Less an invention, more of a fun office game. For a month every year (likely summer, weather is nice, people are often more cheery) offices in question would assign each employee the name of another employee, and give them the month to pull some variety of prank on that person.

Aside from health and safety guidelines, there would be no rules as to the nature of the prank to be pulled. It could be anything from jumping out and yelling 'boo', to a devilishly intricate plot involving pulleys, levers and a series of well bred llamas.

There would be no ranking or scoring system. The best are determined only through the age-old system of office politics. Anything that will humiliate or anger the prankee is to be heavily frowned upon. The aim is to create an air of joviality, not a climate of fear. Nor should these jokes be allowed to interfere with general work. Of course, there is no requirement to actually perform the practical joke, but that person would run the risk of being seen as miserly by his or her colleagues.
-- hidden truths, Aug 23 2006

Who vets the mandated jokes/pranks to make sure they don't fall across the line of sexual or religious harassment? Everyone likes a good joke, but not necessarily at the cost of their job or corporate censure.
-- jurist, Aug 23 2006


Obvious answer would be legal department, but that would just suck all the fun out of it. I think I'm going to say the boss. Unless of course he is your target, in which case you'd probably be being very careful with your joke anyway. Or, if the company was willing to splash out a bit on this, they could hire an outside prank preparation contractor.
-- hidden truths, Aug 23 2006


Hm...I wonder if you can mark something MFD - typo.
-- DrCurry, Aug 23 2006


I want to be on the receiving end of the llamas.

That sounded much wronger than it was meant to.
-- wagster, Aug 23 2006


I worked at a camp where they had "secret" admireres instead. You were given a name of someone to give gifts to. It would probably work better where there were long term employees, and a better chance to know each other's desires. Of course, there wouldn't be too many llamas and levers.
-- ye_river_xiv, Aug 23 2006


//I read this somewhere//
Yeah, right, [phlish].
IT WAS YOU!!! wasn't it?
-- m_Al_com, Aug 24 2006



random, halfbakery