It's probably not politicaly correct to mention anything that hurt someone, but I just had to share this...

I do diamond Machining and was visiting another company that does the same- I make lenses for military stuff and they make similar stuff like contact lenses and, more importantly, glass eyes (well, they're actualy plastic). they're painted by skilled craftsmen and look incredibly incredibly real. So I asked for one and they said yep no problem hehe.

Well, in the pub that night, I palmed it in my right hand and covering my (real) eye with my hand said to Julie the barmaid "Ouch! I think i got something in my eye.. have a quick look will you?" "Sure", she said and started to move to have a look. At that point I handed her the glass eye lol.

she jumped about two feet, launched the glass eye about 15 feet across the room and shrieked loud enough to silence the ENTIRE pub hahaha!

Can anyone beat that :)

IMANCARROT That A Great Story, One Time At A Company That I Worked For They Had To Replace The Chip Conveyor On A Mill. The One The Bought Was A Magnet Type And Worked Great On Steel. But When We Ran Alum. For The First Time We Had A Mess. I Was On The 3rd Shift Left A Note For The Foreman (who Was A Great Guy X Ballplayer No Knowlge Of Metal) The Note Asked If He Would Order The Specail Alum Magnet So He Put In A Request To Purchacing And They Started Calling Around After A Few Day The Foreman Walk Up To Me And Said To Nerver Leave A Note For Him Again

This was many years ago, while I was working in a wire mill.

We had a large wire welding fabric machine called a Schlatter that would weld cross wires on top of other wires. We were making concrete reinforcement panels for the Columbia Tower here in Seattle. The panels were welded and came though a shear to be cut in half.

I was bored to tears by the process of shearing, stacking hot panels and feeding the machine as the operators helper. We were always playing little jokes on each other during the graveyard shift.

Reject panels were always painted with red paint. So, I grabbed the can and sprayed an old leather work glove with the red paint. The operator was on the other side of the shear, so he couldn't see what was going on at the back. The next cut of the shear I stuck the glove between the knives as he cut the panel. Of course leaving the red painted glove fingers on his side. I put the rest of the painted glove on my hand and let out a little scream. The guy dang near passed out, while the Foreman seen the ending part of the ordeal! Oops, big big troubles!

I almost got fired for that little stunt.......but dang, the look on his face was hilarious at the time. Realizing afterward it was over the top. :nono:

After all it was April fools and no one got hurt! :D

DC

I don't hold with pranks in the shop although Lakeside's might squeeze under the radar, but I worked with a guy who pulled an accidental prank. The guy was missing a foot due to a mishap with a wire rope on a tugboat so he became a machinist. One day he was pushing a large shaft out of a sprocket on a big vertical press with a big guy helping him. The shaft came out, hit the floor, fell over and crushed his prosthetic foot. He just said oh **** pulled his leg free and hopped over to his locker to put on his spare. When he got back to the press his helper was still out cold draped over the shaft on top of the foot; he did not know it was prosthetic!

Kind of why I posted it as not a cool thing to prank when it comes to accidents.

Here is another that I get more of a chuckle out of....

One of my current co-workers seems to like pranks and can get laughing tearfully when telling his side of the story. Most of which seem a bit mean spirited. A rather Eddy Haskel type of chraracter if you recall the Leave it to Beaver show from days gone by. Trouble waiting to happen?

I have been the recipient of a few of his jokes. So, what comes around goes around.

Our dogs had this electronic pull toy Duck with a battery box inside that would go quack, quack, quack. I happen to find it doing some yard clean up of what was left of the toy.

Being the engineering type I am. I found a way to install it under this jokers chair in his office here recently. It never went off until he leaned back far enough during a meeting of the minds(Supervisors, Plant managers and leads). It went off about three more times before he could find it. All present couldn't stop laughing, so it was no big deal.

Strange.......he didn't think it was so funny any more.

These things do make you think twice! But some people got it coming! Heheh!

DC

I have been on the receiving end of many pranks in the shop. One time I was getting ready to set an extrusion container into a large King vertical boring mill.
I had the rail all the way up and had to turn the chuck so that the jaws were in such a way that the container could slide between the jaws and under the rail.

