Funniest shop pranks and stories

N2IXK · Jan 11, 2010

IanC said:
We used to put some phenolphthalein into juice and offer it to new hires. Causes the urine to come out bright red. Always an interesting look on the guy's face when he comes out of the bathroom.

Phenolpthalein will likely make then crap their pants, as well. It was the active ingredient in Ex-Lax up until a few years ago.

Never heard of the urinary side effect from it, though. Methylene Blue, OTOH....

4-6-4 · Jan 12, 2010

Pranks

Greetings fro OZ chaps this thread reminded of a prank pulled just after receiving our first safety glasses issue back in the early 60's. All the employees had just been given a talk on the safety glasses and how they were tested. Part of this talk was a film of a ball bearing being dropped on to a lens. After returning to the shop a number of apprentices (there were approx 15 in the shop at any one time) coned one of our number into testing his for strength. This consisted of placing his brand new glasses on the wood floor and drooping a small brass door knob which he was turning, on to the lens. The glasses shattered so did the apprentice. What am I going to do he howled. You will have to tell the foreman said us. So of he went. We could all see the performance in the office while pretending to work. There was much looking down at the glasses and then up at the lad. After the lad returned to his lathe the foreman travelling at record speed headed for the head office the lad had told him that he accidently broke them with his hammer. It was very funny at the time. Yours 4-6-4

mordantly · Jan 12, 2010

to be funny is a harmless prank like hiding the mic while im taking a piss, or removing a tool from the magazine so the program stops a few hours after i leave on friday instead of running for the next 60 hours. what really pisses me off is when some shit messes whit tooling or fixtures when im not looking. say you go to lunch, and someone removes what you spent the last 4 hours machining to use the mill inspite of numerous signs stating the machine is in use. another time, a hand coded program mysteriously dissaspeared off the machine.

number 2 · Jan 12, 2010

Alpacca Fortyfive said:
A friend who served his time at Rolls Royce aero engines in Derby, recounted many happy tales including...

He was just finishing welding shut the last of the draws on the supervisor's steel desk while the guy was away at lunch, and wondered why the ring of apprentices standing around him were silent, and there stood in the ring of spectators, watching with interest was the supervisor...

That years intake of greasy rags were all put on final warning after a couple of near fatal events:

a chase accross the roofs of the works ended in one kid falling through a skylight

one young guy was locking toilet cubicals from the inside, and jumping over the partition into the next all down the line...

Standing in the end cubical , waiting was a guy with a length of rubber hoze with a big bolt stuffed down the end.

when the young guy had landed, he looked up, and was promptly knocked out cold by his mate.

My pal says he was standing at the urinal, trying not to get his feet wet while he laughed, but in came a supervisor and all present were back onto final warning.

Please, someone from Pratt & Whitney tell me the same went on there!!!

There was a recent link on a UK site to a news story about a Czech apprentice;

when the supervisor had left them for 2 minutes his workmated had shoved the air line where the "Sun don't shine" rupturing the poor kid's bowel!

That air line thing killed a guy over here at the railway workshops, a story i heard from an old fellow who did his time there.

Screwmachine · Jan 12, 2010

number 2 said:
That air line thing killed a guy over here at the railway workshops, a story i heard from an old fellow who did his time there.

Yes, air hose pranks are a no-no.

There was a crazy nut who posted on a much more ancient shop pranks thread who would get carbide inserts spinning at a gizillion RPM on a rod with air and then sling them at his co-workers :eek:

.

USMCPOP · Jan 12, 2010

Don't know if I mentioned it earlier here or elsewhere. My son's boss would occasionally yank his TIG filler rod when he was intent on building up a tip on an Inconel turbine blade with a tiny filler rod. Dip, move, dip, move, WTF?

RickWG · Mar 25, 2010

USMCPOP said:
Don't know if I mentioned it earlier here or elsewhere. My son's boss would occasionally yank his TIG filler rod when he was intent on building up a tip on an Inconel turbine blade with a tiny filler rod. Dip, move, dip, move, WTF?

Wait til he goes to lunch & replace the tungsten with a piece of sharpened aluminum rod ..

rusty old tools · Sep 23, 2010

my grandpa told me one years ago, not a shop prank but still good.

