jgrewe
HalfDork
10/24/21 8:59 p.m.
Cut up an aluminum can and put it in a plastic 2 liter soda bottle. Add a splash of muriatic acid and put the cap on tight. Shake it up to coat the aluminum and throw it away from people.
I had a teenager working for me at my equipment rental store and we scared the crap out of him. He wanted to know how to do it. I just told him to pay attention in chemistry class.
In reply to jgrewe :
Had someone expelled from my college for doing similar with drano and foil in a plastic soda bottle in a stairwell. I think an unsuspecting girl had permeant hearing loss from it.
I am also a guy who got a talking to in highschool for saying that any idiot can make a bomb...
I used to be a painter, riding around in the back of a painting van. Sitting on a five gallon bucket with no seat belt, and tired as hell from a long day of work. I fell asleep on that bucket. And the cranky old boss man got me.
He tailgated a semi truck. He and the other coworker sitting in the passenger side decided to scream like death was coming while slamming on the brakes. And I went flying off that bucket into the cage separating the cab. They laughed a lot, and I told them they will need to clean up the feces that didn't make it in the bucket.
ShawnG
UltimaDork
10/24/21 10:33 p.m.
Make a folder on someone's desktop labeled "Midget Porn" or something similar.
Screenshot the desktop.
Remove all icons from the desktop.
Set screenshot of the desktop as the background.
The Door Game - techs with remotes to the shop door openers vs anyone without. The goal is to hit the remote button when the victim has exited the vehicle and is has their hand extended to press the manual button mounted to the wall beside the door. Never gets old
Gassy rag trick - Shops always have random rags lying around, dip one in gas and hide it somewhere in a managers office or near an advisor's desk. Hard to pinpoint the source, looks completely innocent.
Rotor Jenga - stack old brake rotors on the scap metal pile higher and higher. The person who topples the stack loses.
Hide the roadkill - self explanatory, usually birds. We had a severed head of a rabbit on Thursday that someone found peeking from their oil funnel.
Duke
MegaDork
10/25/21 6:47 a.m.
Stealthtercel said:
Way back at the dawn of time, the IT department in the office where my [then future] wife worked arranged for a gloomy-looking moose to show up randomly on people's screens and complain about the state of their relationship, then disappear. It would start with the moose saying, "We never talk any more" and go on from there. As far as we could figure out, the objective was to have staff end up asking for tech support because they were having trouble breaking up with a moose. A real knee-slapper, right? Computer people are a bit strange.
TALKING MOOSE! That goes waaayyyy back to the early days of toaster Macintoshes.
[Bullwinkle voice] You are getting sleepy... [\Bullwinkle voice]
84FSP
UltraDork
10/25/21 6:57 a.m.
barefootskater (Shaun) said:
If someone has their personal car up in the air, sneak a zip tie or three onto a cv shaft or driveline, and leave the tail so it hits someone on rotation.
This is impressively evil, while being non-destructive. Extra point to you sir.
NickD
MegaDork
10/25/21 7:19 a.m.
The best one I heard was from a coworker of mine, Harry. Another tech kept pulling all sorts of pranks on him and Harry started getting irritated and warned him to knock it off or he would regret it. Needless to say, the other guy kept messing with him, and so he he had to take action. He knew this other guy immediately went in and used the bathroom after lunch, every day. So as soon as everyone left for lunch, Harry went in and, in his own words, "frosted the toilet seat like it was a cake" with the clear silicone brake grease. Sure enough, this guy comes back from lunch and immediately goes into the bathroom. He's in there for like 30 minutes, finally comes out and heads over to Harry and goes "I took a E36 M3, motherberkeleyer." He never messed with Harry again.
NickD
MegaDork
10/25/21 7:23 a.m.
Another particularly great one was a couple guys went out to another tech's Jeep, put a T-fitting in the washer hose, ran a new hose in through the wiring harness grommet in the firewall and then attached it to the underside of the steering column so that when he hit the washers, it would spray him in the groin. Even funnier was that the guy never used the washer, so he then sold it someone unaware of the modified washer system. The new owner came back the next day and was ready to beat the daylights out of the guy in the parking lot.
