I only had one 'goof off' activity, during the summer, when the building was empty for vacations, I would open all the hallway doors on the second floor, stretching from the old building, over the atrium, and into the new building. Being the pack rat I was, I kept all the mechanical mouse balls before ditching the broken mice. I loved rolling those dense balls down the corridor, over the bridge in the atrium and into the new building. There were many smaller doors and door jams, and the bridge over the atrium for obstacles. Getting one to go the distance was the challenge! Somehow I never managed to retrieve all the mouse balls, some were lost for the cleaners to find!
In a project that fell into my lap, very overdue, I had to work long nights to get it back on track. That also meant most nights my team was alone in the office, a large square open plan designed around a central area, with a corridor going all around, desks on each side of it and partitioned sections in each corner for the various managers' offices.
Each full compile (excellent à propos XKCD, btw, https://xkcd.com/303/) meant some 30 minutes of leisure time. So we did what was expected and raced chairs, right until the one time someone failed to negotiate one of the 90º turns and slammed head-on onto one of those manager's offices. An half-broken screen went flying, as did the desk behind it, with everything on top of it scattered around (no clean desk policies at the time).
So we took an extra hour that night trying to put everything back in its original place, including paperwork and personal stuff and, after figuring we couldn't, concocting an explanation to give in the morning... In the end we just blamed some clumsiness on the part of the team member in charge of bringing our nightly pizzas, he'd tripped on a misplaced chair - the manager even praised us for working as hard as we did :)
Back in the day, working in a lab, apart from the occasional game of golf on the smooth but uneven floors (trick shots), hide and seek in the huge, listed building which often saw departments move out to purpose built locations and leave maze-like empty shells behind them, and so on, other things I've done in the past include making chocolate from scratch (because I could put my hands on all the necessary ingredients), making marshmallows, chewing gum, and nougat.
Slightly more adventurous was distilling home-made wine (strictly for experimental purposes to see how pure we could get the resulting distillate), and making explosive substances (small quantities).
In the days of real drawing offices (think pencils etc.), our DO Manager used to inspect progress at every station several times a day. He was a brusque Lincolnshire man with a short temper, not noted for his sense of humour but highly respected even by the more exuberant, younger draughtsmen.
During this inspection, Sooty would occasionally 'appear' somewhere behind him in an attempt to force the designer under the spotlight to corpse. Brilliantly nerve-wracking, you never knew in advance if you were to be 'the chosen one' or the location in the office where Sooty's little wave would greet you.
This wasn’t goofing off because everything is relative depending on how seriously you take your job. But years ago (and I was young and didn’t know any better) helping launch 3G networks, I was called to a meeting to brainstorm ideas about bundling data and voice together. The best they’d come up with was an analogy of a sausage and a bread roll - both are great products by themselves but put them together and you have a hotdog - the combination is way better than the constituent parts. Being known as the creative, out of the box thinker, they gave me a day to come up with ideas to get attention and make it more memorable and better than the hotdog idea. What they forgot was I spent five years as a chemistry teacher… So, I walk into the meeting room with 3 colleagues and they’ve got a US office on the conference line (no video!). They start off with the same old stuff: milk + syrup = milkshake and other rubbish - nothing visual or memorable, so (and I prepared this the evening before at home) I start off along their lines: so you have flour - it makes bread, cakes - it’s great, nutritious, an essential of life AND you have a candle - it gives warmth and comfort and romance - both great… but bundle them together (and place in a metal can with and a small wee tube connected to a hollow cone filled with the flour and secure the lid) so they were watching this - absolutely baffled, then I blew down the pipe to create a dust explosion that blew the lid off the can with 3feet of flames roaring out the sides and a huge bang. The women were screaming yelling about the flames, the guys are swearing and the US office thought the office had just been blown up in a terrorist attack and were going to call the police. I clearly remember them afterwards just tutting and shaking their heads and calling for HR. AND that’s when I learnt that when they said it had to be visual and memorable, they meant on PowerPoint not in reality.
I'm going to interpret "office" broadly as "workplace".
Medical ward. Quiet evening. Electric wheelchair+200ml syringe+speculum on head=very passable Dalek. IRRIGATE.... IRRIGATE
Psychiatric ward. Handover to night shift. "New patient. Admitted unconscious. In bed awaiting doctor to examine. 15 minute obs [blood pressure, pulse, Glasgow Coma Scale]. Oh, it's a bit tricky because the bulb has gone in the bed-light." Night nurse goes to take obs. Starts to take pulse only to have other hand in werewolf glove grab arm and head in werewolf mask come out from shadow.... Raaaargh!
Of course, I only heard of these things after the event. Any resemblance to me is strictly coincidental....
I only had one 'goof off' activity, during the summer, when the building was empty for vacations, I would open all the hallway doors on the second floor, stretching from the old building, over the atrium, and into the new building. Being the pack rat I was, I kept all the mechanical mouse balls before ditching the broken mice. I loved rolling those dense balls down the corridor, over the bridge in the atrium and into the new building. There were many smaller doors and door jams, and the bridge over the atrium for obstacles. Getting one to go the distance was the challenge! Somehow I never managed to retrieve all the mouse balls, some were lost for the cleaners to find!
