Today Mark Johnson shows us a few ways to annoy our colleagues. Don’t try this at home (it’s for office use, remember?). Enter Mark:

When you’ve been working together at once place for a while, you tend to feel the need to do things to spice up your relationship with your fellow employees (no, no that kind of relationship, or indeed spice; get your mind out of the gutter). Office pranks are a common way to strengthen – or, depending on how malicious the prank is, severely damage – office relationships, and a good one can be remembered fondly for years to come. But what are the best pranks to play on your fellow worker bees, and exactly how much trouble will they get you into afterwards? Well here are a few ideas to get you started (not that I condone any of these or indeed the practice of pranking your coworkers in general, you understand)…

• Chair meddling

This can range from anything to a good old fashioned whoopee cushion to taking out a few screws (though this generally isn’t advisable as it can potentially cause serious harm as opposed to simply bad posture if you don’t do it properly). For the more pedantic prankee, sometimes simply adjusting the chair’s settings can be enough to send them into a fit of indignant rage (it’s probably an idea to always try this option first; not only is it the most stealthy, but it’s also the least likely to cause any lasting damage).

• Computer meddling

A true sign of the modern age (and even more likely to occur if your company has an IT department), computer-based meddling happens fairly frequently in today’s office space. It may consist of changing somebody’s password, taking a screenshot of a less technically-minded workmate’s desktop and removing all their icons or even something as advanced as writing a simple virus to cause generally disruptive mischief. Again, it’s usually wise to blame the IT department if any of these sorts of things happen… unless your company is essentially one big IT department, of course; then it could be anyone.

• Phone meddling

Prank calls may be one of the oldest forms of pranking, but they can still be effective. Whether you get someone from outside the company to call in pretending to be a customer with a particularly unusual problem or bribe the boss with a pint to instigate a unsettling-sounding phone call, phones can still be pretty effective tolls in the seasoned pranker’s arsenal (just be sure that the ruse is revealed in the end to save any potential mental breakdowns).

Mark Johnson has certainly never inflicted any pranks on the people in his office. Nope.