Funny shop/garage pranks or stories

[ElAzul]

A few short years ago I spent a couple days a week building race engines and such with a well seasoned race boat, car, engine builder in Central Ca.
One early morning we were buttoning up the rotating assembly on a 555ci injected deal. I always kept the build room spotless and laid out all the needed parts in order of build. We both count and verify rod bolts, main stud nuts etc. before/during the windage tray, pan etc. goes on and rolling the block over. This time I was "busy" for the count and told him he was old but I still trust him to get it right lol even tho I was definitely the student. Later in the day we are ready to stab the intake bolts in. When I laid all the hardware out I set on extra ARP 12pt. rod bolt in the hardware hardware that just happened to be the same one this engine used and not a common type to just be laying around. I then happened to be "on the phone" when he came across the extra rod bolt in the mix and I watched him ponder for half an hour if and how he could have missed it. He was counting in the air, air clicking his torque sequence and so on. Then the foul language, a couple thrown tools and he was ready to start tearing the bottom of the motor apart to check. I played dumb right up till things were ready to come apart then promptly called it a day after I told him what I did since he was not amused at all . It took about 2 months before he would laugh when it was brought up

What you got?

 

[LHC Kirby]

A neighbor who barely knew how to tell which end of a hammer to use, asked for some help to install A ceiling fan. He had five to do, but after one he would know how to do it. NFW.

After I install four of them - all exact same models - with his “help” - he briefly leaves the room of the fifth one as we were unpacking the box.

While he was gone I quickly took the blades out, turning three white side up, two brown side up.

He returns, and I tell him the manufacturer screwed him. And I show him the five blades. He gets all bent out of shape saying that he always gets screwed, why am I the one that always gets screwed. At this point his really hot wife walks into the room and says what’s wrong? He points to the five blades and says the manufacture screwed him, they sent three white and two brown blades. At this point the beautiful blonde turns two brown blades over to White. He looks at me and says you are an asshole. And I bust up laughing

Sorry no pictures.

 

[monkeyswrench]

Shrunk wrapped my buddy's tool box after he left for the day...

Put an assortment of those sticky mouse traps in the top of another's, took a week before he rummaged for something up there...

Put anti-seize on the bathroom doorknob...

 

[bagged97taco]

New guy at the shop bought a nice lifted 4 door Jeep. This guy barely knows which way is up and that Jeep didn’t deserve him as an owner. I put zip ties around the driveshaft, he drove off. Came running back in saying his bad ass Jeep was falling apart, making some awful noise. After he figured that one out, we put a harmonica behind the grill and took him a couple days to figure that one out!

 

[mash on it]

Weld test-
When a guy was under the hood welding, on s steel bench, walk by and smack the bench with a 5 lb sledgehammer. Some passed, some were pissed.

Charge a capacitor (for points) and toss it to the new guy.

"Here, hold this wire" usually#1 plug wire, and hit the key...only worked once.

A wrench had his personal car on the lift during lunch, let the air out of the tires.
As soon as it was on the ground, he got pissed. Always good for a few laughs.

Unhooking the power wire to the distributor or coil wire when he wasn't looking, on a car that was in for an oil change or brake job, or something minor.

Dan'l

 

[RiverDave]

Lol you guys are dicks!

 

[RitcheyRch]

We would put bologna in the phone mouth piece on a Friday afternoon. Sure made for an interesting phone call to him on Monday morning.

 

[RaceTec]

Too many... One guy pulled the butcher block top off of another guys rollaway and there are 4 holes that look into the big top drawer, filled all four holes with a pneumatic grease gun. Greased door handles, popcorn in the exhaust, you name it! I think it was Penzoil Panther and Hemelgarn back in the day, Texas Motor speedway, Had "Packy the sticker guy" make a bunch of gay pride stickers that were plastered on the team minivan, then the other team got them with Hershey's chocolate sauce on the windshield while going down the highway. I lost a rear door to my rental car in Indy once... When I was a newbie I had everything in the world asked for me to find, corner weight, etc... Like mentioned above learned and played with condensers for points ignitions, and the one that wakes everyone up, your first time learning about a magneto!

