Bizarre corporate rituals

Pranks, code phrases, themes, and so on are used by corporate workers to cut boredom, express creativity, compete, or rebel. Our IT dept. is a source for a lot of this activity, partly because they employ co-ops who inject collegiate weirdness. One competition they have going on right now involves Sea Monkeys. You'll recall the ads in the back of comic books about these "amazing sea creatures". Well these nerds have bought about 4 of these kits and have a competition on whose tank can create the most babies. I walked by one cube and the kid had a pair of headphones around the tank. He was playing ocean noises to inspire the Sea Monkeys (actually brine shrimp) to "get into the mood". [img]graemlins/kiss.gif[/img]

So what weirdness is happening in your corner of Utopia? [img]graemlins/island.gif[/img]

We play a wide variety of pranks on each other. It is awesome because I have 13 people that work under me, and we all prank each other so our work environment is awesome.

Some pranks include:

Using 4 rolls of packing tape to tape our shipping clerks chair to his desk.

Taking the copiers access three hole punch remains and pouring them into someones locker and sealing it up only for them to get a suprise when they open it.

Super glue everything on someones desk.

Bubble wrapped someones entire office

Removing the balls in the mouse

So much more....

I remember at Great American they pranked us one time by posting a message that indicated their stock price had gone up. We got all excited, and then they were like "just kidding!" Those crazy nuts...

Today is "Haiku Thursday"

This is my entry for today, written to my coworker:


what it means to be rob s****

You really do suck
Sir, would you like fries with that?
Career on the move


Last week was Super Combo Value Pak Haiku Thursday...a frenzy of Haiku activity:

supersize it

supersize combo
value-pak haiku Thursday
it don't get better

i really like you - but not really

killkillkillkillkill
killkillkillkillkillkillkill
killkillkillkillkill

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ May 11, 2006 10:02 AM: Message edited by: The Big Sexy ]</font>

We have bizarre competitions.

At Christmas, I was pretty much forced to be in a Montgomery Inn eating competition with my soon to be boss, the reigning 15 year eating champion. The tie breaker was a gross, cheap cheesecake from Meijer. I won.

A few months ago, I had an arm wrestling competition with my ex-boss. We tied (though he said I cheated.)

Then there was the three on three basketball game (I kicked ass)...and the flag football game...

Then there are the coffee pots...we are each assigned a week to clean coffee pots. If you forget to clean the coffee pots, you owe two coffee pots to the person who cleans them for you.

Coffee pots are bet on sporting events, election outcomes, and assorted other idiotic things. I never really got into the coffee pot culture, but people at work really do take it seriously.

And if you persistently forget...the big boss gets pissed.

It is my week to do coffee pots.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ May 11, 2006 10:36 AM: Message edited by: The Big Sexy ]</font>

I work in a corner office isolated from all of my coworkers, some days I go the entire day and don't have to even speak to anyone in my office. I go days on end without seeing or speaking to my supervisor. I have a radio at my desk and a nice view behind me. Pretty nice set-up, but no pranks.

I dont really interact with my coworkers that much, outside of the fact thast we work together. Therefore, I dont really get into any of the "pranks" or anything like that. I keep to myself as much as possible at work. I fully believe that work facilitates life. I work to live, I dont live to work.

I know what you mean Greg. I have fallen into the trap in the past of becoming close friends with coworkers. This never ends well. (well it did once but that was the exception) Just like the advice of not dating someone from work, "don't fish from the company dock". When it doesn't work out, one of you better switch jobs! And if it does work out, who wants to see their S/O 24/7? There should be divisions I think.

Yep!

I think that your life is what you do outside of work and that work facilitates it. The job is important because it is the source oif income that allows you to handle your responabilities and hopefully have some left over to save and or use to enjoy your free time.

I just do my thing and do my job.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ May 11, 2006 10:48 AM: Message edited by: cincygreg ]</font>

Dulc, I like your prank. Very devious.

As recruits, we don't have any real "pranks" to play but we do have some fun.

1. Sneak up on person who was scared to death of getting tased and do a 1 second taser test (check the operation, it arcs and is loud) behind their head. Be prepared to clean up piss from the floor.

2. During controlled force practice, deliver a chop to the common peroneal area when partner isn't looking.

3. Tell someone they have a huge stain on the back of their shirt seconds prior to morning inspection.

Just my $.02 [img]graemlins/devil.gif[/img] [img]wink.gif[/img]

No one here is feeling particularly pranksterish currently.

However, I wrote a haiku back when we had a project close out that I quite liked:

errors have been made
the project has been shut down
others will be blamed

Actually, I had a whole "corporate haiku" line that all ended with the "others will be blamed" phrase.

In the past: we had a prankster co-worker who was on vacation. While she was gone, we took all the personal photos off her cube walls, and replaced her file cabinets with some from an empty cube. We borrowed some family photos from someone she didn't know, and put them up in the cube. We changed the name on the outside of her cube and put a big "Welcome to our Group!" balloon in the cube. It was great!

We have had cube decorating contests which were quite entertaining.

I was most notorious for playing pranks when I was in college and worked at the Law Library at UC. I made a coworker so angry at me one time she threw a stapler at me. Those were fun times. [img]cool.gif[/img]

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Law Dawg:

2. During controlled force practice, deliver a chop to the common peroneal area when partner isn't looking.

---

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This must happen in every academy. My class was always waiting for someone to not be paying attention so we could give'em a quick knee. And the accidental OC Spray to the food in the fridge occurred.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Quoth the Raven:
Taking the copiers access three hole punch remains and pouring them into someones locker and sealing it up only for them to get a suprise when they open it.

---

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Back in the day when computers ran on punched cards (I know I am dating myself) we use to take trash cans and fill them with chads and prop them over the door to the office and once we created a catapult with a paper cup, rubber bands and paper clips that would explode when our boss opened his desk draw.