h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

not the brightest help desk was it...

A "bright helpdesk" a contradictio in terminis!

In this case the perpetrator was from another level of helpdesk, so he might have "assisted" them in the process.

ah!

How are you, Marjin dear?

Hey, I have friends who work on helpdesks!

*giggles*

I refused to join them and now they're all earning much more than me

This will only work if your office PC's are networked..

Wait for someone to leave the office and sneak onto their PC.

go to c/windows/desktop/right click/properties. Share the Desktop folder to your profile.

From the comfort of your own desk you can now add and delete folders on their desktop. Deleting stuff might be a bit harsh, but adding files called "My huge porn download collection" or "You are being watched" or "Follow the White Rabbit, Neo" followed by "Knock Knock Neo" time after time while they are still sat at their desks can be quite amusing

An Appletalk network will let you do this quite happily anyway (as me and a colleague found out when I was temporarily on a different floor...)

OS X however...bit of a pig in that respect

Once, in the software department of a company, someone carefully opened a colleague's blank(?) floppy disk, cut off the magnetic disk from the metal centre, reassembled the remaining pieces and put it back on his desk. It was quite fascinating how long it took him to figure out why he couldn't save his files. I have a vague recollection that the rest of us had to give him hints in the end.

On another occasion, the same someone disconnected the speaker of that same colleague's computer. He had been driving the rest of us crazy all day by setting it to beep every time his software located a satellite. When he came back to his desk, he couldn't figure out why he wasn't detecting satellites any more. Now, I would have thought that an on-screen diagnostic would have done the trick but no. Then again, he had previously calculated the height of the satellite dish (located above the first floor of the building) to be 50m below sea-level using this same satellite software...

Another variation with the desktop screen dump is to either turn it upside down or invert it before you turn it into wallpaper

That desktop scheme is one of the most cunning plans I've heard in a very long while...

kind of makes me happy I don't work with you people...

MacAddict (the mag) had a few like that for April 1 last year. I think in the UK it's MacFormat. But of course they are limited to Macs.

Best I remember was someone who dashed off a memo to all employees while the hapless owner of the PC was out. Said *Stay the hell away from my parking space, I claim #34!*

Got a memo from the president about privacy and computer *theft*