I signaled the guy in the crane to lower the chain thru the hole in the container
( I should explain that this container was about 4 to 5 feet in diameter and about 4 to 5 feet high with a 10 or 12 inch hole thru it). After putting a 2" diameter bar thru the chain I signaled the crane guy to raise the container up.

When it was at the right height I signaled him to mov slowly towards the machine. Now when you pick something like this up with a chain thru the hole it tilts. So I had to be almost under the darn thing to guide it between the chuck jaws and at the same time use a bar to raise the back side so it would settle on the jaws. As I was doing all this I heard a very loud noise an not knowing what happened I was probably 30 or 40 feet away before I stopped to look back. The whole crew was standing there laughing.

It seems that the shop joker came up behind me with a large plank and while I was under that big container he slapped the plank on the floor. That was a long time ago and I don't remember if I had to change my shorts or not.

ErnieD

jeez Ernie, you are being way to kind calling him a joker, far less kind monikers come to mind - that's the kind of crap the can cause the wrong reaction and get someone hurt

My personal favorite is having the rookies file a magnet flat, Actually told a young guy that and I went to a long lunch came back and he was still trying. Don't think he ever got the joke.

When I worked in a chemical plant we had a shift supervisor that was deathly afraid of snakes. Out section of the plant backed up to the woods and was always good for a snake or two. I talked up snake sightings for 3 days with help from others. He also had the anal property of you could set your watch by him when he was on rounds.

On the 4th night (Graveyard shift) I climbed into the pipe rack. I took a piece of camoflauge rag and dipped it into cold condensate and waited. Sure enough here he came on his little supervisor bicycle. I dropped the rag and it hit the back of his neck and the two end wrapped around the front. Both hands off the bike and clawing at his neck. He careened off the bldg and into the muddy road ditch.

My only miscalculation was I couldn't get out of the pipe rack quick enough so I got caught and spent the next 2 days rodding out intercoolers with pressurized steam hose in July.

Later, Steven

Sending noob helpers for polarity grease and sky hooks was always good for a hoot.

Not even gonna mention the acetylene bombs except that no one ever got hurt.

had a guy on the other shift he was a weasely lil rat of a man , and i m being nice ,
one day i was getting ready to pull a sub table off of the machine which we normally pulled with the forklift , well it was close to shift change so i put an eye bolt into the tool holder , put the tool in the spindle brought the spindle down , and connected all the straps to the eye bolt , when he came up to the machine i had the handle control in my hands pretending i'm cranking this table up ,he comes up and says what are you doing, and i said , ah pulling the table , and he's LIKE THAT ? well ya i always do it this way , the whole time his eyes are darting toward the forman , he says well i guess what they don t know wont hurt them ,i'm like YA AND ME NEITHER ,
well sinse your hear i'll let you finish , his face was red , grinding his teeth ,SURE no problem i'll carry on , it was 2minutes and the forman came into the change room busting his gut and say WHAT are you doing to that guy ? didn take em long to rat me out again , we all knew what that guy was made of , that was one of many for that boy , i love to torment those types

This is a second hand story but its funny if its true.
This guys who was a med student had a lecture where they disected a dead man. Apparently, he stole the penis and testicals as one package.
Later that day he went to the urinal when there was lots of others in there at the same time. He stood there as though he was trying to have a wee. After a few moments he threw the package into the urinal and said loudly, " Bloody thing doesnt work"

Funny if its true, but I just dont know.

And another story similar theme. My next door neighbour had a freind who was a med student too. After they had finished disecting some dead man, this girl was poking around the dead mans crutch area a bit. The lecturer asked her what she was looking for. She said in all seriousnes, she was looking for the bone.

Was told a story by a mate I work with only a couple of weeks ago and still have sore smomach muscles from laughing.

He worked at BHP steel in the coil division. Huge coils of steel are stored in an area and are moved with 100 ton ( I think) gantry cranes driven by a crane driver up in a booth in the crane itself. These cranes are very high up in the air.

