Best Prank You Ever Pulled?

[Ausfahrt]

Here's mine:

A few years back my wife and I spent a weekend at her parents house. I woke up early on Sunday morning and I didn't want to wake anyone so I hopped into our car to get a cup of coffee and a newspaper at a local convenience store.

My wife had left her purse in our car and a quick pick lottery ticket that she had purchased the previous evening was sticking out. Once at the convenience store I bought a lottery ticket for the next week with the previous nights winning numbers and swapped it with the one in her purse.

My FIL and I were watching football later that afternoon when we heard the scream!

She still gets mad at me to this day when I bring it up. Best dollar I ever spent.

 

[simple_gifts]

I used to work @ a job shop and one of the machinists kept advertising in a casual way that his birthday was that Friday; he was probably hoping that someone would bring in a cake etc. By Wednesday of that week everyone was tired of hearing about it so, someone asked him what he was going to do on his day off. He was perplexed and we explained that birthdays were paid company holiday for the person whose birthday it was. Someone pulled out the employee handbook and showed him where it was written up. He was ecstatic.

By Thursday punch out time we had to admit that Julie, the office manager, had produced a "special version" of the employee handbook just to prank him and his 3 day weekend was not to be.

He did not look happy @ 6am on Friday morning.

 

[Spazdog]

My wife actually came up with the best prank:

She found a picture of a real Hill-jack type couple - missing teeth, formal attire by Larry the Cable guy etc... She sent it to a co-worker with a note attached:
Dear Evie,
Hope you and Freddy are doing okay. Me and the boys will be through on our yearly trip. Can't wait to see you! Get that chicken spaghetti ready and we'll make the cobbler!

Well, that's the gist of it anyway. Worried the poor lady so that she could not for the life of her remember who these people were.

I thought it was just mean but it turns out that the little old lady they pranked had a twisted side and loved these sorts of jokes. She was impressed!

 

[Stelth]

When I was much, much younger, I was a "Junior Firefighter" in a volunteer fire department just outside of Wilmington, Delaware. We were guys between 15 and 18 who were allowed to ride the trucks to fires, and do pretty much everything except enter burning buildings.

We often took classes at Delaware State Fire School in Dover. To get there on time, we had to leave Wilmington before it was light.

Apparently the first chief of the fire department I was involved with said he would come back and haunt the station after he died.

One morning, I got there before anyone else, maybe 5:30 am or so. It was pitch black outside. I knew some of the guys were superstitious, so I went into the basement and found some tire chains and waited. When I heard voices upstairs, I started shaking the chains and slowly ascending the stairs, stomping loudly on each step. After a minute or two, I put the chains back and went upstairs. There was nobody there.

I went out back and there were three guys outside with eyes like saucers. "Man, you wouldn't believe what happened! It was Charlie's ghost!" And so on, describing to me the rattling of chains and thumping. I finally couldn't stand it, and told them it was me. At first they didn't even believe it. "It wasn't you! You just got here!" Finally, I convinced them. I think they're still mad.

 

[Panzerman]

I was a younger man at a hunting camp overnight, everyone was drinking in the cabin with a fire place and the fire was going. I pulled a box of .22 shells from my pocket and said "Hey guys watch this" and threw it in the fire. They all laughed and said it was a empty box, until the first bang, then another, everyone jumped, ran around, hid behind couches, ran out in the snow. I just sat there and said it was cool. Reason, I wasnt concerned was because the box of .22 was empty of all ammunition and packed with about a dozen firecrackers. I only ever told my one friend, the other ones still to this day think I am a nut.

 

[Rick in PA]

Hey Shannow, tell 'em your tube prank from work!

 

[Shannow]

LOL, just saw this thread and the invite...not me the pranker, but I got pranked.

At work, we had a main condenser that had seen it's design life out, and was heavily into life management...it was eroded, corroded, and stuffed...17,208 tubes 48'(ish) long...took best part of a year, and a few $M to get them.

As Turbine Engineer, I owned the heat exchanger, had to time the delivery of new tubes, and get the old ones out and new ones in in a 9 week period. 250km of tubes to be pulled out, 250km of new ones to be walked back in. Ridiculous critical path.

I never found a design drawing for that heat exchanger that showed the exact installed length, so had to rely on a collection of detail drawings that included everything except the one thing that I wanted to know.

So I added up baffle plate spacings, thicknesses tube plate details, measurements from stuff that I could get to, and came up with 47' 5-3/8" as the installed length...ordered them at 48' to be a little safe...nearly 12 months later they arrived.

Gave a really good undergrad the job of doing a proper statistical analysis of the delivered tube for length, diameter, wall thickness, so we knew almost exactly what we had recieved (South Koreans did a really good job manufacturing them).

