Shop pranks

[Enzo]

In my pro audio career, I spent most of it with one other tech, and for a few years the outside organ repair guy too. But in prior years I was in the coin-operated amusements industry. The first company I worked for had the amusements division (pinball, video, jukebox, vending), and the coin laundry division. I had seven techs under me, and the laundry guy about the same. We had good crews. We had a friendly rivalry. At one point for some reason we got to foisting a scrub brush off on one another. Me managing the amusements and Jim managing the laundry guys. One of those big stiff bristle brushes with the longish thick wood handle. Like you'd scrub tires with.

He'd toss it in my tool box, I'd throw it in his car. He'd put it inside a pinball machine I was servicing, and so on.

Eventually, I took a motor from a cigarette machine, and connected a crank link to it, and screwed the link to the brush handle, anchored the end of the brush handle, and put this whole deal on his desk with motor running. he came in to find the brush waving at him from his desk.

Another time I took a bunch of relays from a pinball - big open frame relays - and a "scoremotor", which in a pinball is a motorized stack of cams which activate a bunch of contact points. It enabled complex things like resetting the score reels or stepping up the 10 point relay five times if you hit a 50 point target. We also had air hockey tables, and on the side of those was a row of seven lights to indicate scores. I took a score display from that, put letters under the light covers, and wired up a circuit with the parts to light up the lights in sequence, then flash them all off and on a few times, then repeat. This was all done with the clattering relays and stuff. It sounded like a pinball machine.

The lighting letters spelled out my special message to Jim, and I set this project on his desk. The sequence was:
F-U-C-K, FUCK, Y-O-U, YOU,... FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.

And repeat. It really was stunning.

We had a junior shop guy, the guy we all picked on, like McGee on NCIS. We liked to mess with his car. Crawled under the dash and pulled the connector up to the steering wheel. Tapped the wire to the horn button and jumped it to the brake lights. Every time he hit the brakes, the horn sounded. Zaniness ensued. He started to drive away, honking, got down to the corner to get out and check under the hood...BONUS, he turned on his emergency flashers, and it turned out THEY honked the horn too. We were rolling in the aisles.

Same guy another time, we ran the hose from his wiper squirter through the firewall hole and taped it up under his steering column. Figured first time it rained, he'd get a wet lap. Turned out he didn;t need wipers for a week, then loaned his car to his sister... Yep. She came back, "DAve, there's something wrong with your car. Whenever I use the wipers my leg gets wet."

And finally, another guy at the shop took his lunch hour to work on his car out in the parking area. He ran a hundred foot extension cord from a shop outlet out through the garage door and to his car. He needed to drill something with an electric drill. He plugged in the cord and took the drill outside. Meanwhile, I had the opportunity to quick hook my variac into the extension cord. I could see him through my window. He plugged in the drill and reved it, it worked. Then as he started to drill, I dialed him down and the drill came to a halt. He lifted the drill and revved it again and I had it back up to full. But as soon as he tried to drill again, I dialed him back down. he got frustrated and walked back into the shop to see if his cord was loose or something, of course I had plenty of time to remove the variac and look innocent. Grumble grumble. Cord seems OK< back out to the car, and I returned the variac, and we danced some more. A couple cycles of this, and at one point, right out of a cartoon, he lifted the drill and pointed it at his face to look down the drill bit and revved it. He was starting to get steamed, so we let him catch us at it. But ti was great fun at his expense.

[The Dude]

I don't have anything that good and can't think of any tech stories off hand. Your drill story reminded me of a gig prank story though. A band I was in in the 80's was sound checking at a club. We patched a harmonizer into the lead singers wedge monitor and set it down a half step and totally wet- no dry signal. We started a song and whatever he sang came out of the wedge detuned a half step. He'd stop the band, our monitor guy would bypass the harmonizer while the singer talked and everything was fine. We'd start playing again, of course harmonizer reengaged, and he'd try to sing in tune again. After several starts and stops, the monitor guy bumped the harmonizer down an octave. The satan voice gave away the prank.