Guy was staying in a motel with a shared fridge and had beer stored in it, someone kept drinking his beers, so he took some cans and pierced the bottom, emptying some out and replacing it with urine, he then proceeded to solder the hole and put the cans in the fridge, needless to say his beers stopped geting stolen.

aerodark · Sep 23, 2010

Fake duece on Gerstner

Way back when I was early in the trade, I bought a Gerstner Journeyman's tool chest made from quartersawn oak. It was my pride and joy. I kept lemon oil at work and would oil the box weekly. I would not let any perishable tools near the box, let alone actually put cutters IN it.

Jim Graber had been to the gag shop and picked up a fake pile of dog poo. He carefully placed it on the lid of my closed Gerstner chest and awaited my response. :eek:

"What the F! Is there a cat in here somewhere?" I was livid. He was heard in the background busting up and I was relieved that I didn't have scheiss to remove from my box! What a character he was to work with!

mark costello · Sep 23, 2010

Used to work with a guy who would target the new apprentices,ask them if they wanted to buy a used 0-1 mic, then while handing it to them accidentally drop it then tell them they dropped it and had to buy it after price went up!

terry_g · Oct 11, 2010

One of the older guys that I used to work with would go into the bathroom at 8:00 sharp every morning for about 15 minutes and proceed to make a horrible foul smell that lingered.
I was the sub foreman and I started earlier so I could get a handle on the pending days work load.
Just after I arrived one morning another co-worker phoned and informed me he was going to be a bit late. I promptly went and got his work boots and coveralls out of his locker and put the boots in front of the toilet and draped the coveralls over them so it looked like the stall was occupied.
At 8:00 I dispatched everyone to their various tasks and as usual the guy heads into the bathroom to see that the only stall is occupied.
He kept going and checking the bathroom after about 45 minutes you could see that he had gone past discomfort and was now in pain. As he headed out the door to his vehicle to find a vacant toilet he pointed at the bathroom and exclaimed loudly " That guy must have died in there."
A few minutes later the late employee arrived and made a pit stop in the bathroom. You could hear him all over the shop:
" My Boots. What the hell are my boots doing in the bathroom!!"
He came out of the bathroom carrying his boots and coveralls with a puzzled look on his face.
I don't think either one of them ever figured it out.

Terry

andy pullen · May 17, 2011

We have a guy here at work that I call the "man nipple"....for obvious reasons....Most of the time he just does next to nothing secure in the knowledge that he's a permanent gov't employee.....Grrrr.....I know, I know. He's the stereotype gov't employee.

Well, a few weeks ago; man nipple managed to spill an entire 2 ounce bottle of Dykem blue in the felt tip bottle....A week or so later; right on the day before he is scheduled to go on his yearly pilgrimage to Lake Mead to mooch off his relatives, he cuts himself...And, when he cuts himself; he REALLY does a number on himself. Usually needing stiches. Well, he was taken to the clinic here at work and got fixed up. He had to finish the job he was working on before leaving and we told him he had to mop the floor, too.....He went on a smoke break before getting out the mop and one of my co-workers got out the bottle of red Dykem and dripped a bunch of it on the floor on his trail from the machine to the sink to his bench....He couldn't understand why the "blood" wouldn't come right up in places....I was telling him that the blue Dykem he spilled the week before had absorbed into his skin and was now infused in his blood....The look on his face was priceless....

I can't wait to see the look on his face when he gets back and finds a pair of Monarch EEs (that we got through DRMO) sitting where his bench was....

Andy Pullen

Horseheadman · May 17, 2011

A drop of grease bluing on the backside of a shiny new penny laying on the floor will be the best penny ever spent for a laugh,,,

I once rigged up a fake looking can of soda that got knocked over and left overnight on our shops new CMM granite table. The Inspector was so anal about even finger prints on the table that when he saw the mess I left, he couldn't work for a couple hours untill one of the shop guys dicovered iy was fake. I came in on second shif and received an ovation from the shop and a "good sport" handshake from the Inspector.

Belltowerben · May 23, 2011

We have a few unwritten rules for pranks. No toolboxes, no vehicles and nothing in your personal life.

We had a radiant heater above a vertical boring mill all new machinists started on. Flipping the heater on would take a 25-30° day to 35-40. Guy would be sweating away and can't figure out why.

My favorite was the candy bar one. Had a vending machine at work that sometimes stole your money. Well the leadhand one day buys a Caramilk bar. Nothing comes out and he is livid and storms off. He says he is personally going to get a hold of Cadbury's and deal with it (even though Cadbury's has nothing to do with vending machine.) QC head comes in after and buys same thing and 2 come out. So after hearing that the leadhand actually called Cadbury's to complain they went to work. They created/forged official Cadbury letterhead. On it they wrote this letter of apology for the inconvenience that was caused and they also included the Caramilk Bar. They then had a friend who works for UPS show up in his van and hand deliver it 2 days later.

