Birthdays celebrations have been the basis of some pranks. The most fun for me was when I found an outhouse to place on the lawn of a friend that was turning thirty. A sign that announced the age and name of the person adorned the tile lined outdoor facility. Flags in the the neighborhood directed them to view the addition to the front yard. Of course my front yard received decorations the next month when my birthday came around!

No pranks at the office. I don’t like mean-spirited pranks that hurt/embarrass people. One I played on my mother once, though. I saw the numbers on her lottery ticket ahead of time. She asked me to write down the winning numbers that would appear on the TV screen while she left the room for a moment. Instead, I wrote down her numbers (in a different arrangement) on a piece of paper. Everyone in the room was in on the gag. When Mom returned to the room, we pretended to carry on a normal, trivial conversation while kind of watching her out of the corner of our eyes while she looked over the numbers I’d written down. We watched as she compared the numbers I’d written down to the numbers on her lottery ticket. She became more and more excited as she scanned each number of her six-digit Lotto ticket. The rest of us kept yapping away about nothing, pretending not to notice. When she got to the fifth (matching) number, it looked like she was ready to start jumping up and down. As she started to look at the last number, I told her, “Mom, it’s all a hoax”. Everyone in the room burst out laughing. It took her a couple of seconds to settle down, and then she started laughing too.

Do not like pranks so I am not a prankster either. Son can do different voices on the phone and get me going, he pretends to be the IRS or something like that and brings my B P to top speed. I am ready to kill him after a session like that. We all get fooled by him.

James, “I don’t like mean-spirited pranks that hurt/embarrass people” I’m not judging you honestly, but in my opinion,what you did to your mother is beyond mean and embarrassing. What a horrible, hurtful prank. At our office, it is a rule “no pranks.” One always has to expect retaliation, and it does escalate into something that is never funny in the end. I personally live by the rule, I do not do to others what I would not want done to me.

I love practical jokes! I worked as a jobsite office manager for a construction company in Atlanta back in the 80s. We worked hard and we played hard. I smoked back then (shameful, I know), and at one 6 am meeting one of the men lit my cigarette for me and BOOM, the darn thing just blew up. I was stunned, the guy who lit my cigarette was stunned. Another guy (one of the super macho construction foremen you read about) kept saying, “Rita, what happened?” I kept saying I don’t know! Then he burst into hysterics. It seemed he planted something in the cigarette to make it blow up. (Of course, I could no longer smoke safely so I had to quit!) I had to think long and hard on how to get back at the macho, homophobic man who had screwed with my ciggies. So one afternoon, I patted him on his back and said, “Lou, it may not be today or tomorrow, but I will get you back.” He just laughed. Well, when I patted him on his back I was attaching a sign which read: Kiss me, I’m gay! Macho Lou strolled all over the jobsite, chatted with vendors and subcontractors, strolled across Peachtree Street to the bank to cash his paycheck and to flirt with the tellers. As he got the to middle of Peachtree on his way back to the jobsite, the bank guard shouts out: Hey Lou, you have something on your back. Revenge is sweet! We had great fun pulling pranks on each other and on others who worked with us. But you do have to know the party you are pranking cause some folks can dish it out, but can’t take it!

Being the only woman working with a bunch of men you can expect lots of pranks. It taught me to be a better programmer, trying to figure out how they sabotaged my machine, making my data disappear, messages telling me my files have been deleted. Those things produced the reaction they planned on and when I started to turn the tables back on them a healthy respect was earned and we learned to rely on one another when the chips were down. My favorite telephone prank was to tape the receiver down so the phone kept ringing and the answerer was left with a puzzled expression, the line was quickly picked up by someone else so the calling party was unaware what was going on, kept it an inside joke.

Tee Zee - a guy at my first job did the tape down the telephone buttons gag on my boss but did it one better. My boss was very absent minded. They taped down the buttons, unhooked the receiver and put a banana on the phone. My boss walked into his office, the phone was ringing and he picked up and answered the banana. When he finally realized what had happened, he laughed louder and longer than anyone else. We always talked about the day John answered his banana.

we had a receptionist some years back who was not at all up on pop culture of any form - so we used to tell our friends (and even clients) to call up as a celebrity so that when she announced it over the corporate intercom, she’d say something like “Chips, Jerry Garcia is on line 4” with a total straight face and then the whole building would crack up - silly now as I type it but at 25 years old in 1988, it seemed funny then

As a Flight Attendant Cadre (helps new hire Flight Attendants adjust to line flying) we always initiated them with a silly prank, but never a prank that would hurt them or bring them embarrassment. Sometimes as simple as hidding in the overhead bin and when they went to put their luggage up, one of us would pop out. Another popular one was the Captain, during our pre-flight briefing, would ask the new hire to do a cabin air quality test, which was to take place after takeoff but prior to our first service. This test required the flight attendant to obtain a plastic garbage bag and walking thru the cabin holding the bag open, would close it quickly to secure the air within the bag, once she/he reached the cockpit. Then said bag would be given to the Captain. The Captain of course, would invariably call back and claim the test air was not sufficant, thus the test would have to be repeated. Needless to say, the new hire would do so, as she was trying to show she was a team player. And by this time the passengers were all looking inquisitivly at the flight attendant and inquiring as to why she was walking thru the entire cabin with a trash bag wide open and attempting to catch air. After about three requests from said Captain, the flight attendant would start getting the idea that, ok, what’s up? to this we all just fell out laughing and told her “Welcome, you are now officialy inducted in” Never were they humiliated in the process and were always cracking up and telling us what they were thinking about while they were doing the suedo test, and it was always the universal thought of “Why in the heck does the Captain need air in a bag for a test. The Captain would always give the unsuspecting flight attendant a cute little certificate on the nature of being a good sport and upon landing at our final stop for our layover, he would take the whole crew to dinner.

The closest thing to “pranks” I ever pulled were the anonymous candy hearts on Valentine’s Day, or little gifts at Christmas time that people would find on their desks and not really know where they came from.

We had a group of co-workers who would go to a company sponsored aerobics class after work. Two of us taped a remote control fart machine under one of the aerobic steps and an innocent bystander (my daughter who was on the sidelines doing homework) would occasionally push the activation button. It was hysterical. No one was hurt and of course, we chose the person who could best be part of the joke. We also stuffed a plastic bag inside one of the spouts on a girl’s water bottle. She sucked and sucked on that thing and couldn’t get a single drop of water. No one was hurt and it took some of the pain out of the workout session. Laughter is a good workout too.