Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler How do you mess with bad bosses or coworkers?

One of my previous supervisors here was very uptight about people getting along (civil service bureaucracies seem to foster those types (uptight that is)). There was a dry-erase training status board on one wall of the break room. Periodically I would write derogatory things in the training status next to my name. He would get so pissed off and call everyone together and “lay-down-the-law” that this type of behavior must stop and that he would support me filing a hostile work environment complaint against the perpetrator. To quote Bugs Bunny “What a maroon.”

I corresponded a lot with one of my cousins while I was in the Marine Corps. When she went off to university she complained she didn’t get enough mail. So I enlisted the help of my machinegun section and we got every magazine we had (mostly. . . well you know) and cut out the coupons for every free thing we could possibly send for putting her name and address on it.

She wrote to mention getting some odd mail including some very interesting “toys.” A week later she reported getting more stuff than would fit in her dorm mailbox. Then it hit the fan (I guess places started selling their mailing lists) and for about 3 weeks they just delivered her mail in a full sized mail bag which she had to sort though to find any legit stuff. She said she had no problem getting rid of most of the “toys” by just piling them on a table in their common room. I guess I was very popular on her girls dorm floor after that.

Ok I know we have a lot of Dudley Do-Rights here but there’s got to be more practical jokers than this out there.

Mark?

Edit: Ok I changed the title to broaden the scope. An apropos topic with the date that’s coming up soon.

Don't look at me. I'm a nice guy.

And I'm hoping that all of you like me.

Well, I remember back in high school we had a hippy type teaching our metal shop class. He was generally known around the school for being a bit of a twit as well as having private liason's with the girls phys ed teacher.

Anyway, part of our metal shop involved training in welding and brazing amongst other things, and Mr "L" used to test our welds by placing them in the same, huge bench vise and beat the crap out of the welded pieces to test their strength and mark us accordingly. Now, most of us kinda got the impression that Mr "L" was a little to enthusiastic trying to break the students welds since he seemed to get a little flustered on a 'good' weld and keep on hammering at it 'til he was red in the face so next class, a couple of us grade 9'ers decided to exact some justice on Mr "L".

Normally, he started classes off with a 20-30 minute lesson on whatever we were learning at the time, perhaps turning or milling, in this case we were working on small engine repair. So, before class a couple of us made some adjustments to the tool cabinet and to his favourite bench vise. He had the class around the big workshop bench with a small 4 stroke engine sitting on it, explaining how it works and how we'll take it apart ect....so he goes to get the 3/8" ratchet out of the tool cabinet, grabs both doors in each hand, swings them open and both of the bloody doors fly off and rattle to the shop floor, someone had removed the pins out of all the hinges!!...class just goes NUTS!!....of course, so did Mr "L"....he got really pissed off and yells out to my friend "Pete" whom he suspected...."WHERE"S YOUR WELDING PROJECT?"....Pete brings his welding project up to Mr L, who was feeling he was going to exact some revenge by embarassing Pete's sh*tty welding skills in front of the whole class..."Now we'll see how strong you're weld is!!"....goes to open his beloved bench vise, that looked like it belonged in a WW2 Russian Tank Factory..."WHAT!!...WHO WELDED THIS VISE CLOSED!!!" Class goes even more NUTS!!

The whole class new about it, but knowone said a peep, even though the entire class served detention. I think it kind of put this Mr L in his place a bit, he seemed to quieten down a little after that.

The good old days of having fun and messing with coworkers are long gone where I work. Everyone has to be “PC” or you get some ridiculous complaint filed against you. It’s so bad that I can’t even hold a door open for a female anymore because that is considered discrimination…… No joke.

But, there was a time when we did have a lot of fun. Anti seize on ear muffs, phones or hard hat brow bands were always good ones. A couple drops of methyl purple in someone’s coffee that you really didn’t like was a good one too. Before we had email, passwords, time outs and an IT Gestapo, love letters between coworkers were always expected. You’d walk away from a computer that you were logged onto and someone would send one of your coworkers a love letter from your account…..not that I ever did that….LOL. I had my house put up for sale for one hell of a good deal once. I must have had twenty calls on that one. One time a friend of mine who was constantly coming up with creative ways to mess with coworkers staged an inflatable “Love Ewe” in the trunk of another guy’s car. He then got security to make sure they pull him car over for a search and the Ewe popped out of the trunk with a string of cars waiting to gain access to the facility. It was quite obvious what a pervert was supposed to do with the Ewe…

In my Navy days, we’d always send new guys to the bridge for a bucket of steam or report to the bow of the ship for mail buoy duty where he was supposed to snag the mail bag off the buoy as the ship passed by. I used to have the new guys stand bilge watch too. Watching water slosh back and forth always had the same results. Oh…the good old days…

In college, years ago, someone had an issue with the folks in the campus clinic. He mumbled for a while and then stuffed all the PO boxes with a notice that everyone was supposed to bring a urine sample to the clinic.

They came with dixie cups, coke bottles, ...

we filled our boss's cubical with peanuts, the Styrofoam kind.

One of my former coworkers used to work as a phone and network cabling installer. If there was a new guy / apprentice working a job with him, he'd send him out to the truck to bring back a box of dial tones.

When I used to train Tool & Die or Machining apprentices in the shop, I would talk to them very seriously about the invention of the machinery...."Yes, the first milling machine was invented by a Russian fellow by the name of Yuggo Millitov...."

I’ve always wanted to get someone with packing peanuts but haven’t gotten the chance.

A group of bosses (about 5) were standing around in the engine shop (big open area) having a secret squirrel meeting. I just happened to have a dummy grenade in my backpack ran and got it and rolled it through the door in between them. Then walked in picked it up and said “Just practicing.” Kind of surprised that one didn’t get me called on the carpet or sent for counseling.

At officer candidate school another sergeant and I recruited a few others to get the training officers. The next time something when wrong and they started calling for someone to fess up to blowing it the other sergeant stepped forward and said “I am Spartacus!” Of course I then stepped up and said “No, I am Spartacus!” Followed by another and another until people we hadn’t previously talked to were doing it. Our trainers finally had to cry uncle because they completely lost control.