oil shot out as the weight of the forks forced it, and plastered the roof of the workshop (about 40feet) ----and it was still dripping when I arrived. The oily mess on the ground looked like Gilligan's Island with a lonely looking fork truck in the middle.

Anyway, back to Maurice. One afternoon shift, I had to remove a front motor/wheel assembly from a little counter-balance fork truck. I thought of a good prank to play on Maurice. He was always catching me out with little stuff. :)
So I found an old pair of overalls and boots - to which I stuffed with newspaper and rags etc to make it look like a body - then put the boots on the dummy, and lowered the fork truck onto the dummy. I scattered a few tools around the floor just before Maurice was due to arrive.
Since I wasn't in the office as he expected....Maurice came looking for me. Sure enough there he appeared at the battery charging bays....I was hiding behind some pallets of boxes. This guy just could not be fooled. He started calling out for me as I wasn't answering the radio.....then he saw the fork truck. He walks up a bit closer and looked shocked for a second....then start laughing.

He calls out - "Alright, where are you?" :lol:
Maurice did admit it was a good prank, but he didn't quite get sucked in.
 
Yep, had a few idiots leave the chuck key in a lathe. It gets your attention.
My buddy left his in during shop class in 7th grade, took it just above the hip bone, ill never forget the sound. Wrestling was tough for him for a few weeks, our antics of poking the black/purple spot didn't help lol.
 
Wow, where to start??? Ok let’s go back to 1983, working a desk job in a warehouse for Colonial Security in Hudson, NH supplying and stocking trucks for alarm and CCTV installations. I happened across a box of old flash bulbs at a yard sale, those big ones that used a standard lamp socket. Had a VP upstairs that thought he was funny, I took a flash bulb, pie tin, 12 volt gel battery and some contacts and put the whole thing in his desk drawer when he kept his cigarettes. Bends over and leans on the desk, pulls out the drawer and from a distance of about 24” gets a flash bulb right in the eyes, couldn’t see **** for about 10 minutes.

Cliff Ramsdell
 
We were hanging a banner on the side of the plant some 60 feet up when my work partner came up with an idea. We screwed the banner to the top and threw it over the edge. It had ropes on the corner that we would tie to stakes in the ground. We got two five gallon buckets of water and radioed for our boss to come around the front of the plant to hold the ropes till we could come down and tie them off. The wind was blowing and he was trying to catch a corner rope when we dumped the two buckets over the edge. The look on his face as he tried to get into a running stance as the water hit him on the back of the head, neck and shoulders driving him flat into the lawn!! I laughed so hard I really thought I was going to wet myself!! We got back to the shop and told the others, who were still laughing when Dave, our boss, came in. No one said a word, but you could feel it in the air. What fun that was, weeks went by and nothing was said by him. A few more weeks went by and I was getting ready for my vacation to Florida. I took the electric flatbed around back, took off my shirt and was laying on the bed of the cart getting a head start on my suntan next to the building when all of a sudden I felt a deluge hit me hard enough to part the hair on my chest................ I didn't even open my eyes to see what happened. It was quite obvious it was my turn in the barrel. LOL. The real question I never got an answer to, was my partner in on it??? These things went on constantly and still bring a smile to my face to this day.
 
Black Magic marker on the ear piece of the phone or better yet if they lay their cell phone down smear a little vanilla pudding from a pudding cup on their phone.
 
:rolleyes:Ok, @Ron_M here you go.

1988/1989 working at Fairway Chrysler Plymouth in Canton, CT. We had a couple of us that were pretty skilled at having fun. One mechanic, Roger who was not much of a mechanic and he got hammered every time he would say or do something wrong. At lunch one day his tool box ended up in the men’s bathroom locked in the crapper stall. When he finally located his tool box, crawled under the door to open it and retrieve his tool box he found a sign on it “**** house mechanic “

He also fancied himself a funny guy, loved to dish it out but get it back, not so good. One day we took a life size “recreational doll” filled it with helium from the show room, and tied the legs to a length of rope and attached it to the back of his car and stuffed the “doll” under the bumper. At the end of the day he was always first to leave and as he pulled out, the “doll” popped up in the air about 10’ and trailed along behind the car at about a 45 degree angle. Down the road he goes and about 10 minutes later shows back up with a length of rope and a very deflated “doll” and was in a rage because he got stopped by the cops. He was NOT AMUSED...hehehehe.

Last one, when Chrysler would deliver our parts the smaller stuff can in metal cages and once empty these would break down and store for return shipping. On a particular day Matt, the parts helper was out back unloading the cage and after some back and forth banter ended up inside the cage, latch tie wrapped closed and the cage pushed out back. About 30 Minutes go by and Jim, the parts manager is looking for his guy. He wanders out back to find Matt trapped in the cage. He was very mad but Matt, he just took it all in stride.

We couldn’t do any of this stuff today with the current coworkers that most of us have now. I’m so glad I’m almost retired.

Cliff Ramsdell
 
Here is a military one after a very long deployment in the sand box we used to put the cool aid powder that came in MRE's in a members boots usually lime in one and grape in the other right before we went home in the summer. Well after a day of sweating in your boots one foot and ankle was bright green the other purple! Took weeks to wear off. Funny as hell.
 
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