'[We] grew chia seeds in his keyboard': 25+ Office pranks to pull on your unsuspecting coworkers

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jun 14, 2023 3:00 PM EDT

A good prank can make the time fly by at the office, so check out these 25 ideas for some excellent inspo! 

Offices can become a little dull – after all, they're a place we spend 40 hours per week, doing the same activities with the same people. So why not liven things up with some harmless pranks?

As an intern, I was once assigned to make jello in order to imprison someone's stapler inside. After trekking out to buy jello packets, my boss and I made jello and let it chill overnight. The stapler was trapped in it's clear orange cocoon, much to the chagrin of the guy in the next cubicle over, who laughed for ages when he discovered the prank. A wholesome prank really can build camaraderie and break up the monotony. Although as you can see from the responses below, some people took their pranks a little too seriously. 

After that, check out these 20 final bosses who you can never beat, sorry. 

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  • 01
    Font - r/AskReddit . Posted by u/jon-in-tha-hood S Office pranksters of reddit, what's the best prank you've ever pulled on a coworker?
    via u/jon--tha-hood
  • 02
    Font - forman98 Pretty simple to do, but zip tie the lever that adjusts the height of the chair so that when they sit in it, it lowers all the way down. Then when they get up, it raises back up. It will take them a minute to think about looking under the seat, and it's funny to watch them sink when they sit down.
    via u/forman98
  • 03
    Font - MattHurting Put a small RC car in a nearby office trashcan, under the bag so you can't see it. Just twitch the remote once in a while to make noise.
    via u/MattHurting
  • 04
    Font - smellthecolor9 Variation: I took a CD player with headphones plugged in, turned it all the way down, and then stashed it above the acoustic panels right above my boss's desk. Bonus points for putting an annoying song on loop.
    via u/smellthecolor9
  • 05
    Font - GreenGemsOmally It's small but I have a friend at work who keeps leaving his computer unlocked. I go into the mouse settings and slow down the mouse movement as much as possible. We have three huge monitors and it's such a hilarious time to watch him try to mouse back over to the settings window that I've hidden in the bottom corner of one of the monitors.
    via u/GreenGemsOmally
  • 06
    Font - TemporaryBoyfriend. Plugged in a spare USB keyboard into my co- worker's desktop. Would randomly hold down the shift key when he was entering his password, lock his terminal when he turned around to talk to someone, or tap the windows key while he was typing.
    via u/TemporaryBoyfriend
  • 07
    Font - I'm not good at not laughing. I managed to hold it in for 4 days, until he finally lost it and started smashing his keyboard and unplugging all the USB cables. He got to the one for the extra keyboard, looked around, then yanked on the cable HARD, and the spare keyboard skipped across my desk and slammed into my cube wall. I laughed so hard I cried for almost 15 minutes.
    via u/TemporaryBoyfriend
  • 08
    Font - ayethen I had this prank pulled on me. This was in my first job, about 12 years ago. We weren't allowed to share music files via work email, but my work buddy begged me to anyway. I'd only just sent him some song he asked for, when I got a pop up from an anon sender basically saying: "this is IT, we observed you sent, blah blah, blah and we're locking your account". I flipped out, thinking it was for real, and then I hear him laughing a few cubicles away. He sent me the pop-up. I totally
    via u/ayethen
  • 09
    Font - [deleted] Two of my co-workers sat across from each other. One day they were both out and our boss says "hey lets switch their cubes while they're gone" so we did exactly that. We literally moved everything so their desks were exactly the same but on opposite sides.
    via u/deleted
  • 10
    Font - Xelex When someone would go on vacation at a place I worked, they would usually come back to find some minor prank - mouse ball wrapped in tape sort of things. One guy was not well liked. He was pretty well disliked, actually. He went on vacation and when he returned he found his 4' tall cubical closed off by clear packing tape, and filled entirely with packing peanuts. We all found it much funnier than he did, as I recall.
    via u/Xelex
  • 11
    Font - Xelex At a previous job we took turns with an on- call phone. I got it one week, and found the previous coworker (D) hadn't signed out of Hangouts (which we used company wide for IM). We worked in cubical farm sort of environment, and D sat next to C, though sort of back to back. They were pretty good work bros, but not especially close.
    via u/Xelex
  • 12
    Font - I waited until both D and C were on phone calls, and messaged C (but it looked like it was coming from D) "Hey, my neck is hurting. Would you mind coming over here and rubbing on my shoulders?" I was about 5 rows over when I hit send, but we all clearly heard C say "Excuse me?!?"