 

[RaceTec]

I forgot about the best one that got me ever! My buddy Chris that worked at Hemelgarn and I had a long night drinking and partying with friends. He went out to my car at some point and jacked the rear axle about 1/2 inch off of the ground with with the jack under the pumpkin. Then removed the jack handle and spun the jack around. He made an effort to screw me over! I came out all hungover running late for work and thought my transmission shit the bed. Took me forever to figure out what he did then find the jack handle and get my car down that 1/2 "!!!

 

[monkeyswrench]

.... put moly grease under the handles on a tool box.

...waited till the shop's bathroom bomber went in for daily 20min Facespace session, kicked a pack of BlackCats under the door.

 

[Mandelon]

Zip tied one of those air horns to the super's chair. He'd sit down and get blasted.

I hot glued a bunch of my bud's tools to his work bench. He never left me alone in the garage again.


My FIL always told me back in the Navy they would tack weld their co-workers toolboxes to the steel floor. Made em hard to pick up I suppose. LOL

 

[Rayson1971]

I was on a jobsight and I dropped my tools to go take a leak. When I came back I put my tools and began to work. I reach in to grab my tin snips and there was a tie wrap around the handle. Thought no big deal I'll grab my dikes and cut it off. Nope fucker tie wrapped all my tools. Was pretty funny.
Later i put a long tie wrap on his drive shaft. Long enough that it would hit the underside of his cab.

 

[Mandelon]

Not on purpose, but on one of our job sites the toilet was removed while the floor was getting tiled. The super had to take a whiz. He used an old 7/11 coffee cup he found on the counter top. He pissed in it, put the lid back on and simply left it on the counter, expecting to throw it out later.

The tile comes back out to the kitchen. He was pretty sure he had finished his coffee. But there it was, still half full and pretty warm...

So he takes a big swig. That was funny to everyone else, just not the to the tile guy.

 

[pieyed]

New guy in the fab shop welds up a bracket that won’t hold shit and looks even worse. He gets a pretty good ribbing about it and decides to throw it in the trash. The next day when he shows up to work he finds the bracket welded to his work bench. He’s not amused and proceeds to grind it off and disposed of it again, (not well enough though). The following week he finds it welded to a roof beam with his name on it. He has to go get a man lift and cut it down. Again not amused and throws the bracket away. On his next birthday he receives a package COD and opens it to find said bracket. GOLD

 

[pwerwagn]

I like to take those legit "poppers", that you throw on the floor and they pop...and put them under the toilet seats. When you sit down, bnag!

Take the air filter out of the air box, wrap it up tight in trash bag...put back into the air box.

Use a syringe/hot glue to drain and refill gatorade bottles with ATF, 2 stroke oil, etc depending on flavor and leave them in the fridge. Works 50% of the time.

Take all the fuses out of the fusebox and leave them in a cupholder.

Take a cheap leftover horn and wire it to the starter solenoid so a horn honks whenever you crank it.

People that have diesels with stacks, a lot of times a 2L bottle fits good inside them. With a little water, they wont blow out at idle but will once they pull out on the road.

I have never tried the harmonica thing before, I'll have to try that!

 

[Jetboatjosh]

When I first started working on trucks I was two weeks out of high school and pretty wet behind the ears haha. I was turning over an engine while someone set and teach me how to set an overhead, my coworker looks at me with the most serious face and said "did you know there is a fag in the shop?" I said no way that's wierd. He replied "kiss me I'll tell ya who it is" and everyone is earshot was laughing their ass off.

 

[Kachina26]

Ran a wire from the secondary ignition on a car around the passenger side across the back seat pulled it between the seat back and base of the driver's seat; then I stripped off a good six inches and then asked a service writer to crank it over for me to diagnose a crank no start condition.

