April Fool’s Day Jokes Sent in by Humor at Work Readers
Here are a few April Fool’s practical jokes sent in by Humor at Work readers.
- Putting maple syrup in the washroom soap dispenser.
- An interoffice memo went round telling the female employees that their bathroom break time was limited, cameras were going to be installed in the main area of the bathroom and alarms were going to go off and the bathroom stall doors would burst open if we were in there too long. That is the gist of the joke, but the memo was worded much more eloquently.
- I sent an email to our graphic design dept suggesting that San Serif was a great vacation destination, some jumped on the bandwagon and praised the virtues of this location which further fueled the entertainment value when the others figured it out.
- I had my supervisor call the Water Bed Factory and ask for Rusty Bedsprings.
- Telling my supervisor on a Friday that I accepted a new job with an organization I had already been involved in, and that basic training started on the Monday. This was at a time when we’ve already had a few key people leave our organization, and my expertise and knowledge was all that was left for a very specialized area of our work. I had everyone in on it except my direct supervisor, even her bosses knew so they played along as well.
- For April Fool’s day last year, our events team created a hilarious email outlining the fictitious new jobs that the management team were moonlighting at to maintain their ‘glamorous’ lifestyle and provided photographic evidence. For instance, the CEO and COO were now also washing windows and the photo was of two men hanging from the side of a building with Bob and Brad’s faces superimposed. This email was the source of great hilarity and was enjoyed by all, especially the managers!!
- An employee found a goldfish in her glass water jug that she kept on her desk.
- A coworker had a new car and someone else pretended to have hit it in the parking lot. Luckily we work for a municipality so we could even involve the bylaw officer to make it more “real”.
- We soaked a cotton ball in oyster juices and hid it inside the mouth piece of the phone and then popped the number buttons and re-arranged them. It was hilarious to see the sniffing and key pounding on the phone.
- Got into the boss’s office and removed all the furniture.
- Filling an office with boxes.
- We created a newspaper front page with stories about a gentleman’s accomplishments (all fake) for his 50th birthday. He loved it and still keeps it up on his wall.
- Filled the maintenance worker’s room with balled up newspaper from the ceiling to the floor, filling the entire room right up to the door. When he opened the door to get his equipment all you could see was newspaper.
- Taping everything on someone’s desk to the desk so it could not easily be moved.
- Our web team faked an online news story depicting our executive director in a compromising situation. He had the last laugh, though, as he wasn’t fooled by it but pretended to be freaked out and told staff he’d been in touch with “head office” and lawyers to move forward with liable charges etc. The staff who started the joke were terrified thinking that what they’d started was now out of control. Towards the end of the day the executive director let them off the hook. He knew the web story was a joke.
- Black shoe polish on the phone (this was way back in the “old days”).
And a few April Fool jokes that backfired . . .
- The situation is too long for this note but it backfired because the person responsible for stopping the joke before it got out of control was ill for a couple days and other “pranksters” were on travel status.
- The joke got out of control before the recipient was told the situation was not real. (We still laugh about this one!)
- Poured water on a vehicle in -30 broke door handle opening door when frozen.
- Loss of unsaved data. We stumbled across the Ctrl-Alt-arrow down feature (flips the image on your monitor). We did this to a co-worker who we thought might ask for assistance in repairing (Ctrl-Alt-arrow up to go back to normal … if you can read this upside down … since you inevitably tried the Ctrl-Alt-arrow down and are freaking out by now). The co-worker shut down his computer (which doesn’t fix the issue) and neglected to save his work from the morning.
- I left a note on my friend/co-workers motorcycle that was parked in the company parking lot that was for visitors only. In the note I told him that he was not allowed to park there and if he did it again that he would be punished and signed the Executive Directors name to it. I thought it was quite funny and waited to see my friend again. When I did I was surprised to see how mad he was and even more surprised to hear that he had grabbed the note off his motorcycle, rushed into the Executive Directors office and was quite prepared to tell the Executive Director where to go and how to get there. Fortunately the Executive Director was gone for the day and I was able to calm my buddy down.
- Someone tied door knobs of the washroom together from the OUTSIDE when worker was in the washroom. Everyone was waiting outside for their reaction — not funny!
- They filled someone’s office with balloons for his birthday. Turns out they should have checked because the guy had a severe fear of balloons and had to go home!
Michael Kerr, Humor at Work. 2013. Check out the article In Search of Practical April Fools for details on how April Fool’s Day evolved.
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