April Fool's Day pranks

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Qhrumphf

Stay Rude, Stay Rebel, Stay SHARP
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Figured since it's one of my favorite days of the year, I'd ask if anyone's ever pulled any really good April Fools pranks on anyone?

One of my better ones: A couple years ago, my coworkers and I stole my boss's car. We parked it a few blocks down the road at a gas station with a "for sale" sign in the window. Hilarious when someone called his cell phone trying to buy it. Fortunately, the guy knew how to take a joke, and was laughing with us about it for a few weeks afterwards.
 
I don't generally care for April Fools jokes or practical jokes in general. Too often they are lame or cruel.

But today...

Our Chief started a rumor that the facility will no longer pay overtime. We'll get comp time instead. Now, what makes this work, even though it's April Fools, is that there has been a lot of griping about overtime lately and the main office is notorious for implementing some whacked out cost saving measures. I think one guy was buying it. If not, he did a good job being the straight man.
 
Sadly, I did not perform any April Fools Jokes this year.

Last year I made sure my youngest *thought* I was going to play a prank on her. She was so paranoid the whole day until bedtime when I let her in on the secret. Making her paranoid WAS the prank!
 
Yeah I sorta got nailed yesterday at the church I helped start. The Senior Minister stood up at the point where he would deliver the Sermon and said this to the congregation....

"Our guest speaker needs no introduction. His topic today is Einstein's Theory of Relativity As It Intersects with the Theology of Palm Sunday. Let's all welcome Rev. Michael Copado." And pointed at me.

Of course he didn't realize that I probably could have done it. :)
 
I pulled a harmless prank this year. I don't care for cruel or mean-spirited pranks, but this was was all in good fun.

Friday night, my brew buddies and I made what was probably our best beer yet in terms of process. We have added some new equipment (pH meter, submersible pump, got the keggles welded with fittings, etc), and we were very excited to try it out. Everything we shot for, we hit right on the head. It was a great feeling!

I have some yeast from one of our local breweries (Holy City Brewing) that we'd had in my fridge for a couple weeks, and we used that to pitch. Well, I didn't give them any updates on Saturday on how the ferment was going (started in less than 12 hours, very healthy yeast!), so come Sunday they both wanted to know. I told them via email that there was a smell akin to death coming from the bucket and that I was "really worried about the greenish tinge to the krausen." I even linked them to here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/i-got-my-first-bad-smelling-fermentation-236675/

Later that day, I told them that there was definitely mold growing in the bucket and that I thought I also saw some mold in the rest of the yeast in the fridge.

"I had no choice but to dump the whole batch."

I let it ride for a bit before I came clean.
 
I woke up to a text message from my brother-in-law telling me that he changed the names in my sisters cell phone to Harry Potter Characters and that I was "Neville Longbottom" and should call my sister. It was pretty funny.
 
Kodak put up a funny one. Kitten Printer.

Print your own kittens at home!

I did nothing.
 
The mean spirited ones are the best ones though, provided you're pranking someone you know can handle it. But spreading paranoia of the impending prank that never comes is classic too.

Two of my cousins go at each other pretty severely. One year one had a landscaping company drop off a several ton rock in front of the others' driveway. So he responded by bricking up every door to the guy's house in the middle of the night.

In a little more relevance to this forum, there was one this year y'all may have seen circulating the interwebz that "Coors Light India Pale Ale" will be released soon (at least, I hope that's an April Fools joke).
 
I sent a friend a text (he doesnt have HBO) during GOT. "Holy S Ned is ALIVE!"

10 minutes later, and 2 texts from him, "Just kidding, that muthafu@#$@h's dead"
 
The first year I was hired a memo came out on April 1st stating that the company was considering opening on Sundays in addition to our branch starting to open on saturdays (normally work banking hours mon-fri).

Not one to be fooled on one of my favorite days, I replied to the memo to my boss "I will be tendering my resignation upon approval of this new weekend policy" - "Ha suckers I thought, trying to pull a fast one, at least my new company has a sense of humor!!" Except this wasn't a joke and I immediately got a call from my boss asking about my reply. It took 5 solid minutes of convincing her that I wasn't serious and I only thought it was a joke. Luckily in the end she is super cool and has a sense of humor!
 
Baseball fans will get this one, but I made a legitimate-looking AP press release statement concerning Barry Zito (SF Giants pitcher who is both severely over-paid and currently going through the downward spiral that all starting pitchers eventually reach). Posted it on the Giants' forums and on my Facebook.

Reactions ranged from shock to elation.
 
More than a month late, but now that I finally have an Android phone and finally know what those stupid QR pixel box things are, I'm gonna have to have some fun with them....

QR Goatse (completely and totally NSFW on the off hand you don't know what it and are foolish enough to look it up) and QR Rickrolling...
 
Yeah, about all QR is good for is marketing, pranks, and malware. Had a case locally where a restaurant had put up QRs on their window. Someone plastered them over with URLs for garage bands.
 
I was too busy this year to pull anything, but last year I convinced my brew buddies that I had dumped 10 gallons of IPA due to an "infection" that smelled "like death incarnate."

Nothing too grand, but I had a good laugh about their reactions to me supposedly dumping the entire batch without asking them their thoughts.
 
We fabricated a resume & faxed it to my boss (the CFO).
"Attn: Human Resources. Please see the attached resume in response to the CFO position you contacted me about."

We waited and waited. As the day went on, he became noticably anxious.
By the end of the day, he was nearly in convulsions at his desk.
We went in there and said April Fools. He got pissed. Probably won't prank him again.
 
We fabricated a resume & faxed it to my boss (the CFO).
"Attn: Human Resources. Please see the attached resume in response to the CFO position you contacted me about."

We waited and waited. As the day went on, he became noticably anxious.
By the end of the day, he was nearly in convulsions at his desk.
We went in there and said April Fools. He got pissed. Probably won't prank him again.

Ooof. I would have advised you against that one.
 
Can't do April 1 pranks at work anymore. Couple of years ago we made some "legs" out of 2x4's and put pants and shoes on them, then set them on all the seats in the men's shi**er stalls then latched the doors from the inside. We did this the night before. A couple of the suits were caught peeking thru the cracks in the stall doors, trying to see who all the fools were that were hogging the stalls. They did not think it was funny and cried to HR.
Also took a paper clip and put it on the scanner. Then made about 100 copies of the scanned sheet and loaded it into the feeder tray.
They had the whole copy machine tore apart looking for that paper clip. Again, suits did not think it was funny.

AP
 
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