Sometimes the cranes were driven too far along at the end of the track and would crash into the end stops and make a big bang and shudder. This crane driver thought it would be funny to get a pair of overalls and rags and make a "crane driver".
He intentionally drove the crane into the end stop and tossed out the dummy just as the forreman was in the area, this dummy fell out and smashed into a coil and fell behind it.
All that wre involved in the gag watched this poor foreman make this sick sort of ooooohhhhhhh sound, turn red and basically have a heart attack on the spot.
Everyone found the funny side of it later but at the time they really thought this guy was going to drop dead on the spot.

Cheers all M

Was working in my dad's shop at the ripe old age of about 17....
Running a lathe on the other side of the isle from me was a guy named Dave, who wasn't the sharpest tool in the crib...really nice guy, tried real hard, but might have done better in a different career.

So, the foreman had set up a job for him, shown him how to run it, then told him to run it and bring the first part to check. While Dave was off with the first part, I swung around and switched the lathe into reverse. Dave came back with the OK to run it, put in the next part, and SCREEEEEECHHHHHHH!!!! went the form tool. (it was brass, and it really wasn't hurting anything)

While Dave went to get the foreman, I switched it back. Dave comes back, foreman in tow, and miraculously the part runs just fine. Foreman leaves, Dave runs another part, and goes off to show the foreman. I switch the lathe into reverse.

The third time the foreman shows up he KNOWS what's going on, gives me a funny/nasty look, and Dave was able to run the rest of the parts without incident. Dave never had a clue what was going on, and the foreman never said a word.

So I'm working part time in this job shop and we're doing these really precise and aesthetically gorgeous parts for a really picky customer. Look is as important as function.

We're down to the wire, UPS is due in 1/2hour, one guy's running the Hardinge AHC, I'm deburring and doing final QC, another guy is at the other side of the shop cleaning and packing....and Henry, the owner, is like the proverbial chicken....

With the clock running down, I yell to the guy cleaning and packing "Last Part!!" as I pick up a scrap setup part and rolled it 40' across the floor to him.

I thought Henry was gonna have a heart attack. We must have howled for 15 minutes.

For this one you gotta be old to appreciate the humor....

I'm going on an unexpected trip and need to borrow a suitcase from my parents. Knowing that mom and dad are at an Amercian Society of Tool and Manufacturing Enginners banquet, I ride my motorcycle there to ask mom where the suitcases are at their house.

Of course, the meeting just happens to be at the stage where my dad is at the podium about to introduce the guest speaker, Bill Lear. I was just going to discretely walk to the table where my mom was and ask her....but ...

As I opened the door, my dad is at the podium, and everyone turns to look at me. Great. I'm looking like a reject from an Easy Rider audition. You could have heard a pin drop.

Not wanting to waste an opportunity, I say in an announcing voice "Daddy, daddy! I only had two cavities!!"

Remember that pin dropping? You could still hear it. Dad says "That's nice son." and continued with his introduction of Bill.

I went to the table where mom was sitting with Moya to find mom just mortified. Oh well.

Later, dad told me he thought it was funny, and thought that the membership was a bunch of stuffed shirts. He'd known Bill and Moya for years, and wasn't embarrassed in the least.

I guess I'm sharing that story because it was a moment where I recognized the concept of taking yourself too seriously. I never wanted to be lumped into that category.

There were 4 times in my first job right out of school.

The first included the entire lab, so to fire one of us they would have had to let the entire lab go. One day my boss was out so the so we decided to experiment with a little bit of low yeild explosives making. Basically the equivalent of a fertilizer bomb, but with ammonia and iodine instead of ammonium nitrate and petrolium hydrocarbons. The stuff is OK then wet, but becomes very unstable when dry. So it would dry in the hood and the fan motor vibrations would set it off faster than we could keep it wet and try to get rid of it. When he came back in he saw the permanent purple stains in the hood, knew exactly what had gone on and basically said "I don't want to know about this, but I expect it will never happen again. Now clean the hoods".

The second one involved low level radiation and insects. Lets just say the radiation safety officer was wondering how radioactive iodine was appearing of the ceiling of areas of the company where there was no radioactive material allowed.

The third, one of our techs left his radiation badge unattended (leaving things unattended was a dangerous thing to do around the rest of us). So we locked it in the cabinet with the radioactive iron for a little while. Each week they sent those badges out for analysis. His reported that he had absorbed enough radiation to kill a small army.

