Our 70s office pranks were a real scream!

IREMEMBER some of the office pranks I used to enjoy back in my working days. was in the electronics industry in the 1970s when integrated circuits (ICs) were common, replaced by ‘chips’ now, of course.

A colleague and I were always getting up to mischief and one day, when it was quiet, we played a prank on our boss’s secretary, a Mrs King. I found a dud IC which was about the size of a 20p coin and bent the six thin connecting wires out to form legs. I soldered two more to the locating lug on the circumference to form antennae and we then spray painted the whole thing matte black.

It looked very realistic. We left it on the secretary’s desk just in front of her typewriter while she went to lunch. We knew when she’d returned as you could hear the scream all over the laboratory! We all had a good laugh afterwards but these days I’d have ended up getting the sack, no doubt.

My colleague’s favourite trick was to puncture my plastic cup containing hot tea with the tip of his soldering iron. I was then left with the decision whether to try to stem the flow and burn my finger on the tea or let it run away. Incidentally, the only way to remove tea stains on the wooden work bench was to use more tea as a solvent, nothing else would touch it!

When I worked in a government office, the desks were arranged in rows of pairs so colleagues were sitting opposite one another. The trick was to swap telephone receiver handsets, the old fashioned sort, with the one opposite and then ring that person’s number. They couldn’t understand why their phone kept ringing even after they’d lifted the receiver. Their expressions were priceless! Bob hodges, Worthing, West Sussex