How to Play Jokes and Games in the Office

Everyone has those workdays where it's a real grind just to get to the day's end. You may even have a name for those days, like Tuesday. You could spend those days counting how many spots are on the ceiling tiles. Or you try some of these small games or jokes to play with your co-workers when productivity is slower than a crawl.

Instructions

1. Booby-trap a co-worker's work space or desk. Glue the pencils and pens together. Loosen the seat so it will drop down when one sits on it. Lock the drawers if you can get a key. Connect the paper clips together to make a chain. Hide the sticky notes and staples. See how much this slows down your co-worker's productivity.

2. Compare your co-workers to the Dilbert characters. Do you have a Wally, one who manages to still be employed while never doing any work? Which one is Alice, who works hard for nothing and takes it out on others? Is one of your interns naive enough to be Asok? How many Ted the Generic Guys do you have? It's best not to tell your supervisor if he's a Pointy-Haired Boss.

3. Keep extra sets of clothes in your office or briefcase. Change clothes whenever you go to the washroom or before you come out of your office. See how many people notice you're wearing something different. You could get extreme, wear a full disguise and see how many people you can fool.

4. Organize an "Office Games" competition. Offer prizes for the fastest typist, most organized desk, quickest phone dialer, fastest response to email and others. Expect the Fastest to the Car at Five award to be extremely competitive.

5. Go to another department and measure some place in the room, like an empty file cabinet or corner of the room. Then nod, say something like, "There's room," and leave. This can lead to mass paranoia in the department.

6. Call your department and ask for yourself. This works best if you have a temporary secretary in the department. See if anyone knows where you are. Maybe they'll say you're gone for the day, and you can leave.

7. Stand outside the building and look straight up. Wait for other people to join you. Once you have a bunch of idiots staring up at nothing, burst out laughing to let them know you fooled them. Or just walk away and see how long they keep staring.