[Enzo]

A band I was running sound for back when did the Nilsson tune Jump Into the Fire. Our guitarist had an echoplex on stage, but between songs I had to run up to the stage, grab the echoplex and run back to the sound booth and install it in his mic line because the delay repeats are integral to the tune.

To mess with the guy, I would sometimes turn the echoplex all the way over to wet only, and start with the head up close, so it sounded more or less normal, but then I'd drop the head down the tape a little so his voice came out of the speakers a half second late. try a second delay or thereabouts sometime. It is almost impossible to talk hearing your voice come out later. I didn't mess with the song, only when he was talking between songs.

He'd yell at me, "Turn that damned thing OFF."

Your story reminded me of that.

When I was touring with Stanley Steamer in 1973, we played Filling me softly, the Roberta Flack tune, and also War's Slippin' into Darkness. TOny would announce the songs. He occasionally said we were about to play "Slippin' in the dog shit" and no one ever noticed. Likewise, no one ever reacted to "Filling me softly with his dong."

[The Dude]

I'm sure none of you have ever charged a cap and tossed it to a fellow tech. (Disclaimer: Of course not recommended with a high voltage cap.)

[Enzo]

We never did that in the shop, but...um... we did do that in high school electronics shop. Towards the end of the class, we'd charge up a cap and leave it on the bench for the next class to pick up. ZZZT.

[Chuck H]

This would be more on topic if I had ever worked in an electronics environment, but I worked in a paint shop. One trick we always pulled on new guys was to poke a pinhole in the lid of whatever paint can they were tinting and unplug all but the rotary shaker The tint room was decorated with the results. As was the new guy.

The same tint room had a painted brick wall behind the tint desk. Whenever a bright or gaudy color was made it was customary to paint one of the bricks. So eventually it was a mosaic of loud colors. When we moved from that shop to another location I painted over about six of the bricks with pure colorant. Pure colorant has no binders. That means that no matter how many coats of paint you put on top, the colorant will bleed through until you scrub it off and seal it with something like shellac. Of course we weren't there when the new renters came in to paint, but I know they would have painted that gaudy brick wall. I'm sure the noise pollution in the warehouse increased that day.

At the new shop sometime around Halloween I carefully carved a Jack o Lantern to look like my co worker Mike (he sort of looked like one anyway ). Mike was strangely offended. So I kept it on the sales counter. Customers would say "Hey, Mike, that pumpkin looks like you!" or "Wow! That pumpkin looks like Mike." It really got under his skin.

[52 Bill]

Here's one from the old days of CRT repairs. There's nothing like the sound of a high voltage discharge spark to put fear in a tech's head. When you hear that snap you just want to quickly drop whatever you are holding and run.

You'd just calmly walk up behind the guy taking voltage readings somewhere near the flyback transformer and clap your hands to make a high pitched snap. Older techs would be startled and younger ones would be across the room before the meter leads hit the floor.

Things were certainly different back then.

[Enzo]

Oh man. On a CRT, the outer surface of the tube is coated with "aquadag" a conductive paint. There was a similar coating on the inside, and connection was made to it via the high voltage anode cup on the outside. The conductive coating on the inner and outer surface made a capacitor. If memory serves me, maybe 500pf worth? The spiky 15kHz sweep in the tube was rectified, and that capacitance was all it needed as a filter cap to make the 20-30kV DC.

The inner surface had the high voltage on it, the outer surface was grounded to chassis by a strap or bare wire stretched across its surface. If that wire got disconnected from its ground point, the outer coating would charge up tot he high voltage like the inner. Eventually the voltage charged up enough the outer coating would arc over to some nearby grounded point with a very loud SNAP.

I learned that the hard way, and yes indeed that snap is scary.