And last but not least No. 4

One of the techs (last name of Fry) left his photoID unattended... big mistake. Through the magic of a scanner and some good artists there appeared ID's for French Fry, Elvis Fry, etc. I think there were a total of 12 in the set by the time everyone was through.

May I propose another for you young pranksters out there inspired by another thread.

I think "hide the dongle" would be funny. Just watch how you explaine it to the girls in the front office. They may not know what a dongle is and get the wrong impression of just what you want to hide and where you want to hide it.

fizzissist ... I like the story. Does that mean I'm old?

The first thing I'd do is go ask the office folks if anyone had seen my dongle!

Seriously, I had a problem with our EH&S Rad Safety officer....sent in my badge, and got a report for it that had NOTHING that indicated it was my badge. He hadn't sent it in with the group and the control, so it's obvious he fudged it by giving me a bogus report. I contacted the company that did the analysis, Landauer, and they were unable to track the numbers on my report to anything that was on my original badge...I'd had the foresight to document ALL the data on the badge...

Good news is that I'm confident there was no appreciable rad exposure...

Glad you liked the story! Was hoping there was someone 'round here that remembered that stupid toothpaste ad!

ask the office folks if anyone had seen my dongle!

have you seen my dongle?
Would you like to see my dongle?

There was a radio station in my area known for pranks and every St Patricks day they would have the lepricaun come in to make prank phone calls.

I still remember the call he made to some unsuspecting young lady (I assume she was probably just out of high school and working her first job, maybe 20 years old tops).

Have you got a wee bit o' the Irish in you lass?
Would you like a wee bit o' the Irish in you, it's just the wee bit...

The 30 seconds stunned silence was deafening.

This was the station who, every 4 years, would sponsor Dwane Glasscock for president and would run great parodies of comercials like "solosex... when a mans got to do what a mans got to do" (parody of soloflex) or adds for the show Ally McVeal. In fact some of their old files and fake comercials can be found by googling "the big mattress", including some of Dwane's material.

This was the station who, every 4 years, would sponsor Dwane Glasscock for president and would run great parodies of comercials like "solosex... when a mans got to do what a mans got to do" (parody of soloflex) or adds for the show Ally McVeal. In fact some of their old files and fake comercials can be found by googling "the big mattress", including some of Dwane's material.
And that’s station was WBCN Boston (They are not what they used to be sad I say I miss old Dwayne or Charles)

That would be the station Mike. Charles is retired and living in Hawaii now. But he was a Boston institution. And he still maintains the big mattress web site.

I remember a show he did once where, prior to the show he went over a friends house for breakfast, and unknown to him, his friend spiked it with Acid. A very trippy show to say the least. And the running battle he had with the FCC where he would try to bleep out the swear words, but miss, and bleep out the wrong word instead.

Did a stint as sound man for Ice Capades (the happiest show in town!)....
....the light man used to love to have me page people before the show started.
One of his favorites was, not surprisingly, Mike Hunt.

Funny, Mike never came to any of our shows.

I grew up with WBCN and WCOZ remember them lived(many year ago) in Scituate-Minot

Mike, a little trivia for you. Do you know what BCN stands for?


Boston Concert Network. Their name back then they were a classical music station.

Boston Concert Network

Mike. used to love COZ, great station. Remember Bud Balou (afternoons right after school let out). Turns out years later I found out that my father went to high school with Bud's sister.

Do you Know what happen to Mark Perento sometime lick me is not the thing to do(if the tong is under 18)

Mike Hunt.

Sounds like the simpsons and Barts prank phonecalls.

fizzissist, I assume from your handle you are a physicist... What's your specialty?

well this thread is taking off faster than a prom dress

Mike, I don't know what happened to Mark.

Dale Doorman ended up on some hiphop station for a time about 6 years ago. KISS 108 I think it was. But at the time I heard him he sounded like he had been dead for a while. His voice was totally gone.

Mark P found with a boy and now he's where he belong after the stunt he pull about 5 years ago

Mark P found with a boy

So he turned out to be a pervert. And not even a priest. He may have gotten away with it if he were.

Not in Boston anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very true Mike. You know, I do remember something about him getting busted for it, but never new what happened. Having raised two and having taught for a while I tend to be very protective of kids. So I'm glad to see he got what he deseves.

sdantoni are you in Bellingham,Ma.?

