digitalBush

I don't play nearly as many pranks as I should. The office can get boring sometimes, so it's good to spice things up from time to time. Brandon and I managed to pull a good one off with some help from our office secretary. Here's a few things to get you going:

1. Pick Your Target - Our target was a salesperson who has a very low tolerance for things not being right. As a bonus, he's not very good with technology.
2. Pick Your Prank - Our prank was to plant 2 Annoy-a-trons in his office. We tried hiding them in the ceiling, but people thought that something was wrong with the lights and wanted to call maintenance. The final hiding place for these ended up being one behind the blinds and one in his chair.
3. Stay close - It's important to get constant feedback about the status of your subject. It's good to find reasons for you (or your accomplices) to visit the victim.
4. Make it public - Once you've started the prank, slowly include people in the joke. Some of the people we included were because they had the authority to actually try to help this person. A few others we just felt would appreciate the joke. REMEMBER: It's still important to maintain control of the prank and not let others interfere with your plans.
5. Make the reveal even more public - Our pick was the company Christmas party. It's more embarrassing that way. As an added bonus, there will be witnesses should your victim become irate and try something funny.

This prank turned out to be a blast. That whole side of the building knew about the prank before all was said and done. We had a few snags. First, we set the beepers on the wrong beep. This noise was a high pitched squeal that kind of sounded like electricity doing things electricity shouldn't do. That prompted cries for someone to call our building's maintenance crew. Luckily we had the secretary in on the whole deal, so she did a good deal of stalling. One day while he was out I fabricated a ridiculous fake letter from maintenance as follows:

I listened for the noise that you reported for a good 30-45 minutes without any luck. I think that you may be hearing the rain or possibly even the building settling. It's very normal for older buildings to make strange noises. If you can find where the noise is coming from, then I might be able to help a little more.
Sorry,
Maintenance

The letter was meant to sound stupid from the victim's perspective. Of course those things wouldn't make a beep. We tried to play it up as if someone just reported a "noise" without specifying what it was exactly. The victim bought it and was furious because no sensible person would hear a beep and think that the building was settling.

For the reveal, we stuck one of the annoy-a-trons underneath his seat to see how long it would take for him to figure things out. Unfortunately he didn't figure it out until our CEO made a public announcement with the noisemaker in hand beeping into the mic. The reveal still turned out to be good and the entire office got a laugh at his expense.

Now I have to start watching my back for retaliation. One down, many more to go...