This one requires tremendous dedication,
much like the last image below

Remember back in Ye Olden Days of the Before Time, the days of the Dot-com Bubble,  when you and all your friends had jobs that paid $80k+ a year, and “work” on Monday consisted primarily of calling your friends on the phone while browsing Match.com and reclaiming your childhood by buying mint-in-box copies of your favorite toys on eBay? Yeah, me neither. While all those hosers were busy frittering away the capital from the biggest economic boom in history, I was working my butt off starting a business. And as a result, I rarely work on Mondays, because I’ve usually worked ALL WEEKEND. Which is why, as recently as 2009, I still took delight in derailing the MF95 crowd’s week with our Monday Demotivators. Well, the other day, it occurred to me that this was not enough, so I figured it was time to revive The Office Prank. We’re omitting the more obvious “cubicle remodeling” jokes; once you’ve seen one cube covered in Post-Its, foil, or wrapping paper, you’ve seen them all. Instead, we’re focusing more on gaslighting methods. We’ve outlined them below. Just don’t get carried away like the dentist who thought that replacing his employee’s teeth with boar tusks would be good for a hoot. Things might get ugly .

Basic Gaslighting

Every night after the victim leaves work, remove every staple from their stapler except for 3 or 4. This requires long-term persistence to see and enjoy the results

Put scotch tape over the plug-end on the target’s desk phone receiver, and plug it back in. This works as is, but for more rewarding results, call their line, and act like a management or HR figure. When they respond and you “can’t hear them”, start suggesting that their silent treatment is getting them in deeper trouble by the second.

Put a “Voice Activated’ sign on a new machine (fax, printer, copier, etc.) in the office. Here are some official looking documents.

Computer Based Tricks

Take a print-screen of their desktop, save it as the background, then hide all the icons on the desktop.

Reverse the buttons on the victim’s mouse in Control Panel.

Dvorak their keyboard.

Add a USB wireless keyboard and mouse receiver to their station, and randomly operate the extra keyboard and mouse while they work.

Assign pornographic sounds to simple things on their computer.

Install the dreaded Blue Screen of Death  Screensaver.

Change the AutoCorrect settings in Word -

The image below is from Word 2000. It may look different on your version, but the method will be very similar. Go to Tools>AutoCorrect and make sure “Replace text as you type” is selected, then add replacements of your choice in the “Replace” and “With” boxes. Here are a set of words that will take them forever to notice: accept/except; advice/advise; are/our; buy/by; complement/compliment; emigrate/immigrate; it’s/its; loose/lose; miner/minor; past/passed; principal/principle; stationary/stationery; than/then; their/there/they’re; threw/through; weather/whether; your/you’re

Inexpensive Fun

	The Phantom Keystroker V2 is a handy (and maybe less expensive) alternative to the USB keyboard trick above. Just $10.95
	The Annoy-a-tron 2.0 emits the sound you select at random intervals including: Teen Buzz tone (young people can hear it, older people can’t), Cricket chirping, IM Doorbell, Grating Electronic Noise, Electronic Beep. $10.99
	Although they mention no health warnings, you may want to spare children or the infirm. The SHOCKING PEN – EMPIRE EDITION emits a powerful “poke” when clicked. $2.34

You’ll need some crime scene tape for this one:

And a decent cobweb gun for this one:

And we had to include this one out of sheer admiration for the devotion required:

Although we originally started our Monday Demotivators to add a little dimension to your Monday morning, we’ve fallen a little flat this week; all we have is this simple game in which you guess the shape of a three-dimensional object as it passes through your two-dimensional field of view. This game will be familiar to anyone who’s familiar with the book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, which Isaac Asimov described as “The best introduction one can find into the manner of perceiving dimensions.” This, by the way, was one of my favorite books when I was young. I was admittedly a rather annoying kid; as a seven or eight year old, I had no idea what the big deal was about Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss books, I was busy designing model rockets and wondering what the fourth dimension was like, and if it ever passed through our dimension like the sphere in Flatland. Don’t get me wrong, I was a pretty dumb kid too. Once, after some “preliminary field tests” using the front porch, I jumped off the chicken coop using a large umbrella as a parachute. This didn’t turn out so well, as you might imagine. But since we’ve got you imagining, imagine this: although any discussion of Möbius Strips will inevitably be one-sided, when you start talking about the fourth dimension, things get a little crazy. Try to imagine that if two-dimensional beings see three-dimensional objects the way the characters in Flatland see them (Carl Sagan does a nice 7 minute explanation in this clip), and we see two-dimensional objects the way we do, then four-dimensional beings can see all six sides of an opaque box simultaneously, and in fact, what is inside the box at the same time! Unfortunately the best look we’ll get at the fourth dimension is an animated diagram of a hypercube, like the clip above. My brain just exploded. Hope yours did too. Your day should shape up nicely from here…

Due to the recent discovery of the tragic and perhaps incurable First-Person Shooter Disease (see the clip at left), we’re taking a break from the mindless Flash games usually highlighted in our weekly Monday morning time-wasters to take a more serious look at the damaging effects of video games and the Internet. While in the west we’re still debating whether or not there’s some kind of addictive disorder related to surfing and gaming, the Chinese have not only decided there is, they’ve set up boot camps to deal with the problem. After doing a little informal research, it becomes clear that they’re on the right track. The three most noteworthy gaming-related deaths were all Asian*; a Chinese gamer who killed someone over an imaginary sword, a Korean man who died after a marathon gaming session at an Internet cafe, and a Vietnamese kid who killed a woman for video game money. So let’s look at alternatives to sitting at the computer. How about self-induced hallucinations without drugs? Or better yet, with drugs? If, like me, you don’t feel like actually doing drugs, the book The Beyond Within is a fascinating look into LSD. The BBC video version is also available on YouTube, but if you don’t have 90 minutes to waste this morning, maybe check out this insightful two-minute video from the Canadia Wildlife Service that explores the dramatic effects of various drugs on spiders. And remember, it’s not just video games and drugs that are bad for you, Facebook causes brain damage too.

Who needs drugs or video games when you have ping pong balls?

*Yes, I’m profiling. And they’re good at math too.

This week’s Monday morning productivity inhibitors will take a (ahem) back seat to the fact that the more clever amongst you have sneaked in a four-day weekend. Which means you already are demotivated. And perhaps facing a day on the freeways to get home. If you have a carload of family or friends on a weekend excursion, the way there might not be so bad, but the way back can be excruciating. That’s when a healthy game of Punchbuggy or Padiddle can come in handy. Hopefully though, you’ll be home long before any Padiddling is required. If you happen to have a carload of kids (or immature adults like myself) on board, maybe some classic road trip games like Highway Bingo or Counting Cows are in order. Okay, maybe not so “classic”. Personally, I’ve never heard of “Counting Cows”. Anyway, those are print-it-yourself games; you could always buy some reusable bingo games, they’re cheap, and according to GasBuddy.com, gas prices are $1.50 lower than a year ago, so you should be able to afford a measly $6.91. And if gas prices still aren’t low enough for your tastes, you can always make your own. And finally, for those of you who come here on Monday morning for the silly Flash games, maybe you’d like to vent your holiday road rage (or frustrations with grandma) by playing a nice game of Mad Monday Road Rage or Squash The Granny. Me, I’ll probably be padiddling well into the night, and asking Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet?