My manager and three of my co-workers went off to the SungardHE Summit conference in Las Vegas last week…I was left to fend for myself in the office. Nope. I didn’t go. But I didn’t sit idle! I wrangled up a crew (Al, Casey, Cliff, Tim, Laurianne, and a couple others) and “decorated” their offices.

Firstly was my boss’ office, wrapped up nicely in Tin-Foil. See the full article here.

Tin Foil Used: 1,100 square feet
Time Spent: 3 hours
Continual Manpower: 5
Cost: $30

Secondly was Zach’s office, Wallpapered in Post-It Notes. See the full article here.

Post-It Notes used: 5,300 (248.45 square feet of note surface).
Time Spent: 4 hours
Continual Manpower: 3
Cost: $60.71

Thirdly was Dan’s office, covered in cups, a number partially filled with water. See the full article here.

Cups Used: 575
Time Spent: 45 minutes
Continual Manpower: 4
Cost: $25.99

Lastly was Dee’s office, I stole her monitor then filled her office section with balloons See the full article here.

Balloons Used: 280
Time Spent: 1.5 hours
Continual Manpower: 3
Cost: $12

All work was done after hours or during our lunch break on Friday. No work resources were used (save for half a role of tape and a little bit of electricity). A whole lot of plotting and fun was had by all. In fact, our Administrative God, Colleen, helped formulate a plan to ensure that the 4 prankees remained away from the office until Monday morning that involved buy-in from our CIO and the Plymouth State University Facility Services office. Basically, we told them that the carpets were being steam cleaned all weekend with some serious chemicals. Fun times :)

Following the completion of the first prank, I found myself giving numerous tours of the offices throughout the week as each prank was completed. Overall, a lot of fun! When they come in on Monday, I plan to have 4 video cameras…one in each office…to get their first reactions. Thats the plan and if I succeed, the vids will be going on YouTube.

This was our second and most time-consuming prank of the four executed this past week. Using 5,300 Post-It Notes (248.45 square feet of the little suckers), a number of co-workers and I coated my co-worker‘s office in yellow sticky goodness. Wednesday after work we began this prank with a mere 1,400 Post-It Notes but after an hour and a half found that I had purchased too few. We continued the following day with another 4,900!

The participants in this prank were primarily me, Al and Cliff. Also making an appearance to help were: Casey, Abby, Ted (our Systems Group Manager) and his family.

5,300 Post-It Notes is a nice large number with a lot of repetitive motions…rip, stick, press; rip, stick, press. The application went a great deal faster than we all expected, however, we had a lot of surface to cover. We promptly found out that Post-It notes didn’t like sticking to the door, to the chairs, or the ceiling…but we shoved notes wherever we could. On and under desks, bookcases, toys, bottles, monitors, a fan, a globe, white boards, etc. Anything that would accept a Post-It Note received one.

This prank rivaled the Tin Foil prank. The final result looked amazing and really brightened up Zach’s blue room. I considered this one a pretty good accomplishment once it was finished. Check out the full gallery here!