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Making Work Fun?

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BParsons

Technical User
Jan 27, 2005
33
US
I’ve been with my current employer a little over a year and like what I do but every now and then you need something to make it interesting. What do you guys/gals do to make work more enjoyable and break the monotony of day to day operations?

Thanks
 
Harass coworkers! Turn the brightness down on a technicians monitor and watch the troubleshooting show begin.

Bo

Kentucky phone support-
"Mash the Kentrol key and hit scape."
 
Browse Tek-Tips ;-) or add a bells and whistle type item to my project, something fun or challenging.


Two strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender: 'Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ'. The second string says: 'Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated'.
 
Tried the bells and whistle thing, it just became the norm and now I am continually raising the bar for whats expected from me. Not that that’s a bad thing but it kind of takes the "fun" out of it.
 
Nerf Guns or squishy toys. Nothing is better than a nice nerf fight.


Shoot Me! Shoot Me NOW!!!
- Daffy Duck
 
I took in a 6-foot tall cardboard standup of Chewbacca to a previous job. Someone came along and put a company T-Shirt on him.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
Donate to Katrina relief:
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first
 
That's awesome, chiph... I want one!

My boss and I go to LAN parties occasionally outside of work. It gives us a friendly rivalry and keeps us acting goofy with each other. Since I'm substantially younger than he, I tend to be better at the games, so he teases me about giving me extra work when he loses and I tease him that I'll let him win the one right before my next performance review. The fact that we can goof off like that together makes our office so much fun to work in.

I try to keep everyone in the office guessing, most of the time. People who are in a rut need to be shaken up a little (within reason, of course). Since our plant is very informal, I wear tshirts that I've gotten from ThinkGeek and find strange quotations for my email signature (mostly Douglas Adams, as he has a way of saying things that's just hilarious).

In the productive realm, I keep a non-urgent "pet project" on the back burner for when I need to do something valuable to the company but can't focus on the task at hand. An hour working on a different project can really clear your mind.

Ben
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. - Douglas Adams
 
benlinkknilneb,
I've been putting little facts and quotes under my email signature since my first job, and I don't think I've once used Douglas Adams. I have no idea why...

Well, I'm off to change my signature!

And BParsons, bring in something weird and put it on your desk (or better, someone elses desk). Nothing rude or offensive, just something to catch peoples attention.

Also, it helps when you company keeps it fun. My bosses bosses boss (I'm at a ver large company, three bosses isn't that high up) is having her bi-monthly townhall meeting next week. We're all going to Laser Tag :-D

Wish me luck.

-------------------------
Just call me Captain Awesome.
 
well, we just go down to the pub whenever there's a birthday/someone leaving/general occasion/whenever we feel like it...

in fact, I just come back from the pub about 30 mins ago...

--------------------
Procrastinate Now!
 
I like to listen to the soundtrack to "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and then type code as if I'm accompanying the musicians on my keyboard! I'm surprised I haven't broken my keyboard yet!

Then, of course, there's Tek-Tips...

--Dave

--Dave

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
O Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience! [infinity]
 
There used to be some practical joke apps knocking about that would replace the start button with a fake one. Another would trigger the fdd to search for a disk at random intervals or flash the num caps and scroll lock lights on the keyboard. Hours of fun can be had pushing those out to users desktops :)
Alternatively, copying the contents of system32 into startup always guarantees a giggle.
 
Definitely harass cow orkers! Especially practical jokes.
Years ago at an ex-job, when everyone got nice new shiny 486es with Windows95, some genius *ahem* found out that the screen that said, "It is now safe to turn off your computer" was a graphic file that could be edited with photoshop, changed the security guy's to read: "It is not safe to turn off your computer" - it sat there like that for a week until the hardware support guy could go in with a straight face and change it.


jsaxe


"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson (R.I.P. Doc)
 
jsaxe - That's beautiful.

We had a guy write a script that would display a "You have a virus" message when any MS games were launched on a PC. Push that out to some PC's and let the fun begin. We never actually did but it sure would have made for a good laugh.
 
I wrote a VB application at my last job. There was a grayed-out button on the main form saying "Don't Click Here." (It was a very laid-back place)

If someone clicked there, a dialog box would pop up saying "Now Deleting..." and list every single file on the hard drive. Then, when it got to the end, a message box pops up and says "Just kidding!"

-------------------------
Just call me Captain Awesome.
 
I made a VB program that integerated the TTS control. The program was a picture of my buddy with the TTS mouth over where his mouth is.

The program would say something rude over and over and over, then when he tried to close it it opened up full screen and turned up the volume.

After that everytime he clicked it, it would say "Stop touching me there"...

It was a laugh when he ran it and called me to tell me he had to hard boot to get rid of it.

Casper

There is room for all of gods creatures, "Right Beside the Mashed Potatoes".
 
Well, I just got the "it" ball lobbed at me over the cube wall, so I must go tear through the nerf bowling going on to chase after the culprit.....
 
The guys in my office (myself included) will find a workstation that is open and make fun changes to the desktop amongst other things. Sometimes we will send out emails as if we were the workstation's owner. I remember when I first started, I placed a picture of my favorite sports team on my desktop. Came back to the office and my team's bitter rival was now ocuppying the screen. This was during the playoffs when the two teams were battling!!


 
Oh man we did a whole array of things at my last job...a lot probably are illegal/against policy by most corporate standards...and what's awesome was the execs were often times involved in this and worse before I started and they got all corporate.

(mind you this is at quite a well known IT bootcamp)

Disposed of monitors by throwing them from the roof (3 stories up)
Figured out many ways to inflict pain on others w/ compressed air
Fruit fights
Subway sandwhich eating competitions
When one of us forgot to lock our workstations we'd probably come back to a picture of a naked man sex doll (we called it gettin' "Charlie'd"
New MCT instructors were thrown in a pond on there first night there
Chair races
Snowball fights
We'd use classroom's not in use for LAN parties, Xbox games, or movies.

And so much more. Man if the job didn't pay like crap and the bosses asking for so much more and paying no more, that job was awesome!

 
One of my friends used to balance a broom on his nose.

What no one realised was that he was spelling sommething out on the ceiling tiles - the indentations were only visible when the sun was at a certain angle.

This was in a room that was occasionally used as a meeting room.

Yes it happened - during a meeting of some more senior people one leaned back in his chair, raised his head and saw on the ceiling "Colin Smee is a (expletive deleted)".

Although my friend was never identified as the author for some reason he was moved to another job shortly after.
 
gpastoreli}When one of us forgot to lock our workstations[/quote said:
My personal favorite is to take a screen print of a colleagues desktop while they are away, and save it to an image file. Then set this as wallpaper, close down all open programs and move all the desktop shortcuts to a temporary file. Oh what fun when they try to continue working....

If you don't have time for this, then send out an email on your colleague's behalf (to all who will see the funny side) outing him, or announcing that he will soon be on extended leave as he is going for gender re-assignment surgery. I find it best not to interfere with a female colleague's pc, as they would kill me.

How can you tell if a Systems Engineer is an extrovert? - He looks at Your shoes when he talks to you.
 
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