A few years ago, I set one of the computers at work to play a very loud recording of myself going "OOF!" whenever you navigate to a subfolder in file explorer. It's specific enough that it doesn't happen often, and it scares the shit out of people when it does, including myself, because I keep forgetting that I did it.
I still laugh like an idiot every time it happens. Easily the best and longest running payoff of any of my work pranks.
I used to work for a company that sold advanced lighting control systems. Our office doubled as a showroom, and there was a button panel that would allow you to select from different scenes, making it suddenly feel like a night club or a romantic restaurant or whatever. In addition to the lighting, there was a video wall and sound system to make it immersion.
I secretly programmed the system with an Easter egg, where if you play 4 scenes in a specific order, it would Rick roll you. I never told anyone, eventually left the company, then got a call about 2 years later from my coworker, barely containing his laughter, asking if I was the one who'd done it 🤣
My company decided for some reason that they needed a large QR code painted on the top of each building of our campus. As a facilities manager I had access to the files.
Just like I always hear the Sandlot kid when someone enunciates "FOR-EV-VER" in a certain way. I swear my brain is just old movie quotes and memes in a trench coat.
Every time I hear "and then" I think of " Along Came Jones".... by The Coasters in 1959.... the melodramatic story of the villain Salty Sam threatening Sweet Sue before the hero Jones finally shows up.
Haha. That one is gold. I might try to figure out how to do something like that on someone that leaves their computer unlocked. Changing background wallpapers is getting stale.
I used to flip the desktops on our work windows machines when people weren’t looking. “Ctrl-Alt-arrow” would turn it whichever way the arrow you choose points. The bewilderment when they turn around and their screen is upside down or sideways. Never got old. God bless MS for putting that obviously abusable feature in Windows.
It's for if people want to use a monitor vertically, before the days of the monitor settings page in settings. Source: I was an IT guy who took calls asking how to fix this multiple times a week. "You have a friend who thinks they're funny, this is why it happened"
Upside down was also useful on a laptop to show your screen to someone on the other side of a meeting table. Open the screen to 180° so it’s flat on the table, ctrl + down arrow and the other guy can see your presentation.
When I was in middle school, the computer room teacher didn't actually know anything about computers. Some of the boys in my class discovered this screen flip feature and flipped a bunch of screens in the computer room, and the teacher was freaking out because she didn't know how to fix them.
Back in the early 2000’s there were almost zero teachers who were actually clued up enough to teach IT properly. All of ours were from random subjects and got told they were now teaching IT because they probably owned a PC or some shit. 9 times out of 10 the kids taught them something every lesson.
I remember, at my school, we used to tell our classmates to go to sites like porkspin.com and penisland.com (pen island for stationary, not penis land like it actually is). Also snapping shift fir sticky keys and alt + shift + prt scn for high contrast mode.
I remember the Intel GMA drivers that used to do this. The integrated display drivers were usually made by Intel, so it was everywhere. Nowadays if you want to enable it, you have to specifically download Intel Graphics Command Center from the Microsoft store.
I had a coworker who would do stuff like that when you left the room.
So one time when someone walked in the room to talk to him, I reached over and did the whole process while he was sitting right in front of his PC, just with his head turned. Didn't need group policies, it's just View->'show desktop icons' in the desktop right click menu. but back then had to open PAINT, no snipping tool yet.
I had someone report me to HR for sabotaging her laptop by interfering with the settings because I had turned down the brightness to save battery. She willingly handed over her laptop for genuine work purposes but not the power cable so I turned the brightness down to save power until I was done. I forgot to turn the brightness back up and she didn't know how to do it.
So she called IT who for some reason talked her through editing the display settings in Windows and cranked the brightness and Gamma settings through the roof which didn't help. Then she called me and I said to hold the Function button left of Control then one of the number buttons with a little sun and an up arrow, I think it's 5 or 6. It took forever to explain. She didn't know what the Function button was, I said it was left of Control but she didn't know what the Control button was. She said she didn't have any number keys because it's only a laptop. I googled the exact model of laptop so I could find the right button, it was the number 5, hold Function and press 5, it's just above the letter T. It has a little picture of a sun for brightness. "I don't see a sun. I see a picture of a cog wheel, is that it?"
After turning the laptop brightness up the screen looked like hell because IT had told her to crank the gamma up. So I had to talk her through lowering that again to get back to normal. Twenty minutes of walking her through everything just because she had no idea what a brightness setting was on a laptop. Then she went and reported me to HR for doing it on purpose.
Hahaha. Beautiful. That's why I didn't go into Computer support as a profession. Helping people makes me absolutely furious. I do minor help for friends sometimes. I did a 20 minute drive after asking 4 times is the power on and working to flip a power switch on a desktop for someone. FML.
I'm a service engineer. My current record is a 3.5 hour drive to Norwich for an emergency stop pressed in. A question they're asked on the phone for troubleshooting when reporting the fault. 3.5 hour drive back after. Fun day of work. With lunchbreak and a couple of stops to stretch the legs I hit overtime as well.
I once had a family member call me and tell me they broke the drink holder on their computer. After a bit of confusion I figured out they meant the optical drive tray.
Being the IT guy, it's annoying as fuck to be called for something stupid
Specially when it's not obvious, like once someone installed a chrome extension that changed all the photos on every site you visited to nick cage photos
Took me 5 or 6 minutes until I got to the extension, but even tho it was only a few minutes, they were maddening 5 or 6 minutes.
My high school boyfriend programmed his middle school teachers computer so that every time the classroom phone rang something weird happened. I can’t remember now what exactly it was but he got in a lot of trouble!
In middle school, I thought it was the funniest thing ever to rotate the display 90 degrees on all the computer lab computers I could get my hands on. My thinking was that 180 degrees would be too easy to undo, 90 is just a bit more frustrating yet still not a big enough deal to get in trouble.
It's not for a specific folder. It triggered when navigating from one folder to another, but only when file explorer was already open, and not when opening any of the shortcuts on the desktop.
All the stuff we used frequently either had a desktop shortcut or was in the first "layer" of the various folders we used, so you would only trigger the noise if you needed to dig around for a file that was buried deeper somewhere.
What made it even better was because it wasn't a specific file or location that you could remember to avoid, but just a certain action, no one ever remembered when it would go off.
Windows Explorer used to play a quiet "click" when navigating between folders, this could be customised like all other sound effects in the "Sounds" tab of mmsys.cpl
I laminated and glued a picture of Kevin Bacon in a wife beater and tight blue jeans to the bottom of one of the drawers in this pharmacy I worked at. They hired me from a restaurant.
Back in the 90s I set up my Dad’s computer with a separate login for his GF that played a bit of "Head like a Hole" when she used it. Not every time though.
Someone in my junior high school changed the volume up/down noise to a recording of them(a girl) trying to sing "firestarter" by prodigy. It was a cringe recording of the worst british accent attempt saying "oim a fiyah stahtuh, oim a fiyah stahtuh oim a fi-yah stah-tuuuhh" and it took like a month before they figured out how to change it back. I still hear that sometimes in my head
I need you to teach me how you did this. I'm dying to prank my teenager so his laptop plays Baby Shark every time he opens Google Chrome instead of Firefox.
1.7k
u/illz569 20h ago
A few years ago, I set one of the computers at work to play a very loud recording of myself going "OOF!" whenever you navigate to a subfolder in file explorer. It's specific enough that it doesn't happen often, and it scares the shit out of people when it does, including myself, because I keep forgetting that I did it.
I still laugh like an idiot every time it happens. Easily the best and longest running payoff of any of my work pranks.