He went around all the time saying you have to stand up for yourself and fight the system. Told his neighbor about it who knew someone from the shop who filled him in on the truth. The guy has such a temper that I don't think anyone ever told him and that was 10 years ago now. And last I heard he still has the letter!

Hopefuldave · May 24, 2011

Slightly gross...

My first job was in a small factory making Expensive Cars, and being a normal teen with a healthy appetite and hollow legs, I got a reputation for "eating anything" (other guys' leftovers, "time-expired" foods from the fridge, you name it... The machine shop foreman was always on my back about it (and a lot of other things, me be ing the "new kid"), he was a bit squeamish about food, said I'd catch something or poison myself, I just told him I had an iron gut

The place was pretty primitive, the factory outhouse had an urinal that wasn't much more than a porcelain trench with a trickle of water running through, and to try to keep it fresh the janitor would throw in a few of those white blocks now and then. I noticed my mum using a bar of pressed coconut in the kitchen one night (she's an adventurous cook), and how much it looked like the urinal blocks...

Next morning, I arrived with a coconut block with a hole punched through the middle, just like the urinal blocks, lurking in my pocket, waited for the foreman to take his usual pee after lunchbreak, and followed him in...

As he stood there, I wandered in, bent over next to him at the urinal, and exclaimed "MMM, looks tasty!" and apparently scooped up one of the urinal blocks and started munching on it...

Maybe I should have done it *before* lunch , he certainly lost his...

Dave H.

mark costello · May 24, 2011

That was cruel, but funny!

jrolands · Sep 11, 2011

First place I worked we used to have a lot of fun with the engineers car.

- We put wooden blocks under it so that the drive wheels just barely touched the ground.
- We put a big cable tie on the drive axle so it slammed in the bottom of the car making a terrible noise when he drove off.
- He always parked on the pier next to a bollard, so the only natural thing to do was to tie the car to it.
- Once we even got a blow-up sex doll, fitted it with an helmet and a jump suit and stuck it in the driver seat.

In a place I worked recently this guy I worked with started talking about the hand lotion he used, and how good it worked to prevent oil and chips from going into the skin and asked me if i wanted to try it and so on.. When I finally caved in to his nagging he squirted lots on the top of my hand. So i started to work it into my hands while i was going to get a rag to clean the excess. When grabbed the rag i noticed that my hands where beginning to stick to it. I turned around and there I see three guys laughing so hard they had problems standing up. They had put white instant dry gasket glue in the lotion bottle. Really nasty stuff. I used the better part of the day getting it off.. And the ring that i had on my thumb was glued on for about two days..

Bentworker · Sep 11, 2011

Got a horrible one.

Had a foreman who in his earlier days thought it was a good idea to pull a prank involving a blue room (porta potty)

Material needed...
1 Occupied portable potty (preferably using it to do a #2)
1 Large 300 CFM towable air compressor
1 1" Hose long enough to stretch from compressor to vent pipe on porta-potty

The "Joke"
Wait until the porta potty is occupied. Fire up compressor and insert air line down vent pipe. Open ball valve on manifold and watch occupant come out soaked in blue fluid, feces and urine.

It was a miracle that no one got killed, fired or hurt (One guy should have been fired). The idiot who pulled the prank became a foreman a few years later. The occupant had to go to an immediate care center after a cleanup at the yard. He had to get a series of Hepatitis shots and get tested for a whole panel of bad things. Could have been a lot worse considering he got covered head to toe. I always remembered this when I had to work for that foreman, I didn't trust that guy with any decision. just nod my head, smile and do what I was going to do anyway...

jtjoser · Sep 11, 2011

I have glued dollar coins to the floor in our kitchen area of our shop, and on lunch break, its funny watching people try to pick it up and they cant

Also, when I know their machine is almost done with its cycle, I've gone behind the machine and slam the sheet metal LOUD and watch the operator run to the machine thinking it just crashed! lol

Good times! :cheers:

RC99 · Sep 12, 2011

Bentworker said:
It was a miracle that no one got killed, fired or hurt (One guy should have been fired).

actually he should have been jailed..

That would be a criminal offence here..

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