Yes I am Mike

nice town now we should go back to the thread sorry all

When I was an apprentice we used to charge up a capacitor (about the size of a ciggarete packet), walk by a tradeseman and drop it in his labcoat pocket. Your natural reaction is to stick your hand in there to see what it is hehehe shocking! :)

Lets not forget my favorite Prussian Blue on the door handle

hahaha!

Similar- we use Jewelers eyeglasses (loupes) to examine optical surfaces. Jewelers Rouge and vaseline (used to stick prisms down) on the rim of the eyeglass leaves a perfect red ring around your eye and when you try to wipe it off it goes literaly everywhere lol I never use one without first wiping it with a tissue!

I worked in a very large transmission plant. The skilled tradesmen had electric golf carts to get from job to job. I was walking down an aisle once when one of the young electricians offered me a ride. When we arrived at my destination I got off the cart and he asked me if I could use some layout dye. I said yes and he pointed to a can in the back of the cart. It was laying on its side. When I picked it up the kid took off with the cart and as I turned the can upright I got this huge shock. I threw the can at him but he was out of range by then. It seems that he had rigged up a battery, capacitor,mercury switch and whatever else and charged it when it was on its side. When the can was turned upright the capacitor discharged and you know the result. I have been retired for many years and see this young man on occasion and we still laugh about it.

ErnieD

In the DOS days of PC's, I stopped by my brothers apartment. He wasn't home. So I modified his boot (start up) file. When his PC started it said.....

Warning: The system has detected an error.
Press any key to format the C: Drive.

Of course it didn't do anything. If you pressed any key it just continued to boot up. It did make his heart flutter a little.

Mike Mattera

One time in my younger days I worked building machines. We had an 'electrical' engineer (kid type, though older than myself) who had an irritating habit of coming out into the shop, taking people's tools out of their toolboxes, and fiddling with the equipment without asking.

One day I was finishing up a machine, almost ready for test. He was itching to fire it up for the first time. The machine was water cooled and had a 5 hp cooling pump on it. The business end was meant to be hosed up with 3/4" hose. Just before lunch, it occurred to me that the hose barbs for the hoses were pointing right at where you would stand to push the pump start button. So I filled the tank, disconnected one hose, taped a sign over the pushbutton station that said "Do Not Push This Button", and went to lunch.

When I came back from lunch, the guy was wet from his head down to his soaked shoes, and madder than a wet hen. Couldn't touch me, though, he had to remove the sign covering the button to start it. And anyone could forget one hose out of a dozen. Hehe. The foreman gave me one of his priceless glares, with a knowing smirk on his face.

--97T--

I had a great one that was sent to me as an email attachment.

When you opened it you got a big picture of a beer mug and a sign saying "free beer for all". The button to close the picture was rigged to move when the mouse came near it. When you finally clicked on the x in the upper right corner a big blue progress bar appeared on the screen and a note saying "company email of not for private use, you email file has been copied for possible legal action, please see your system administrator".

I sent it round the company (incliding the sysadmin), he thought it was funny until later that day when he had a line of about 20 people outside his office, all worried and asking questions about the possible legal action.

Relabled a Dykem Blue areosol can with an ink remover label. "A little blue goes a long way!!!"

My old boss went on vacation, and while he was gone we removed his office door, drywalled over it, and spackled and painted the hall. The look of absolute confusion on his face when he returned was worth the time off work :D

We had a dayshift, and a night shift. One guy on day crew and one guy on nights had a beef, pretty much the whole time I was there. Night guy was working alone one night, day guy came in the back way, quietly, snuck around the back of a machine night guy was working and got a can of wd-40 and a welders striker, and sprayed a fireball about 5 feet over his head. He screamed like a little girl, and I think he was more embarrassed about that than the actual joke itself. A couple of days later, night guy left the Fadal with the coolant hoses pointed up and over the door. Day guy fires off the machine, the coolant just raines down on him for about 5 seconds before he figures it out. I think they both got fired shortly after that. Probably ended up boxing in the parking lot.

The Boss was never really well versed w/ computers.