[picturevalve]

Workshop radio

Where I used to work, one of the boys had a radio on his desk with an external speaker, he'd have it on quiet during the day and used to turn it up louder at break times when he was having lunch etc. One day when he was on leave we put a bridge rectifier inside the external speaker cabinet in series with the spkr. It sounded fine at low volume, but when you turned it up... He spent ages fault-finding the amp before turning his attention to the speaker (speaker was hard-wired). For those of you still gainfully employed, the best gag has got to be one of those little devices that mimic the sound of a desk phone ringtone, switched off just before whoever it is gets to the phone.
Hours of fun.

[Chuck H]

For those of you still gainfully employed, the best gag has got to be one of those little devices that mimic the sound of a desk phone ringtone, switched off just before whoever it is gets to the phone.

That's a good one. It reminded me of the time I hid an electronic metronome, set to it's slowest speed of about four seconds between reports, behind the cabinets in my bosses office. tick........................tick........................ ........tick.........................tick

Barely audible. You would even question whether it was coming from inside the room. He looked for "That F#@&ing sound" off and on all day. I took it out that night and didn't let on until the company picnic later that year.

[Enzo]

YES!!!^^^

The ANNOYATRON. The phantom phone ringing is one of them. One I like is the original. It emits a beep now and then. People go nuts trying to figure out what is beeping. It has a magnet so you can stick it on a file cabinet or up under a metal desk.


Then there is the Phantom Keystroker. It looks like the average USB flashdrive. Plug it into someone's computer and it can do several things. At random intervals it will move the mouse cursor. Or click on the caps lock. Or move the keyboard over a key. Or just enter some gibberish.

Amazon sells them cheap. So does ThinkGeek.

[Tom Phillips]

Here is a true story of someone who unintentionally pranked herself. Her office computer was making strange noises. Sounded a lot like an intermittent failing hard drive or fan bearing. She called tech support and after a confusing few moments they discovered a very unusual source of the noises. The computer user had been watching a barn owl nest web cam site. She had minimized the owl cam browser tab and forgot about it. The strange noises were the baby owls who had become active and could be heard over the computer speaker faintly squawking. Years later we still tell the story to every new employee.

[bob p]

I'm waiting for one of you guys to say that you modded a smoke detector to emit the a random low battery beep even when the battery is good. Continually changing batteries on one of those things would drive someone nuts.

[Chuck H]

I'm waiting for one of you guys to say that you modded a smoke detector to emit the a random low battery beep even when the battery is good. Continually changing batteries on one of those things would drive someone nuts.

Sometimes the really old ones will fail due to the old americium element. It seems that even with the half life being so long that some weakening and general room dust can cause these things to fail in some twenty years. So they beep. Some can't even be shorted to drain the capacitor (battery out and terminals shorted) so they keep beeping, beeping, beeping. I have NOTHING against destroying a smoke detector that refuses to stop beeping after 24hrs. So, that's as long as the prank could last on me before I replaced the unit with a new one. 24hrs. is long enough though. I'd be grumpy enough to punch a baby.

[SoulFetish]

Some of these of reminded me of a story my father told me growing up. It's not so much about a shop (or necessarily about a prank). Bear with me though, it's a pretty good story and a cautionary tale.
My Grandfather grew up on a farm in eastern Massachusetts. When he was a young man, they were having a problem with a thief coming sometime in the night and stealing chickens (or tools, but I think it was chickens). Anyway, after this happened a few times, my great grandfather had enough of this person getting the better of him and making off with his chickens. So, he decides to take matters into his own hands and end this once and for all. He came up with a plan and enlisted the help of my grandfather. He set up a booby trap by setting up his shot gun pointing at the barn door and rigged the trigger to go off when someone opened it.
My grandfather says to him "Dad, don't you think you're overreacting a bit? Maybe we can scare this guy and we don't have to kill him." He convinces my great grandfather to aim the gun at the roof, so when the door opens the gun goes off and scares the shit out of the guy, hopefully running him off.
A day of two goes by and that afternoon out of nowhere my grandfather hears the loud BOOM of a shotgun blast going off in the back yard and runs out there to find my great grandfather standing in the doorway of the barn, with the barn door (and his mouth) wide open. His cigar hanging off one lip and a look of shock on his face. He had completely forgotten about the trap he had set.