Workplace Wevenge

Co-workers are a great deal worse than family. Yes, we know that you can pick your friends and you can't pick your family - and co-workers in this scenario firmly fall into the 'family' category. Sadly though, it's even worse when you consider that you spend more of your waking hours at work. The last thing you need is to spend that time with colleagues who possess the personality and intelligence of bathroom tiles and IR laws prevent you from giving them a hen-peck or dead leg like you could do to your siblings during times of frustration.

You know the types: the frustrated old Cardigan who guards the stationery cupboard with his life; the Girlfriend at the pub who backstabs you at the office; the graduate know-it-all with an attitude larger than his IQ; unflappable old lag whose age you can guess by counting the rings around her coffee cup; and the evil egomaniac boss who was born, raised and trained in the fiery caverns of hell. Just to name a few.

Getting revenge on these office anals can be a very tricky business. Firstly, you don't want to appear like an unhinged bully or mentally deranged stalker. No, revenge office-style requires patience, delicacy and careful planning. Here are a few ideas for those of you who wish a great more than a paper cut on your comrade cube citizens:

The Raw Prawn. Legend has it that Aussie soldiers in World War II would snort, "Ah, don't come the Raw Prawn with *me* mate," if they felt they were being treated like a fool. Well this is the time to make your *co-worker* the fool instead. Unlike ex-boyfriend's apartments, it is the rare office that has curtain rails to hide raw prawns in, so you'll have to practice your long shots at home with a long-dead crustacean and the slot of your toaster.

When you think you're proficient enough, simply stroll past your victim's car, whip out your prawn and aim it at the grill directly between the windscreen wipers and the windshield. Remember, it is vital that your shot gets the prawn in there first time so that you don't leave any incriminating fingerprints. You probably won't be there to witness it, but the mind-numbingly awful odour of a prawn slowly going bad especially when dispersed via the air vents on long, hot drives home will be severe. Rest assured too that the suffering driver is very unlikely to discover the source of the smell.

Cost one prawn.

The Nigerian Talking Clock. This is a classic, beloved of all wronged people everywhere. Except maybe Nigerians of course. Spend a few valuable minutes looking up the international dialing code and number for the Nigerian talking clock. "After the second stroke, the time will be.." When your co-worker has left their desk for the weekend, dial the number and leave it off the hook until they arrive back on Monday. Said co-worker will be struggling to explain to the accounts department just why their outbound calls increased by seventeen thousand percent in one week.

Cost: 2 minutes of internet search time.

The Audio Assault System. This requires a great deal of technical proficiency, so may only appeal to true cyber geeks (like my darling husband Love Chunks). He has informed me that there are ways of rigging a computer so that the sound is unbearably loud and can blurt out all sorts of unfortunate pieces of information like "I'M DOWNLOADING PORN!" at the most inopportune moments.

Cost: sleeping with an IT guru. Try it, you might find that you like it.

Sugar Substitution. If you're a regular dipper into the shared, coffee-crumb-infested sugar bowl in the office kitchen, you will need to ween yourself off the evil stuff for this to work without your own taste buds being blasted into smithereens. Before your co-worker slumps in for their regular cup of java, substitute the white sugar for salt. Trust me: the totally unexpected taste of salt mixed in with coffee is likely to leave the sipper with a hairstyle they hadn't planned for when getting ready that morning.

Cost: a bag of salt.

Finally, for those with no social life and lots of newspaper, we have the Scrunch-a-thon. A lot of office doors are left open so that cleaners can get in and empty the bins over the weekend, or, failing that, have windows above the door that can be jemmied open. Get yourself a nice selection of beer and chips and tear a page out of the pile of newspapers in front of you. Scrunch, and throw in. Yes, your aim will get better the longer you try. Hopefully you will stagger home in a jolly mood and leave your co-workers' office filled with an ocean of black-and-white balls of paper to wade through.

Cost: your time.

There's plenty more where THOSE ideas came from.....