I took a screen shot of his desktop w/ all his short cuts and then cut and pasted all the shortcuts off the desktop into a folder w/ a simple yet pointless name in his 'documents'. Next I set his background to the screen shot I'd previously taken..

He complained about pc's all the time.. and it took a while for anyone to really listen.. he just couldn't get the "little buttons on the screen to work" finally after a week or so.. I went in a changed it back, by this time he'd stopped trying to use them and was using the start menu.. restored his desktop just like the screen shot.. and then later went and said.. "ok.. whats wrong w/ your short cuts... " I grabbed his mouse and opened a couple app's from the shortcuts.. he was soo baffled.. and I don't think he know's to this day what happened..

It kinda back fired though.. as now he think's pc's are more tempermental than ever and just work when they want to.. :D

Our electronics tech scrounged used computers and maintained a stock of parts for students, which included a stack of hard drives. Seems someone from another department was sneaking into his office and helping themselves to parts without asking. (funny thing is that if he'd simply asked, he'd get what he needed)...

So the tech puts a note on a drive that says "Formatted, Ready, Don't Use".

A few days later it disappears. A day or so later there is much consternation in an adjacent department....seems someone's VERY expensive computer smoked (literally, from what we heard!) Big time. Motherboard and power supply both. What a coincidence!!

Our tech wired the power supply leads on the drive so that high voltage went everywhere.....

Also coincidentally, the drives stopped disappearing.

Next time do this too, right click on the screen, highlight arrange icons and uncheck show Destop Items. Then next hide the taskbar by first right clicking on it, uncheck Lock The Taskbar, then move the cursor over the top edge until it turns into a vertical stretch icon. Right click, hold and drag it until it disappears. Then the screenshot wallpaper shows not only the desktop icons but the taskbar too. Now the start button doesn't work either. It is faster and makes the whole desktop seem frozen. Did that to the fab shop foreman when I came in one morning and found a questionable wallpaper featuring his pimply behind on my work PC.



The Boss was never really well versed w/ computers.

I took a screen shot of his desktop w/ all his short cuts and then cut and pasted all the shortcuts off the desktop into a folder w/ a simple yet pointless name in his 'documents'. Next I set his background to the screen shot I'd previously taken..

He complained about pc's all the time.. and it took a while for anyone to really listen.. he just couldn't get the "little buttons on the screen to work" finally after a week or so.. I went in a changed it back, by this time he'd stopped trying to use them and was using the start menu.. restored his desktop just like the screen shot.. and then later went and said.. "ok.. whats wrong w/ your short cuts... " I grabbed his mouse and opened a couple app's from the shortcuts.. he was soo baffled.. and I don't think he know's to this day what happened..

It kinda back fired though.. as now he think's pc's are more tempermental than ever and just work when they want to.. :D

Have seen two really hilarious ones at work thusfar;

The NC Tool & Cutter grinder op is a bit of a prankster, but hates it when someone gets even with him. One day he pissed off the wrong guy. (74yo foreman who still works 60+hrs a week.) Next time the operator has his head stuck in the machine, dressing a wheel, the foreman came along and turned the coolant on. (Anyone who's worked on an ANCA TX7 will know this one.)

Whenever someone is qualifying a wheel on one of the NC machines, you're guaranteed that a really loud noise will be made nearby for sh!ts and giggles.

For some reason, the state government has seen fit to start sending high school kids to trade school one day a week while they do their HSC.

Have thusfar sent these poor b@st@rds on the following errands;

-Find an imperial shifter
-Find a carbide file.
-Turn the dust collector on. (Takes them half an hour to realise you're talking about the pedestal fan next to you.)
-Find a 4/16" or 8/32" spanner. (Good for ten minutes of peace. After that it's hell to pay.)

Have also seen balloons floating around full of acetylene with little wicks hanging off them while at work. Won't go into too much detail there, however.

Ever rub a balloon on your head and stick it on the wall with the static electricity? Ever do it in the dark and watch the sparks in a mirror? Those little sparks go a long way towards explaining why acetylene and balloons or plastic bags are a BAD idea. For safety, acetylene should always be detonated in a semi-rigid container that doesn't collect a charge just in the act of filling it. Someplace where the shrapnel doesn't get you.