I was still worried that I had fudged up the workings of the lengths required, so every couple of weeks, on a Monday morning, I'd pull out the drawings and redo my calcs from scratch again...still 47' 5-3/8".

The tubes sat waiting for the shutdown for some months, and still, I was checking my calcs.

Shutdown came, and I was still nervous.

The procedure was to cut each tube around 9" in, leaving a 9" section, and a 40-something foot section. Another couple of $M contract, that I'd delegated to one of my best, who I'd worked with for 11-12 years at that point.

So I asked that instead of cutting every single tube, that we pull a couple of samples to check length before crippling the whole thing...at least then I could fall on my sword, and not doom the company to having a 9-12 month shutdown.

My mate calls out the office that they've pulled the couple of tubes that I asked for, and they were setting them up on the floor for a comparo...get hat and vest and we'll go see.

I get there just as they are assembling the long and the short, next to a new shiney one from the box...fitter looks up at me grimly...the new tubes are a full 4" too short.

My heart sank, I turned, and started walking back towards the heat exchanger, having an inkling that I could get somewhere between that 4", and maybe a foot...and was going to have to tell my boss that the machine wasn't coming back quickly.

When my mate, the site manager, and his leading hands all burst into laughter.

They'd made a dummy dummy tube that was too long, just for giggles.

It was very clever, and very funny...but geez I was hammering there for a few minutes.

 

[Shannow]

My get back was that every week I hold a team meeting, and bring cake.

As I'm the boss, I delegate the cutting.

Next meeting, we had a beautifully iced sponge cake, and it was his turn to cut the cake.

By sponge, I mean an actual car washing sponge from the car parts shop...proper icing 'though, so you can lick it off your fingers in the setup phase.

 

[PandaBear]

There is a good one from my college days:

One of my great friend / roommate was a geek. On his birthday I was doing laundry and ran into another hot neighbor, and I asked her to dress up and play a prank of my friend. So what I did was to gave her a brand new man's underwear with banana pattern, and told her to rang his door bell and wished him happy birthday and gave him the present.

Friend: Hi, can I help you?
Girl: Are you Wesley?
Friend: Yes
Girl: Happy birthday
Friend: Thank you, but it is not my birthday
Girl: Are you sure?
Friend: Yes, I'm very sure
Girl: Anyways, here's a present for you
Friend: [Opened the box]
Girl: Why don't you try it on
Me and a few other friend: [Came out of the room] Surprise!


Turns out we made a mistake on the date, but still, that's a lot of fun.

 

[MolaKule]

I always visited my grandfather during the summers to work on the farm and he was always pulling pranks on me, like planting those "pull-string" fircrackers all over the place.

For example, he would ask me to go get a tool from the tool shed and have a pull-string" firecracker attached to the tool or a door, and something would invariably explode.

An older cousin who lived nearby told me that granpda had been a "blaster" for a coal mine at one time which was probably the reason he was so facinated with fireworks and "other" exlposives. So we decided to pull the ultimate prank on him for once, knowing that he would be familiar with "dyno-mite."

Anyway, we took a heavy brown paper sack and cut out a nice roll, filled it with sand, and stuck a large, long, slow canon fuse in it. (My older cousin was a civil war reinactment nut).

While on the porch one evening just before dark, I came around the end of the porch where grandpa was sitting in his rocking chair and had this thing lit and told him I had found this large firecracker.

I never knew grandpa could leap such a long distance from the porch, remove an object from my hand so quickly, and throw it such a long distance.

 

[Volvo_ST1]

That's a ripper, mate! Just glad your grandpa didn't trip and break a hip or have a heart attack.

If you need some slow match for more pranks, I recently bought 30 feet and I don't need all!

 

[lyle]

I used to work about a mile from a nuclear power plant. In the summer, every Wednesday at 1:00PM the county would test the civil defense sirens for tornado warnings. Well, a new guy from the desert southwest had just started and he was asking if there were any problems working so close to the nuke plant. My buddy and I gave each other that "we're gonna get him" look and told him that there were no problems, but if any occurred at the plant, they would sound the civil defense sirens.

Sure enough, two days later at 1:00PM, the sirens sounded. My buddy and I jumped up, looked at each other, and tore out of the office screaming and laughing to our cars where we proceeded to squeal out of the parking lot. We stopped about a half-mile down the road, mostly because we were laughing so much we couldn't drive.

About 30 seconds later, we see the new guy in his car come screaming down the road, his engine sounded like a F1 racer, he had the death grip on the wheel, I've never seen a person more scared in his life. He sees us laughing and locks his brakes. It took him 3 days before he would even acknowledge us again.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: lyle
I used to work about a mile from a nuclear power plant. In the summer, every Wednesday at 1:00PM the county would test the civil defense sirens for tornado warnings. Well, a new guy from the desert southwest had just started and he was asking if there were any problems working so close to the nuke plant. My buddy and I gave each other that "we're gonna get him" look and told him that there were no problems, but if any occurred at the plant, they would sound the civil defense sirens.

