Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: What Pranks/Hazing Rituals Do You Have for New Hires?

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Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 06-25-2010, 02:37 PM:

What are some of the pranks/hazing rituals you have for your new hires?

The following is one of my favorites:

Having the new usher "fill" the water fountain.

Yes, I have actually convinced several new ushers that the water fountains need to be filled. I explain that they need to take an ice bucket fill it with water and then pour the water down the drain of the water fountain. I further explain that there is a valve that is opened/closed when someone pushes the button to dispense water. So when you push this button the valve switches to allow the waste water to go down the drain as normal, but when you let off of the button the valve switches so that the holding tank can be filled. You'll know when its full when the water backs up out the drain.

I actually had one usher that kept pouring bucket after bucket of water for almost an hour. Yeah, it was a slow day. He didn't even sense that the concessionists were giggling the whole time. Finally one of them finally told him that is was a prank. He was upset for a bit, but was able to laugh about it a little later.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 06-25-2010, 03:53 PM:

The best kinds of pranks are the ones where you can say, "That was terrible!! ... Let's do it to somebody else!" [evil]

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-25-2010, 04:16 PM:

There is a thread from years back with a ton of these examples in it. Maybe someone can find it.

Posted by Jake Spell (Member # 5294) on 06-25-2010, 04:18 PM:

Haha, I had someone fill the water fountain, but I said that it had a good filter on it. The guy started to "fill" the fountain when my boss saw him. Only time I ever got wrote up.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 06-25-2010, 06:27 PM:

quote: Brad Miller
There is a thread from years back with a ton of these examples in it. Maybe someone can find it.

I figured there would be since this site has been around for 10+ years now, but couldn't find one.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 06-25-2010, 07:56 PM:

We usually just sent them looking for the "marquee stretcher". Other times, when we had a black and white movie or something that was pillarboxed (like Snow White), we sent them on a mission to acquire more Technicolor.

A recent GM of mine was quite the prankster. He would say that the theater needed your e-mail address for some reason or another, he'd hand you a pen to write it down, but it would be a joke pen that electrified you. He would coat the earpiece of the theater phone with chocolate syrup, call the theater with his cell, put it on hold and tell an employee that they had a phone call. Syrup all over the person's ear. He wouldn't tell them until they figured it out, too. They went on serving customers in their soiled condition. He would do the same things to doorknobs, but that would be more obvious to the person on the receiving end. He would use our cafe area to make concoctions out of popcorn salt, butter flavoring, popcorn flavoring, put it in a little water, top it off so it looked like some sort of cappuccino and offer it to an employee for free and then delight in the gag reaction of said employee. He paid an employee $20 to drink half a cup of butter. The employee did it. He paid another employee the same amount to snort the orange popcorn salt/powder through a straw from the counter. The employee did it and looked totally stoned/red-eyed and served customers in that condition. This guy really got his rocks off on pranks.

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 06-26-2010, 08:08 AM:

A little off topic but funny none the less.

True story...

When I was in the Army the mess sergeant sent a new cook off to get a bacon stretcher telling him not to come back until he found it.

Three days later, after enjoying a weekend away, the cook returned.

When chewed out for being AWOL he responded, "Sorry Sarge, I couldn't find it."

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 06-26-2010, 09:50 AM:

The original thread is in Ground Level. The thread title is Practical Jokes. This goes back to 2001. The first page of this shows some old friends who are no longer with us.

You can find it using the Search function. I don't know how to post the link directly...perhaps one of the moderators could come to the rescue.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-26-2010, 09:55 AM:

A good friend of mine who is general manager of a restaurant likes pulling all sorts of pranks on his employees, usually his assistant managers. He likes putting Tabasco sauce in the straw of an employee's unattended drink or putting some sort of goo on the door handles of their vehicles. Sometimes when he mows his lawn he will put the bags of grass clippings in his pickup, let them sit for a few days and then deposit the rotting bags on an assistant's drive way. He gets paid back in the same manner.

I think it's funny to mess with another person's computer desktop wall paper and icons. Move around the icons into a scattered mess. Perhaps change the background image into something stupid or unpleasant. Take a screen shot of it and turn that into a wallpaper image. Then hide the actual functioning icons. Usually panic mode sets in for the joke recipient. The joke victim thinks his computer has been hacked and frozen. Real easy "problem" to fix.

quote: Joe Redifer
We usually just sent them looking for the "marquee stretcher".

We sell those! I just don't know where we keep them.
[Confused]

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 06-26-2010, 09:55 AM:

Yep. Found it.

Though reading through it briefly, it appears mainly to do with practical jokes on new projectionists.