When I worked the service drive at a Nissan dealership, we had a crew of complete jokers. There were always pranks going on. If you went a full day without seeing a prank, you began to get nervous. Some of the frequent ones were:
1. A blob of axle grease on the ear end of the telephone. The phones were black, the grease was black, and service advisors are quite frequently in a hurry to answer the phone. This one almost never failed, and the target had an ear full of black axle grease.
2. Re-arranged computer keyboards. Many of the guys on the 'drive didn't really know how to type, they just used the hunt-and-peck method. To this day, I have no clue how they got all their work done without being able to type fast. Anywho, using a paperclip, the various keys would be removed and put in new positions. Several times the victim actually called the IT guys to come fix their computers, as the keys were acting strange and typing the wrong letters/numbers.
3. The timely disconnect. As I mentioned earlier, advisors are quite often in a hurry, especially towards the end of the day. It's crunch time to get paperwork done as the customers are arriving to retrieve their cars, meet said customers, talk about the work, etc. Myself and one other out of the 8 advisors on the service drive were good buddies with the head of the IT department. He supplied us with the ability to log someone out remotely on our Reynolds and Reynolds terminals. It was well over 2 years before the first person figured it out. They'd come rushing to their terminal to close out a ticket, add comments, etc, and at a very bad time their computer would log them out mysteriously. The service drive offices were all glass and in a row, so we could sit in the office behind them, wait until they'd painstakingly typed in a long story about the repairs with their hunt-and-peck method, and just before they saved the ticket log them out. This was probably the best ongoing prank. When one other advisor finally figured it out, he was pissed. But rather than just let the cat out of the bag, he came to us, and we got our IT guy to give him the remote logoff capability so he could join in the fun. This was back in '99-'00, and I do believe this prank is still ongoing today.
4. Repair order, well-done. Our technicians had a twisted sense of humor too. If you asked them to do something in a huge rush, and didn't ask nicely, or if you asked them to do something they didn't necessarily want to do, chances are your repair order would come back up to you in poor condition. Burned to a crisp was the most common, but other variations were: soaked in oil, completely obscured in tire marks from being driven over repeatedly, crumpled into a ball, and my favorite, drawn on very artfully with crayolas, usually something resembling the artwork of a 5-year old.
5. Tired yet? If you REALLY pissed someone off, you could count on getting some extra exercise after work. The employee parking lot was a looooong way from the service drive, and if you weren't in good with the Lot Lizzards you'd have to walk it. The offending party would walk all the way out to the employee parking lot after a long day, only to find their car on a jackstand, missing one wheel/tire combo. Usually a note was left on the windshield detailing the location of the missing wheel, which was normally somewhere up near the service drive.
These pranks could be extremely frustrating at the time, but really made that place fun to work at. Really a good bunch of guys, and pranks or no, if you needed help, you know they always had your back. I miss working there.
