"Best Office Prank Ever"

One of my favorite shows is The Office on NBC. The writing is sharp, the acting is awesome - overall great show. One of my favorite relationships on that show is between Jim and Dwight. They sit essentially facing each other and Jim, the office prankster is always coming up with hilarious ways to torture Dwight (well, I guess the writers are, but you get the point). One time, Jim molded Dwight's stapler into a mold of Jello - hilarious! Another time he snagged some of Dwight's letterhead and sent him an ominous message from "future Dwight."

Here's a great series of clips of some of the best pranks in a video called "Jim v. Dwight":



So, seeing my penchant for office pranks I decided on this humid Tuesday I'd add one of my favorite web videos. I first found it on CNN's sister site ireport.com and is titled "Best Office Prank Ever." When I looked further I noticed that this video was created and produced through CheeksDown.com. I think what I love most about this site is the VP of Sales who stares so long at the wall as if it might move if she concentrates real hard! Also, what CEO wears gym clothes to the office. As of when I posted this entry, this video received 1,342,012 views since it was posted in August of 2007. Can't determine if those are unique views (most likely not), but figured I'd give some stats.
Watch and enjoy!


If you want to hear how they did it - click here to see the same clip, but this time with their commentary.

A little explanation about CheeksDown.com:
This doozy of a site consists of videos made for the Internet to be passed around for pure amusement. The people that create the content for this site are a comedy troupe with merchandise and well, I guess I should let them speak for themselves about who they are and what they do. Here's a video they made to explain "WTF is CheeksDown.com?"




It has come to my attention while writing this particular post that there is a whole mini-culture of cubicle pranksters that get their inspiration from The Office. On the show's website, there are even photos and stories about those people who reenact pranks from the show. I've created a list below of a few videos, blogs and articles about office pranks. While prank videos abound online, it seems that the office prank and its popularity is in no small way linked to the NBC hit.

Super Funny Prank: This is one of my favorites because a similar thing happened to me back in my cubicle days. A friend sent me a forward and a scary image came up like the one in the video below and I shrieked so loud that people from other departments on my floor came running to see what happened. Embarrassing - yes, Funny - absolutely!



At Entrepreneur.com they detail the "Top 10 Office Pranks Exposed" in an article devoted entirely to Office pranks.

Windward Reports: Cubicle Wars 2006: This video has been viewed over 1.8 million times and is clearly a staged/produced comedy spoof on the growing office prank web videos. It also uses the same stylistic elements from The Office by making it a "mock-umentary."


Golf Office Prank: What is interesting about this prank is that it is actually an ad for the state of Nebraska and their site visitNebraska.org.


Ultimate Cubicle Prank: This seems a bit more amateur-ish, but some of the aesthetics are the same and the self-reflexive nature is evident in their mentioning of other pranks posted online. The prank in and of itself is pretty funny and quite impressive!


I guess these videos all leave me asking the same questions: where do these people work? don't they have better things to do with their work day?!
Hope you enjoy!