Sure enough, two days later at 1:00PM, the sirens sounded. My buddy and I jumped up, looked at each other, and tore out of the office screaming and laughing to our cars where we proceeded to squeal out of the parking lot. We stopped about a half-mile down the road, mostly because we were laughing so much we couldn't drive.

About 30 seconds later, we see the new guy in his car come screaming down the road, his engine sounded like a F1 racer, he had the death grip on the wheel, I've never seen a person more scared in his life. He sees us laughing and locks his brakes. It took him 3 days before he would even acknowledge us again.


THAT sir is EPIC!!!!!!

 

[olddognewtrks]

Many moons ago, when I worked as a Paramedic, a couple of my co-workers got someone good. Sadistic as all heck, but funny.
They had been complaining of occasional exhaust fumes in the back of the ambulance for a few days. The night crew guys were waiting for a woman from the day crew to show up, with the premise that one of the guys had been napping on the stretcher with the engine running and the heater on (it was cool weather season). She drives up, and sees one of the guys using the breathing bag on the other. (the "victim" has a cut-off breather tube clamped between his teeth.)
Guy #1 hollers "Hurry up! He was sleeping in the back of the truck, and he coded!" (i.e. respiratory/cardiac arrest) She jumps into the truck, rips the "victim's" shirt open (the "victim" later said it was worth a few buttons) and starts frantically pumping on his chest. After about three or four compressions, he opens his eyes and says "Please, not so hard!"
She FREAKED! The guys were rolling. She didn't speak to them for several days. In fact, she wouldn't speak to anyone about it. She was just a bit peeved.

 

[beanoil]

Back in high school, I placed one of those 'auto fooler" firework devices on the coil of a car, before the distributor cap, with complete disregard for the instructions of putting on a spark plug wire. The guy started the car, it went off with a whistle and smoke, and the connection from coil to ground was complete. Naturally, the car wouldn't start with the coil shorted to ground, and he wound up having it towed to the service station.
Good times..

 

[tinmanSC]

Originally Posted By: bigdreama
Here's mine:

A few years back my wife and I spent a weekend at her parents house. I woke up early on Sunday morning and I didn't want to wake anyone so I hopped into our car to get a cup of coffee and a newspaper at a local convenience store.

My wife had left her purse in our car and a quick pick lottery ticket that she had purchased the previous evening was sticking out. Once at the convenience store I bought a lottery ticket for the next week with the previous nights winning numbers and swapped it with the one in her purse.

My FIL and I were watching football later that afternoon when we heard the scream!

She still gets mad at me to this day when I bring it up. Best dollar I ever spent.

HAHAH! This is quite possilby the best prank i've ever heard. Simple, quick, cheap and oooohh so effective. Too bad about the lasting repercussions.

 

[SteveSRT8]

We have a regular Easter egg hunt at my FIL's house every year.

He just loves to put a buck or two in a plastic egg and watch us all scramble!

This year I brought a plastic egg and put my own 50 dollar bill in it. When I opened it at the table with everyone watching I yelled "Fifty Bucks! Thank you Carl!"

The look on his face was priceless. He really thought he had had a 'senior moment'!

 

[PeteTheFarmer]

In high school, my friends and I would often order takeout from this local restaurant. We noticed that the delivery guy would always double park his car with the engine running when bringing the order to the front door.

Once night he rang the bell, so we opened a window and told him there was a problem with the front door and he would have to bring it to the side. When he got there, the person meeting him deliberately stalled. While this was going on, one of us slipped out the front door, got into the car, moved it two houses up the block, got out and ran back inside the house. Then we all took viewing positions at the windows and waited.

He walks down the driveway, and the look on his face changed from normal to terror to relief to confusion as he notices the car is missing, spots it, and then wonders what it's doing there.

He never left the car running after that. However, he never said anything that indicated he suspected us.

 

[Slick17601]

I once put some folded over ketchup packs under the toilet seat at work......you know the rest.

 

[The_Jeff]

When my sister was a pre-teen, "Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman" was on tv and doing well. She had a crush on the long hair guy played by Joe Lando.

This went so far as she wrote a fan letter into CBS. April fools day came and I had to react.

I steamed a cancelled stamp off some other mail and typed up a letter to her and stuck it on top of the incoming mail pile. I thanked her for her viewership and gave her "insider info" about a renewal for a third season that fall, with all the original cast, except Sully was going to be played by Richard Dean Anderson, best known as "MacGyver".

She went shrieking and crying to her room.