Once you’ve gone through our list, you can get additional workplace culture ideas from The Assist - a free weekly email for professionals full of actionable productivity and leadership inspo. Even if your intent isn’t malicious, you can still lose your job and/or put your company at risk. We know you’d never do this, but don’t engage in humor that pokes fun at anyone’s race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Ever heard of the phrase “hostile work environment?” Well, let’s hope you never do (especially coming from your lawyer or your company’s Head of HR). We’re talking about things like pulling the fire alarm, unleashing noxious stink bombs, or unplugging your company’s servers (as tempting as that might be). But don’t do anything that would cause major disruption or otherwise harm your business. They may even cause a minor disruption in the workday – the kind that makes people pop their heads up from their desks and smile (or shake their head). The best office pranks surprise and delight. That’s not a prank, that’s straight-up vandalism. Don’t ruin the paint on someone’s car, or break someone’s monitor, or stain their clothing. That goes for office or personal property.

Most of these are pretty obvious (and we seriously doubt any of you would do any of these things), but it’s worth mentioning that you should avoid doing any of the following:

Once you’ve pranked your buddy at work… you may want to send them a reminder of the “damage” done… A platform like Bonusly can come in handy to cement the permanent record of your glorious victory… Click if you dare… First, a few ground rules. These are the best of the best, office pranks guaranteed to help you become the king (or queen) of office pranks – without getting fired. We tried to avoid all of the jokes you and your co-workers have probably already pulled on each other. With this in mind (and with April Fool’s Day coming up), we decided to put together our Ultimate Guide to pranking your colleagues. Of course, you don’t want to prank your colleagues with the same, tired pranks. Sometimes you need a little office laughter to break up the day and recharge from all the time spent focusing on the serious stuff. According to a 2014 Gallup study, full-time adults work 47 hours each week, almost a full workday longer than the standard 40-hour workweek. I think it’s safe to assume that we all work really hard.īesides the fact that doing anything worthwhile takes hard work and dedication, the trend has been longer and longer hours for American office workers.

Harmless but mean pranks