The best practical joke I ever played.

[Will Carry]

This story is a little long but it is true. If I'd done that today I would have been fired and maybe even arrested.

Back in 1977 I was going to School at Nashville Tech in their Co-op program. They got me a job working at Nashville Electric Service one summer. My job was to hang pole tags. Every pole has a number that corresponds to a map grip and then a number to identify the specific pole.

Whenever the line crews would find an untagged pole they called it in. It was a great job for a kid. They gave me an old station wagon, no AC, no power steering, with "NES" on the side and a yellow bubblegum machine on top. My motto was "Leave no pole untagged". I was all over Davidson County and the surrounding area. There was one rule that NES made me follow. I was not to put myself in any danger, particularly from BAD DOGS. When I came to a place that had bad dogs I would put the tag aside and it would be placed in the "BAD DOG" box back at the office. I came to a pasture with a Brahma bull in it: Bad Dog. I went out to Bill Monroe's (Father of Bluegrass) farm north of Ashland City and had 30-40 hounds surround my car: Bad Dog. By the end of the summer I had a box full of bad dog tags.

These were real bad dog tags. I know dogs and I only included the really bad ones in the bad dog box. The summer came to and end and I had to go back to school for a quater and on my last day I had to train my replacement. He was a wide-eyed young African-American fellow named Sam Hatcher, a class mate and a friend of mine. I showed him how to get the tags, plan his route for the day and fill out the paperwork at the end of each day. As I opened that cabinet to get him his tags for his first day, the BAD DOG box was right there. I had no idea that Sam was afraid of dogs but the devil in me said to give him the BAD DOG tags. When he left the office for the day I told eveyone what I'd done and word soon spread throughout the building.

When Sam came back that afternoon, he walked in the office and he was ashy, shakin' and all torn up, just shaking his head. People were laughing until they cried, rolling on the floor. People from other departments came in laughing and shaking Sam's hand. Everyone liked Sam after that and he did very well as a Pole Tag Hanger. Although on his first day, he didn't hang a single tag.

[Il Duce]

awesome

[Guest jackdm3]

Sounds good. All that I can think of was wrapping the top of my dorm quad's toilet bowls with saran wrap so when you walked up to it to take a leak, the plastic on it was so tight, you couldn't see the wrinkles. Let 'er rip and piss all over your legs. Two of the guys started laughing immediately mid-piss! Otherwise, I've been an angel!

Makes me sad. MTSU was fun.

[Magiccarpetrides]

hahaha

[Guest jackdm3]

And sometimes, the "shorter" dudes would sit down and not feel it. It'd be like it was lifting you up off the seat!

[frontier737]

Now that is a funny story!

[Guest jackdm3]

I'm sorry, Will. Stealing your thunder was not my intention.

[Mike.357]

Great stuff, Will.

I have pulled more than my fair share of gags at work over the years.

Your post reminded me of lots of crap that got pulled back in the day, thanks.

[peejman]

Excellent story!

Sounds good. All that I can think of was wrapping the top of my dorm quad's toilet bowls with saran wrap so when you walked up to it to take a leak, the plastic on it was so tight, you couldn't see the wrinkles. Let 'er rip and piss all over your legs. Two of the guys started laughing immediately mid-piss! Otherwise, I've been an angel!

Makes me sad. MTSU was fun.

Among other things, we'd light the plastic tip on a can of WD-40 and stick it under the stall door when someone was stinking up the place. A few missing eyebrows later, people learned what "courtesy flush" meant. We'd probably go to jail for that now too.

[SpartaTN]

I put a remote power switch on an older guy's monitor at work and kept turning it off and on at different intervals... to the point he finally called tech support.

At my next corporate job, we filled a few guy's desks with packing peanuts, turned drawers upside down, reprogrammed keyboards to type the wrong keys, etc....

When leaving that job, I did the respectful thing, gave notice, talked to my boss, talked to his boss, but they still required a letter of resignation. It was written, or more like drawn, in crayon by my 8 year old son. It was a nice picture of the 21 story building with a caption out my window that simply said "I Quit" with a space underlined for me to sign.

[Guest Gene83]

When I was in the Army, one of my buddies bought his first motorcycle. After he dropped it for the second time, we went out one night and bolted a set of training wheels on the back end of it.

[ttocswob]

Small world, Will. I spent about 20 years under the dome, starting about 2 years after you. Rass, Ann, and Putty were there when you were.

Co-op students were usually good for laughs.

One wrote in his term report that he loved NES, especially the 1-1/2 hour lunches and 30 minute breaks. Another spent his summer at the pool, and told them on his last day where to find the pole tags. Then there was Henry - found ONE tick - next thing you know, he's outside the truck, on the side of the road, stripped down to his underwear!

(BTW, what's a co-op? The sound an elephant turd makes when it hits the ground...KO-WAP!)

[Guest mosinon]

so this one time I got pretty drunk in college. I lived on the fourth floor of an old dorm. The dorm was old enough that it still had a laundry shoot. I suppose, at some time in the past, students would throw their uniforms down the chute and get them cleaned and pressed by staff or something. Why the chute was there wasn't as important as the fact that it was there.

Every floor had a firehose, all rolled up behind a swinging glass door. Presumably so you could fight a fire if it came to that. you didn't have to break the glass to use it or anything. You just knew not to use it because it was painted red and it looked like you shouldn't mess with it.

So I was drunk and came up with this plan: I'll lower this hose down the laundry chute and get the bottom floor slightly damp. But, cause I'm drunk clever, I'll string the first floor hose out to make it look like they did it. Why not just use the first floor hose to dampen the first floor? I was drunk. And 19.

So I pull the bottom floor firehose out a little bit and then lower our floor's hose down the chute. But I'm drunk clever again so I just lower it down to the bottom of the chute, I don't pull it out of that floor's door. I turn it on just a little bit.

I go down to look at the damage and see nothing. At this point I think that the firehoses don't work. I pass out.

The next morning, after the four feet of the shaft had filled up, the bottom floor is largely okay expect for six rooms that are dealing with 16 inches of water.

I still feel a little bad.

[analog_kidd]

At work, we all carry text pagers. I send out pages to coworkers like this..

Joe, please call Mr. Lyons @ 123-4567. Where the number is the zoo. in fact if you call the zoo on the first, they'll have a recording now saying if you're looking for Mr. Lyons, or Ms Byrd, you've been goofed with.

Others I'm famous for..

Liz Onya - Number of Italian restaurant

Lon Moore - Tractor Supply