 

[coolchange]

Back in the day of coils and distributor s, pull the coil wire and a plug wire and swap em. engine would hit on one cylinder when trying to start and sometimes almost want to run.
Usual comment was WTF it ran fine when I shut it off! Then if you really wanted to be a prick you'd say must have ran backwards and Skipped a tooth on the timing chain.
Hiding a half eaten burrito up under the springs in the seat was always a good one.

 

[j21black]

Another manager at work would always tell the entire office when I was dropping a deuce. I asked him to knock it off, as I enjoyed reading the paper in there with complete silence, but I didn't like people saying shit to me about it, especially the ladies in the office. He didn't stop kept on going with it.....

One day, I noticed he was in the can. Had an employee fill a 5 gallon bucket about 3/4 full of water, and I dumped it over the stall on him.

He never talked of me dropping a deuce again.

 

[Instigator]

1 small dab of Black Permatex under a door handle goes A LOOOOONG WAYS and will last all year.

 

[buck35]

We used to put antiseize inside the sweatband on hardhats at work . When you get a good sweat up ,you have really hard to wash off polkadots all over you're forehead.

Catch a guy dozed off at lunch and tie their laces together ... Shift work can be fun !

 

[25Elmn8r]

Not a shop prank, but we moved one of my guys entire desk, working pc and phone, into the restroom. when he came in there were signs pointing him to his new desk. Same guy was in dropping a deuce and accidentally dropped his phone in the toilet, he thought no worries I'll just get up and grab it. Well, he forgot it was an auto flush... whoosh!!!! there it goes down the drain! BTW, this was back when flip phones were the ticket to have before all the giant iphones etc.

We also filled one of the management teams entire office with balloons while he was out on vacation. I brought my compressor in to fill the balloons, it took the entire week and thousands of balloons (we had very large offices), but it was worth it to see his face when he got back!

One of the better ones was we had a husband and wife that worked with us. He worked for me in IT support, she was in disaster recovery. Her and I looped the head of HR in to mix and filed a sexual harassment claim against him. The look on his face was priceless when we were going over the complaint. He was trying to figure out who and how it could have been misconstrued, it was hilarious!

Those were some good times! I now work from home, so it's just me and the dogs all day.

 

[Sleek-Jet]

We'd send the new mechanics out for a couple feet of flight line and a gallon of prop wash. A few were wise to it, but most spent the afternoon being sent from department to department.

 

[Mandelon]

A couple guys had the exact same cell phones, but with different colored covers. I switched the covers. It took them a bit to figure why they each kept getting calls for their co-worker.

 

[$hot]

Transmission fluid in the tail pipe is always a good one.

Ketchup on the top of the wiper blades

Clear jello in an outdoor toilet durring the winter months. First guy of the gay is in for a nice treat

 

[Shlbyntro]

My service manager is almost always the first to arrive in the morning. I am almost always the last to leave. One night I took an old air horn and strapped it to the underside of is office chair. It's one of those ones with the spring loaded gas shock so it always drops half an inch or so when you sit in it. We all got to watch his reaction on the office security cams later that day. We all had a good laugh including him.

In my old shop we had a bathroom with an outward swinging door out in the shop. One day one of our shop hands named jack when to drop the kids off and we quietly parked a forklift in front of it without him knowing. About 15minutes later I got a rather un nice phone call telling me to let him out. His nick name from that day forward was" jack in the box"

I had a boat come in that had sank to see if I could save it. I pulled all the spark plugs out and asked that same shop hand to put his head down next to the engine while I cranked it to see if he could pin point an odd noise that the engine was making.

I also shimmed a coworkers car one time and pulled the ignition relay out of his fuse box and then by an act of wizardry I managed to to slip the relay into his pocket without him knowing. I got a phone call about half hour after I left work to see if I could help him figure out why his car wouldnt start at which point I told him the problem was in his pocket. It took him a minute to put 2 and 2 together.

Of course the next day when I was on my bike and went out to grab some lunch, the same coworker had followed me unbeknownst to me and managed to push my bike clear across the shopping center parking lot without me noticing. He let me think it was stolen while he "came from the shop" to pick me up. I lock my forks now too.