Hehehe. Detonating acetylene full-stop is a bad idea. However, in such endeavours I am merely a witness, not a perpatrator. Matter of fact, I'll recap that with a little horror story from trade school...

Twas a bright and sunny day... blah blah blah

So, I'm on a lathe turning some crap little job up and I hear these two clowns chatting in one of the welding bays around 8 feet away. I can already see the bottom of an acetylene bottle underneath the curtain.

I remember hearing, 'Now, before you light that...'

At which point, the 600ml bottle they'd filled got ignited, the entire shop was lit up and the curtain was flung at 90deg. Both lads were quite badly burnt from the melted plastic. (flame2)

Directing someone to be careful when picking up a 12kg weight off a bench that had been in the oven at 600c for over an hour and watching them walk off saying 'yeah, yeah' before having '12KG' permanently branded on their palm, however, was quite ironic and hilarious. (Even the person in question laughs about it in heinsight. He also listens to directions much more carefully now.) :cheers:

When I was at school we had A computer (yes one :)) and it was the pride and joy of our Maths teacher, she would marvel at how great this thing was, for those old enough it was a TRS80.

One day I was in early and wrote a little program that basically had a prompt waiting so when the teacher came in and pressed any key it would start printing text on the screen and making a little beeping sound after every letter printed, of course I slowed down the speed of the letters appearing for effect.

I cannot remember the exact nature of the dialog but it went something like :

Do you wish to continue ? Y/N (any key press just kept this going)
Enter password :_
Password confirmed, securing access
Access granted, collecting top secret documents...done
Do you wish to destroy ?...:You are responsible for any consequences !!!
Deleting, files will be unrecoverable
Done... sending your location
Have a nice day.


I think she may have got counselling after that one, funniest thing was that the computer had no way of outside world connection, there was no such thing as the internet, modem's didn't exist (not for us anyway). Looking back that was my first computer program...lol.

Russell.

Another one I have heard about was during the "good old days" at a remote pub where one night one of the locals was getting a little rowdy and got told to leave. Not happy with this turn of events once outside he just happened to be eating a Chicko roll, and of course as you did in those days just happened to have a bit of dynamite fuse in his pocket.

Being the creative fellow he was he shoved the fuse into the Chicko roll, lit it and threw it through an open window onto the crowded bar, needles to say the bar cleared with most choosing the closest exit, mainly windows.

Another one told to me by my Dad was during his first week working on a mine site, one of his jobs was to watch a conveyor belt carrying ore and check over the large electromagnet above the belt that removed any pieces of steel that managed to get mixed up with the ore, spikes, bolts etc.

One day at the end of his shift a couple of the powder monkeys finishing their shift strapped an empty charge casing to a lump of steel, shoved a fuse in, lit it and threw it onto the conveyor. He still laughs about how far he ran in such a short time and threw himself to the ground, much to the amusement of the onlookers.

Shotout.. I thought about perminantly hiding the task bar at the top of the screen or something... but I wanted it to still "work" just not work as well as it used to :D

Back in my bush flying days we used to harass the new kids [who were 'gonna be a bush pilot some day' ] who helped us out on the ramp or at the float base. The usual first task was to send them looking for a bucket of prop wash.. usually it was good for a couple hours of walking and lots of rolled eyes by others in the company.. everyone else knew what was going on as it happened regularly

We had a labourer that used to press down the rubbish in the general waste dustbin with his foot to save him having to empty it. These are the large bins that are almost waist height. Well one day we emptied the bin, filled it full of water and then laid paper on the surface. Of course the labourer came along put his foot in the bin and it went all the way to the bottom. Soaking his leg up to his hip.

Another trick we played on him was as follows:-
He had timed how long it took for an empty barrel to be filled from a tap. He could then start the tap and go for a cigarette while it filled. He would return just when it was almost full. One time while he was away I hammered the tap tight so it couldn't be switched off easily. His face was a picture when he came back, couldn't turn the tap off and the water started to pour all over the floor.

