Office IT pranks
Author
Discussion

onedsla

Original Poster:

1,135 posts

280 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
Hi - in winding up a new girl in the office we've diverted attentions to her PC. Tricks played so far include putting shutdown.exe in her startup group, batch files to move files that she's working on to a strange location and strange 'error' messages about using MSN messenger.

Does anybody have any other suggestions?

Podie

46,649 posts

299 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
Rename the desktop icons...

Podie

46,649 posts

299 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
Sellotape on the network connection...

pdV6

16,442 posts

285 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
Screenshot of an embarrasing website as wallpaper...

Bodo

12,523 posts

290 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
While they are away, and the desktop is not locked, make a screenshot of the current work with all windows open, set as desktop-background. Close all windows, and change the functions of the mouse buttons to 'left-hand use'. That should keep them busy for a while

shadytree

8,291 posts

273 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
swap mouse buttons , left and right

onedsla

Original Poster:

1,135 posts

280 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
hmmmm... Don't you just love abusing admin rights

slinksport

15,704 posts

273 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
make sure you are on XP Pro and they are on 2k or XP..

then make use of the taskkill command..

Most entertaining when the document they've just opened closes in front of their very eyes..

You can also use tasklist and close windows behind the foreground window without the users knowledge..

Most entertaining..

syntax as follows

Tasklist /s \computername <-- lists tasks on computer
taskkill /s \computername /F /IM xxxxxx.exe <--- closes all tasks with that image name, ie. notepad.exe or Winword.exe or if naughty web surfing, iexplore.exe

Bear in mind that you need to be an administrator of the machine you are targetting, BUT, if the local administrator password is a known value then the /U switch can be used to provide a username, at which point you use computernameadministrator

Is that going a bit far???

Slinky

KITT

5,345 posts

265 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
If they use the desktop icons a lot then screen grab the desktop and set it as the background. Then delete all the desktop icons Will take them ages to work out why clicking the icons does nothing

slinksport

15,704 posts

273 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
ooh, another one,
net send computer name "message"

find a suitably anonymous computer name and net send "your fired" type messages..

Got a message from my MD like that, scared me until I realised the computername had been spoofed..

I got the perp back for that one!

FourWheelDrift

91,952 posts

308 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
Take the ball out of the mouse, if it's optical put tape over the optic.

Tape down her phone reciever so when she pick it up to answer a call it still rings.

If the the PC is close enough to another PC swap the monitor cables or mouse cables, make sure someone in the know is at the other one and can move the mouse about.

onedsla

Original Poster:

1,135 posts

280 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
I like the phone trick - just waiting for the lazy b**ch to come in now - she'll probably use the tube strike as a lame excuse...

wiggy001

7,080 posts

295 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
How good is her typing? If she's a one finger, stare at the keys type, remember it's not difficult to remove, and subsequently rearrange, said keys!

Another is to email her and copy in the big cheese saying you're not impressed with her poor timekeeping, skiving, poor work etc. Change one letter in the big-cheese's name so he never actually receives it.

Not sure which mail package you use, but in Notes it's simple to set up a button in an email which, when clicked, emails the whole department. Send it to her with instructions to click to install new software or something - make it look official and laugh when she emails the whole department telling them the colour of her pants!

simpo two

91,604 posts

289 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
Bodo said:
While they are away, and the desktop is not locked, make a screenshot of the current work with all windows open, set as desktop-background.

Better still, take several screenshots with the icons in different places each time. Then animate at 1 second intervals (Powerpoint maybe?).

The icons will keep moving about and even if she clicks on one, nothing will happen.

onedsla

Original Poster:

1,135 posts

280 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
whoops - just heard she's at a funeral today - best put it off for a week or so

zumbruk

7,848 posts

284 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
Get sacked for harassment. That would be freeking hysterical.

onedsla

Original Poster:

1,135 posts

280 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
zumbruk said:
Get sacked for harassment. That would be freeking hysterical.


hmm... it hasn't got to the point where we've had to ban fun / laughing in the office just yet!!

[K]ar|

959 posts

270 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
One of my personal favourites is to change the keyboard layout to DVORAK in the control panel. Press one key, and get a completely different one on-screen! Combine with the old mouse-button switcheroo for added hilarity.

I had one colleague on the point of phoning the helpdesk with that one before I owned up!

[k]

apache

39,731 posts

308 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
onedsla said:
whoops - just heard she's at a funeral today - best put it off for a week or so



whoa, she's not pesty's girlfriend is she?

Ding

888 posts

274 months

Wednesday 30th June 2004
quotequote all
Be very careful who you upset!

Admin/Finance can cause havoc to you personally if you go a step too far!

Ellie