Were all assholes on here lol

 

[Flying_Lavey]

My buddy was wiring up some off-road lights on his Ranger back in the day at our other friends house. He had the hood up while he was wiring some stuff up under the dash. I reached in and popped the suction side pressure switch for his A/C off. It was in the middle of summer. About a week later he stops by my cousin's house when we were working on his truck I asked Tyson how he has liked his lights. He said "They're great except apparently I fucked my A/C when I was putting them in. It's not working. I took it to a shop and they said I need a new compressor so it's getting put in on Thursday." I told him to let me take a look real quick (couldn't allow him to get hustled like that). I think I "found" the unplugged pressure switch too quick cause he put 2 and 2 together pretty quickly. After he calmed down he admitted it was a good one. Apparently it even fucked up a first date for him cause he didn't have A/C. I still laugh thinking about it.

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[Kachina26]

Rigged up an empty gallon sized coolant bottle to an air hose. Lube guy got the heavy line guy to come listen to a noise. When he got his head down there, I turned on the air hose. He damned near went through the roof when that thing blew.

 

[LHC Kirby]

He said "They're great except apparently I fucked my A/C when I was putting them in. It's not working. I took it to a shop and they said I need a new compressor so it's getting put in on Thursday."

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I hope he never used that shop again

 

[boat 569]

Several years ago I worked in our company’s machine shop. I was usually the first one in the shop. One of my coworkers “Rick” was usually second and after drinking his coffee on the way to work would head straight to the bathroom to take the browns to the Super Bowl. So I took an old pair of boots and cut the legs off of a pair of coveralls and with some tig rods made it look like someone was sitting on the can in the stall. The next morning I set up my dummy and wait for Rick to show up. Sure enough he heads straight to the bathroom and comes right back out and has to run across the parking lot to the main office bathroom. While he’s gone I pick up my dummy and hang it in a locker. Same thing happens the next two mornings. By now he’s quizzing everybody about the guy in the shitter. Of course the rest of the shop knew about it by now. We were having a lot of steel work done on one of the pads and there were a bunch of iron workers around. They told him that one of those guys was living in his car and using our bathroom but no one would say anything to him because he wasn’t right in the head. So one of my coworkers got the dummy out of the locker and set it up at lunch time with a magazine open on the floor and a cigarette in an ashtray in front of the boots. Rick sees it and goes straight to our supervisor about this crazy guy camping out in our bathroom. Of course the supervisor was in on it and humored him and using a sheet off his desk blotter made a big sign that said this bathroom is for Boeing personnel only in big letters. So Rick goes back and tapes the sign to the stall door. The next morning we were pre shifting so everybody was in the shop when Rick made his trip to the can. I gave him a minute and the put on a pair of coveralls and the old boots and went into the bathroom stomping my feet. I walked right up to the stall and wadded up his sign and threw it over into the stall. You should of heard the toilet paper flying off the roll! He says something I can’t understand because his voice is cracking and I turn around and walk out. A few minutes later he comes flying out and runs into the shop telling everyone what happened and that he told the guy when he was through wiping his ass he was gonna be sorry but the guy had run off. About that time he saw me standing there wearing the coveralls and old boots and knew he had been had. This was 25 years ago and it’s still talked about. Rick is now my supervisor but holds no grudges.

 

[Instigator]

