Work birthday

The weather forecast was for 8-10 inches of snow. The supervisor, Joe, told our crew to be ready to be at work for a few days, including staying overnight the next day or two if needed. We were being sent home at noon, and told to return at ten that night, with extra clothes, food and drink. We had already made sure all snow equipment was hooked up and ready to go. One of the foremen, Dave, was not happy. If we stayed overnight, he would be celebrating his birthday at work, instead of at home. But, when we got to work the next day, Dave was there, although he wasn't happy about it. Unknown to him, a few of us had come up with some gag gifts.

We were a small group of foremen- there were three of us, and our supervisor, Joe, in one large office. We were close enough that we were constantly pulling pranks on each other. Probably the best prank we pulled was to tie Joe’s chair to his desk with a bungee cord. There was just enough leeway he could pull the chair about a foot, but then the elastic cord would make the chair roll back under the desk. What made the prank priceless was the morning we bungeed the chair, not only was it snowing very lightly, but Joe was 15 minutes late, and was trying to organize the crews while fielding phone calls asking what we were doing about the dusting. He was extremely distracted, talking to people in person and on the phone, and wasn't watching the chair, which kept sliding back under the desk. On the third pull, Joe blew up. “What the $@**?& is wrong with this chair”, at the top of his voice. Joe was one of those people who turned red when he was mad, and now he was redder than iron just pulled from the forge. He tried to rip the chair out from under the desk with both hands, and only succeeded in pulling the desk away from the wall. “WTF”, Joe yelled, then seeing the bungee cord attached to both desk and chair, sat on the desk laughing.

We picked on Joe a lot. Another great prank was the time, from one side of our office, we threaded some fishing line up into the drop ceiling, and over to Joe's desk. We then tied the fishing line to a thin piece of wood that was parallel to the opening. The string hung down the wall, and was hidden under another desk, taped within reach, so it was easily grabbed. We had moved one of the 24 inch square ceiling panels about 4 inches away from one side of its frame, and left it on top of the frame on the other side, putting it at a slight incline. Then we took some loose tennis balls, and put them behind the wood piece.

So, once we pulled the string enough, the wood piece would move out of the way, and the balls could fall down on Joe's desk. We even tried it out, to make sure it would work. Several times.

We planned and installed this on a day Joe was off, and, yes, we had way too much time on our hands.

When Joe returned to work, and sat at his desk, Dave quietly and slowly pulled the fishing line. Having practiced, we knew how much line to pull. We all were sitting there quietly, Joe had his left side to the desk, when the first ball fell. He turned and laughed,

and called us some adult type names. The second ball didn't drop down for a minute or two, and by that time Joe had turned back to his desk, looking at paperwork, and the ball hit his paperwork, spilled his coffee, and scared Joe to no end. Joe repeated his name calling, improving on it. While he was cussing us the third ball dropped, almost hitting Joe. He picked one up and threw it at us, but admitted it was a good prank, especially because the workings weren't visible.

We didn't get any sleep that night, having spent most of the night working. Everyone had gathered in the shop area to go for breakfast, and several of us presented Dave with a few presents. First was the card. I had recycled a birthday card from my wife’s birthday, just a few days before. I had crudely crossed out her name, but it was still visible, and had written Dave’s name on it. One of the other foremen’s gift was a chocolate Easter bunny- it was around Easter- with the ears chewed off. A third present was a pack of bubble gum, the type about an inch round. The change was that the orbs had all been chewed, then repackaged in the original wrappers. Dave really appreciated the effort, sincerely saying it was the best away from home birthday he had ever had, having spent some birthdays in the army and away from home.

The last prank was on the other foreman, Chris. He was shorter than us, with hair past his shoulders we wore in a ponytail. He almost always came to work wearing sandals. His sandals were very thin, and we often teased him that they were women's sandals, but he agreed that maybe they were, no big deal. One day, as I was looking at them, I realized that if I made a copy of them on our lousy copier, the copy would look exactly like the output of our crappy copier. Slightly tan, little brown spots on them. First I memorized their position on the floor, then I made a copy of each, sole up, and hid the sandals. I cut the image out of the copy paper, then put the copy’s down on the floor where the sandals had been. Oh yeah, I alerted Dave and Joe to the prank.

Chris came into the office, took off his work boots, and socks, then tried to slip his feet into the sandals. He wasn't paying close attention, and couldn't get his feet in the straps. After a few tries, he says, “what is wrong with these #^@? sandals, and bent to pick one up. You can imagine his surprise when he picked up a piece of paper. He started laughing, and taped both to the wall as a reminder.