One of our welders had an Oxy/Acetyline set up at home, we were hanging out there one day after work it got dark and he said watch this. Filled up about 5 BIG balloons with and oxy/acetyline mix, put them in a big box, and made a wick out of a rag and some gasoline. I really didn't know what to expect, he went out to a field at a school across from his house, it was pitch black outside, lit the fuse and ran back to his living room to watch. BABOOM, about a 75 foot fireball, all the car alarms and burglar alarms within about a half mile were going off, the local cops, the county sherriff, the highway patrol, and the bomb squad from a neighboring county showed up. There were television news crews, cops up the yin yang, the whole neighborhood was out there talking to the cops, and apparently none of them saw us do it. It was the biggest fireball I had ever seen, I thought we were going to jail for sure, but nothing ever came from it. Good Fun.

Next time, try one balloon with a nice acetylene mix, and an a secondary balloon with helium for lift. That way, you get some really good altitude, depending on fuse timing... :)

Yeh .... one little static spark and the fun starts earlier than planned.

....a little careful grounding and careful handling prevented any surprises.. :)

Me and another setup man always played harmless pranks on new employees.
I got a ton of them..here's one.

One night at work there was a guy dancing around at his machine,he had to take a dump.
He goes to the bathroom and comes back,still dancing.
About 10 minutes goes by and he goes to the bathroom again...comes back,still dancing.
10 minutes later he runs to the bathroom..runs back still dancing and tells me he has to go to the other end of the plant to go to the bathroom and runs off.
I look at the other setup man and he's laughing out loud with tears in his eyes.
He tells me to follow him to the bathroom..We go in and i see work boots in the stall and wonder who it is thats been gone that long.
The setup man opens the stall and there is a pair of empty boots in the stall.
I almost lost it...I laughed for two days.

One shop i worked at,we had a break in joke for all the new grasshoppers.
We would send them from person to person looking for ID thread wires.

I may be a youngin but the formula SAE team I participate on has a few good ones. Mostly got played on freshman who didn't know their way around the tools or a print for that matter.

Usually can get the freshman with tossing them one of the chassis tubes. There are weld caps on the ends so it looks solid once the welds are ground off...you do i nice job of making it look heavy and then kinda toss it to them. they usually catch it with so much force they throw it back up in the air.

There was another kinda spacy type kid. He was a total know it all who new nothing. We had him convinced we had some new super material that not only was illegal to posess...but it was also invisible and extremely fragile. ( I told you he was a space case) The guys spent about three days carrying around a foot long piece of nothing. We ran the nothing through the lathe mill edm etc. then it was handed to him and he 'dropped it'. This poor kid was in so deep he had no idea and was totally a wreck.

the best though was drawing a print for a womens type device. We gave him the print in parts and he didn't realize what he was making until he went and showed the 'fueling nozzle' to the retired, evangalist, tool and die maker who taught all the classes in the shop. Priceless

I just got reminded about another one that happened here. I wasn't a part of it all, I just heard though the grape vine. We had a new kid who 'knew all about welding' as he 'came from the farm' [now.. I grew up on a farm so this is not a knock against our rural people] It was difficult to work with him as he was always telling the more experianced [some were VERY experianced & had been with the company for 15yr's+] people what they were doing wrong..

He was pretty much a complete nube but didn't want to admit it.. finally one day someone got sick of him spouting off, so they sent him up front to our "front desk" fella to ask for a "sheet stretcher".. he was told it was probably in the basement [there is no basement in our shop]. He goes and ask's, and the front desk fella realizing what's going on, quick as a wink asks him.. 'well do you need the big one or the little one..' anyway the kid went back and forth several times before he realized he was getting the run around.. he's since settled down and is a great help to the shop, once he realized we knew he didn't know jack about what he was doing and we could teach him.

Once in a while when we have tool box meetings about cleaning up the shop or whatever.. the "we're gonna have to find a home for those sheet stretchers" comes out and we all have a chuckle.. him included.. :)

We used to have a sink in our testing lab. It had one of those sprayers in the corner - like for rinsing dishes. I get the brilliant idea to place a rubber band around it so when you hit the faucet - it squirts out at you. Did the deed - have the band all painted black to match and everything - in comes plant manager (owners kid) and he proceeds to hit the faucet - totally sprayed with water and the best part is him trying to push the water back in instead of turning the faucet off. (mind you he was in a suit and headed to a board meeting).