Two come to mind.
Co-worker in the R&D lab went away on a trip for work and left his Chevette in the parking lot for the week. Blocked the passenger side axle up so the tire had a tiny gap to the ground. He came back and spent 30 minutes trying to figure out if his clutch or transmission had failed.
Same co-worker was always bragging on his Chevette's fuel mileage. We started to add fuel every day for two weeks and the story would grow and grow about how he was now getting well over 50 mpg. Started to siphon after that and got it to where he was thinking he was getting under 5 mpg.
One I found online: a snipe hunt gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Short version: The new guy went to their supplier for skyhooks. Unfortunately, the reply wasn't "We don't carry that, but you ought to check with..." - instead it was "They're not in stock, but we can special order them for £300 each. How many do you need?"
Story from my dad:
Maintenance/repair shop at a lumber mill. Few guys worked in the shop and one of them liked to pull pranks on everyone else so one day they decide to get him back. They stripped about 10 feet of wire and coiled it up under the seat cover of one of the yard pickups and connected on end to the coil +. Guy gets in to move the truck and gets a shock to his fingers from the key when if fires up. Apparently only thinking "that's weird" he goes to shift it and gets shocked again...and not lightly either. At this point WTF hits and he goes to get out...metal door handle gives him multiple big hits and there he is stuck. Touch anything metal (old ford truck....everything is metal) and get shocked. Key/colum is grounded too so he can't turn the truck off either without getting shocked. Apparently he had a few minutes of sitting there before just going for the door and getting out....Shockingly he quit doing pranks after that!
wspohn
SuperDork
10/25/21 11:14 a.m.
I prefer the more subtle.
Waited until a friend had completed the engine built and had it hanging from a hoist to reinstall before holding up a new con rod lock tab I'd supposedly picked off his work bench and asking what it was for, then walked away......
car39
Dork
10/25/21 11:17 a.m.
Old timer told me they had a tech who regularly "borrowed" tools without returning them. His box was covered with decals. They got a copy of one of the decals, drilled a hole in the box, and filled it with gear lube, then covered the whole with the decal. He never figured out how it was done, but changed jobs soon after.
I had a tech was giving me a hard time regularly, I filled his box with speedy-dri. End of BS.
Bungee cord the center desk drawer, so every time you open it, it closes automatically
Dry ice in the floor drains makes for some fun toxic waste emergencies. Especially when you're the manager and you can act really concerned and upset.
When I first started at CSK autoparts (before it was bought by O'Reilly) I was transferred to another store almost immediately after getting hired. A guy I went to high school with had seen how hard I worked and how I had a modicum of vehicular knowledge and wanted me at his store. We weren't friends, but we knew of each other during school. Well we became pretty good friends. One night I was closing and he was coming in the next morning to man the commercial desk. I was tasked with destroying some clearance product that had aged out. A huge cardboard display of smelly trees. Just the standard royal pine scent. I'd say it was 30-40 three packs and six packs. Well I got the guy I was closing with to help me unpackage them all and hang them from his desk. A little under 200 smelly trees dangling from his workstation. I think it took me a few days to get that smell off my fingers.
The old 'jumper wire between the brake light relay and horn relay' routine never gets old. Turn signal relay also works.
84FSP
UltraDork
10/25/21 7:58 p.m.
Ok - enjoying this as expected keep em coming.
From my time on the shop floor when all the tow motors were propane. Whenever possible, and for no good reason, flag down the tow motor driver in the far corner of the building. Stop and chat them up while you deftly turn the propane tank valve off. The truck runs another 2-3min tops before dying.
The far corner of the building is a solid 1/4 mile from the replacement propane tanks. Like clockwork, noone checks the tank to see if it's empty.
Upon hoofing it back to the truck with a fresh tank they realize the tank on the truck is still full.
Laughter, anger, and or retribution ensues.
ShawnG
UltimaDork
10/25/21 9:48 p.m.
Put an extra ball bearing in someone's parts tray.
In reply to JoeTR6 :
Yeah, I remember that, I was the guy that caught it.