    via u/Xelex
  • 13
    Font - 12 acmesalvage Mid 90's, cleared a friend/co-workers cube out while he was on vacation in Europe, and sealed it off with Crime scene tape. When he came back, called him into our managers office and told him a fairly elaborate, extremely believable story about how the office had been raided, and everything from his cube taken into evidence. Freaked him out so bad that we had to come clean with him almost immediately.
    via u/acmesalvage
  • 14
    Font - mattxfish I used to be a production manager and anytime we would get someone new on the shop floor, I would tell them that our maintenance supervisor(who was in on this) needed help moving some equipment in the basement. All they had to do was walk through the two doors at the north side of the building and Z(maintenance super) would be waiting. There was no basement.
    via u/mattxfish
  • 15
    Font - jordanscollected I put a box of water on a coworkers forklift with the intention of him getting on and getting soaked. Well the warehouse big wig director came around the corner and hopped on real quick to move the forklift and the jokes' punchline was not near as funny.
    via u/jordanscollected
  • 16
    Font - Kelluthus My buddy had this hand lotion on his desk that he used everyday soon as he got into work. I found the same brand/bottle and bought it, emptied it out, then filled it full of mayonnaise. Made sure it was the same weight as his current lotion before making the switch, just in case. He came in and used it! I screwed up and started laughing way too hard and had to fess up, who knows how long he would have kept putting mayo on his hands before realizing something was up!
    via u/Kelluthus
  • 17
    Font - lizlemonaid One of my Tech Supervisors won the leadership award for the quarter which includes a lovely headshot for the slideshow. He hated this photo, which made me contact the company photographer and get a copy. I proceeded to make ~200 copies of various sizes to plaster around his office. No surface was safe. I took apart his fan and taped little ones on each blade. One on the phone receiver, under the chair, inside the lamp, and basically wallpapered his desk with photos of himself.
    via u/lizlemonaid
  • 18
    Font - My favorite was the three foot poster size cut out I made to take his place at meetings. It was three years ago and he's still finding photos.
    via u/lizlemonaid
  • 19
    Font - P lookingformywheezy Everyday my coworker eats a Nutella sandwich. One day I switched it for marmite. His face was priceless.
    via u/lookingformywheezy
  • 20
    Font - Mrferg101 Did a screen shot of my co-worker's desktop and then made it his background image and moved all of his real icons off the screen.
    via u/Mrferg101
  • 21
    Font - BaconReceptacle I wrote "You're Welcome" on a tiny piece of paper and taped it over the sensor on the bottom of my co- worker's computer mouse. It was hard not to bust out laughing as he plugged/unplugged, rebooted, and checked the Windows settings before finally looking at the bottom of it.
    via u/BaconReceptacle
  • 22
    Font - omgyouc I was making a sandwich and suddenly everyone in the office wanted me to make them a sandwich. I left the plastic wrapping on all the cheese slices. Try and bite through that John.
    via u/omgyouc***
  • 23
    Font - Netronidus Been the recipient of and partook in: • Had entire desk and all contents wrapped in aluminum foil when I was on vacation. • Coworker would randomly add keys to my keychain when I was away from my desk. Randomly put a piece of tape on bottom of laser mouse so it would quit working. Routinely unplug mouse and keyboard from coworkers computers.
    via u/Netronidus
  • 24
    Font - • Coworker printed off a ton of small portraits of himself and then hid them in locations through my desk. Picked up phone and there he was on the handset. Removed the last post-it-note from dispenser and there was his face. There are probably lots more, but I'll have to think on this.
    via u/Netronidus
  • 25
    Font - menowashair I worked in an office and would remove all but 3 or 4 staples out of my coworker's stapler every day since he left before me. We often staple a stack of documents so you would hear him at his desk: staple...staple...staple...cl ick, click "DIT!!" He thought the janitorial staff that cleaned the office at night was stealing his staples. I never told him it was me.
    via u/menowashair
  • 26
    Font - sirclesam Two things we did when people were out for a couple weeks: Grew chia seeds in his keyboard so it was a small field when he got back. Another time (different guy) we just started leaving any trash on his desk (things that wouldn't smell) then say before he came back we got some gift wrap and wrapped up the whole cube. Bonus was we hid a six pack of smiranoff ices in the rubble.
    via u/sirclesam

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