I’ve had two office pranks backfire on me. One was in the response to the other. Here are the scenarios:

1. I’m at work all day Saturday and part of Sunday and starting to go batty. Cabin fever and whatnot. So I swap all the desk nameplates of the people on my team except for the boss’ and mine. I thought it was a harmless prank, and funny. In a weird IT geek kind of way. In retaliation, a teammate that always arrives before me hides everything on and in my desk in some adjacent file cabinets, leaving only the PC, monitor, keyboard, and mouse (all unplugged). All papers, desk supplies, notepads, etc. are gone. It’s like my first day. Or last day. I get to work Monday morning and freak out. Nothing works and all my stuff is gone.

2. In retaliation, I steal his mouseball. He gets to his computer and likely taps the mouse to get out of the screensaver. Nothing happens. I return to my cube later on, tap my mouse, and nothing happens. He stole my mouse ball. He gives it back. I return his mouse ball by tossing it over to him. It rolls away into oblivion. He invades a teammate’s cube who had nothing to do with any of this and takes his mouse ball. I feel bad. I find an abandoned computer (probably someone who recently left the company) and swipe the mouse ball. Prank over.

I’ve had two office pranks backfire on me. Maybe I’ll eventually learn how to pull off a successful prank.