And I don't want to hear about your mom!
In a project that fell into my lap, very overdue, I had to work long nights to get it back on track. That also meant most nights my team was alone in the office, a large square open plan designed around a central area, with a corridor going all around, desks on each side of it and partitioned sections in each corner for the various managers' offices.
Each full compile (excellent à propos XKCD, btw, https://xkcd.com/303/) meant some 30 minutes of leisure time. So we did what was expected and raced chairs, right until the one time someone failed to negotiate one of the 90º turns and slammed head-on onto one of those manager's offices. An half-broken screen went flying, as did the desk behind it, with everything on top of it scattered around (no clean desk policies at the time).
So we took an extra hour that night trying to put everything back in its original place, including paperwork and personal stuff and, after figuring we couldn't, concocting an explanation to give in the morning... In the end we just blamed some clumsiness on the part of the team member in charge of bringing our nightly pizzas, he'd tripped on a misplaced chair - the manager even praised us for working as hard as we did :)
Back in the day, working in a lab, apart from the occasional game of golf on the smooth but uneven floors (trick shots), hide and seek in the huge, listed building which often saw departments move out to purpose built locations and leave maze-like empty shells behind them, and so on, other things I've done in the past include making chocolate from scratch (because I could put my hands on all the necessary ingredients), making marshmallows, chewing gum, and nougat.
Slightly more adventurous was distilling home-made wine (strictly for experimental purposes to see how pure we could get the resulting distillate), and making explosive substances (small quantities).
A long time ago, though.
In the days of real drawing offices (think pencils etc.), our DO Manager used to inspect progress at every station several times a day. He was a brusque Lincolnshire man with a short temper, not noted for his sense of humour but highly respected even by the more exuberant, younger draughtsmen.
During this inspection, Sooty would occasionally 'appear' somewhere behind him in an attempt to force the designer under the spotlight to corpse. Brilliantly nerve-wracking, you never knew in advance if you were to be 'the chosen one' or the location in the office where Sooty's little wave would greet you.
Bit Char-G micro RC car racing. We were so deep into it at one point we were buying the suspension, tyre and motor tuning kits.
I know not of what you speak. Surely the workplace is for working and that, in itself, is fun enough. Why would you even consider doing anything else?
This wasn’t goofing off because everything is relative depending on how seriously you take your job. But years ago (and I was young and didn’t know any better) helping launch 3G networks, I was called to a meeting to brainstorm ideas about bundling data and voice together. The best they’d come up with was an analogy of a sausage and a bread roll - both are great products by themselves but put them together and you have a hotdog - the combination is way better than the constituent parts. Being known as the creative, out of the box thinker, they gave me a day to come up with ideas to get attention and make it more memorable and better than the hotdog idea. What they forgot was I spent five years as a chemistry teacher… So, I walk into the meeting room with 3 colleagues and they’ve got a US office on the conference line (no video!). They start off with the same old stuff: milk + syrup = milkshake and other rubbish - nothing visual or memorable, so (and I prepared this the evening before at home) I start off along their lines: so you have flour - it makes bread, cakes - it’s great, nutritious, an essential of life AND you have a candle - it gives warmth and comfort and romance - both great… but bundle them together (and place in a metal can with and a small wee tube connected to a hollow cone filled with the flour and secure the lid) so they were watching this - absolutely baffled, then I blew down the pipe to create a dust explosion that blew the lid off the can with 3feet of flames roaring out the sides and a huge bang. The women were screaming yelling about the flames, the guys are swearing and the US office thought the office had just been blown up in a terrorist attack and were going to call the police. I clearly remember them afterwards just tutting and shaking their heads and calling for HR. AND that’s when I learnt that when they said it had to be visual and memorable, they meant on PowerPoint not in reality.
I'm going to interpret "office" broadly as "workplace".
Medical ward. Quiet evening. Electric wheelchair+200ml syringe+speculum on head=very passable Dalek. IRRIGATE.... IRRIGATE
Psychiatric ward. Handover to night shift. "New patient. Admitted unconscious. In bed awaiting doctor to examine. 15 minute obs [blood pressure, pulse, Glasgow Coma Scale]. Oh, it's a bit tricky because the bulb has gone in the bed-light." Night nurse goes to take obs. Starts to take pulse only to have other hand in werewolf glove grab arm and head in werewolf mask come out from shadow.... Raaaargh!
Of course, I only heard of these things after the event. Any resemblance to me is strictly coincidental....
I worked at a startup where we had a full cable package in the lab. This included adult channels.
It was like fly paper for dudes. You'd go back into the lab and see a couple of guys hanging around the TV "doing research".
When one of our female colleagues walked into the lab they would scatter like cockroaches.
Sadly, Mr. Dabbs, I lack the video evidence you requested :-)