Several years ago I worked in our company’s machine shop. I was usually the first one in the shop. One of my coworkers “Rick” was usually second and after drinking his coffee on the way to work would head straight to the bathroom to take the browns to the Super Bowl. So I took an old pair of boots and cut the legs off of a pair of coveralls and with some tig rods made it look like someone was sitting on the can in the stall. The next morning I set up my dummy and wait for Rick to show up. Sure enough he heads straight to the bathroom and comes right back out and has to run across the parking lot to the main office bathroom. While he’s gone I pick up my dummy and hang it in a locker. Same thing happens the next two mornings. By now he’s quizzing everybody about the guy in the shitter. Of course the rest of the shop knew about it by now. We were having a lot of steel work done on one of the pads and there were a bunch of iron workers around. They told him that one of those guys was living in his car and using our bathroom but no one would say anything to him because he wasn’t right in the head. So one of my coworkers got the dummy out of the locker and set it up at lunch time with a magazine open on the floor and a cigarette in an ashtray in front of the boots. Rick sees it and goes straight to our supervisor about this crazy guy camping out in our bathroom. Of course the supervisor was in on it and humored him and using a sheet off his desk blotter made a big sign that said this bathroom is for Boeing personnel only in big letters. So Rick goes back and tapes the sign to the stall door. The next morning we were pre shifting so everybody was in the shop when Rick made his trip to the can. I gave him a minute and the put on a pair of coveralls and the old boots and went into the bathroom stomping my feet. I walked right up to the stall and wadded up his sign and threw it over into the stall. You should of heard the toilet paper flying off the roll! He says something I can’t understand because his voice is cracking and I turn around and walk out. A few minutes later he comes flying out and runs into the shop telling everyone what happened and that he told the guy when he was through wiping his ass he was gonna be sorry but the guy had run off. About that time he saw me standing there wearing the coveralls and old boots and knew he had been had. This was 25 years ago and it’s still talked about. Rick is now my supervisor but holds no grudges.

Now that is funny as hell!

 

[HALLETT BOY]

Had auto shop for 26 years , had just opened shop , filling out a work order with a customer, late 20’s , moderately overweight women , when in walks one of my mechanics through the parts area to the shop , adjacent to the service writer desk . Well , he rips off one huge fart as he walks by , not noticing the women . After about 30 seconds , I notice her squirming like crazy and smell something awful. Before we could finish the work order , she starts screaming : where’s the bathroom ?? I gotta go now ! Gave her the key and directions , let’s just say the bathroom wasn’t a pretty sight after ...

 

[ka0tyk]

 

[Racing97]

I forgot about the best one that got me ever! My buddy Chris that worked at Hemelgarn and I had a long night drinking and partying with friends. He went out to my car at some point and jacked the rear axle about 1/2 inch off of the ground with with the jack under the pumpkin. Then removed the jack handle and spun the jack around. He made an effort to screw me over! I came out all hungover running late for work and thought my transmission shit the bed. Took me forever to figure out what he did then find the jack handle and get my car down that 1/2 "!!!

Hey RaceTech did you ever know Graham Donaldson from Hemelgarn?

 

[Kachina26]

Heavy line guy was just wrapping up an engine install. Last day of the pay period and he had until the end of lunch to wrap it up to get the flag sheet turned in. This job was a big part of his pay period. Shop was empty, just him or so he thought. I was crouched down on the other side by the fender and made a low end thump noise with the palm of my hand. He lost his shit, I had to let him off the hook after the second start up.

 

[CoronaChris]

Dickhead coworkers office was next to the men's restroom. Went into the attic and unhooked his office a/c vent and swapped it with the men's restroom shitter fan vent. Dickhead brought in air freshener and could never find out why his office always smelled and requested to move away from the men's restroom. I think he even went home early after a secret employee Del Taco binge party.

 

[Nordie]

When I worked in the rebar fab shop (I was 18 and green) I was the kid that had to load all the pool guys trucks, so I came into work 2 hours later than everyone else, and I had to stay 2 hours later than the shop crew. Anyhow one morning I goto my locker get my gloves and tool belt out. 1st customer rolls in and I go to put my gloves on, and them fuckers filled my gloves full of grease. I kept em on until customer was loaded, but damn that felt weird. I'll never forget that one.

I got the culprit back though. He was on a rebar bender, so naturally I had to stay 2 hours later than the shop crew. So the bender computer has a door that covers it. I grabbed a big gulp cup and put it inside where the computer was and I carefully wired it with tie wire all on the inside. I closed the door and went home. Next morning bender guy opens his door, and boom 44ozs of water pours out all over him. Worst part was not being there to see it.

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