Monday, May 12, 2008

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.....

9 comments:

franzy said...

I like to think that I've weened myself off of this kind of behaviour, but we're bog buddies and I wouldn't expect any less from you.

I'm not talking about pranks, I'm talking about this sentence:

"No revenge office-style requires patience, delicacy and careful planning."

Instead of going on to contradict yourself with office revenge plans that do require patience delicacy and planning, I believe a comma is needed to shore up your case.

Office revenges?
Drop all of their pencils on the floor and steal the blade on their sharpener.
Instead of substituting the sugar for salt, simply hide the Extra, Nutrasweet or whatever other weird chemicals they insist on poisoning their coffee with. And for good measure, throw out everything except for the full cream milk. The types that care about the calories in their coffee are usually the best foci for vengeance anyway.
Another prank I've heard of is actually replacing the regular coffee with high quality decaf (bring your own supply of Kopiko so you too don't go off it) and then, three weeks later, in goes the platinum black pack Lavazza.
Not so much vengeful, as hilarious.

Write stranger's names on their lunches in the fridges and take a big greasy bite out of it (if you can stand the beans).

Pull the power cord to their computer out, out, out, until it's almost unplugged, then drape the cord somewhere so that it won't become unplugged immediately, just when someone walks in during the middle of something an hour later.

Then there's always ordering flowers COD, but that punishes the florist too ...

Umm...
I'll get back to you ...

Kath Lockett said...

Bugger. Well spotted Franzy, and amendments have been made.

Y'know, we should write a book about this stuff together one day... 'Cancerous Cardigans' is a title that readily springs to mind....

Baino said...

My, my you devious pair! Or you could Take an office umbrella and fill it with the confetti from hole punchers and place back in its original position. Or put obscene words in their autocorrect. Adjust their chair every time they leave their desk. Change their wallpaper and sound settings or leave a vulgar search window open .. .oooh the possibilities! If you can work out how to punish someone who has no concept of personal space . . .please let me know!

River said...

Hee-hee, you three are truly evil.
Go ahead and write the book, it's sure to be a best seller. A three-way collaboration shouldn't be too hard.
"....personality and intelligence of bathroom tiles......." heh, I had no idea you knew me that well....

tomshideaway said...

I am my own worst editor...I feel bad for those who get my mistakes via subscription.

Love the Prawn idea...How about the Visine treatment...Pour a little in someones drink and they will be spending a lot of time in the bathroom!!

LJP said...

That's it! I want to know how to rig up that audio assault system...

eleanor bloom said...

My bathroom tiles have quite a bit of personality actually. But that could be because, like me, they were manufactured in the 70's.

I am so impressed with all these ideas (and I'm guessing that Davey will be happy about the AAS one too; now there's a pick up line). Especially impressed as I am just hopeless at thinking up such things. I think it comes from being an only child. Which probably means, if you write such a book, I'll be the one drinking shite coffee with salt, having my compy shouting disturbing things just before it is accidentally unplugged, and then, as I drive home in tears, vomiting out the window due to the stench of expired seafood.

*sigh*

Anonymous said...

this is the most hilarious bog and comments that I have come across.
Very amusing bunch. hahahhaah

Definitely should publish the collections and it WILL be a hit.

ashleigh said...

One that I saw done ages ago is to pull the power cord out of the main socket (for the PC, whatever)...

Then get a bit of sticky tape and wrap a single layer, very carefully, over the metal pins on the end of the cord. (This is an insulator, see?). Trim with scissors, and then put the plug back into the mains outlet.

That one takes a *long* time to find.

You can also put dead mice in the a/c ducts, if the somebody has an office, stay back and get in there one evening. Bung a dead mouse up above the vent. Then wait.