Things to do to past the time...

Larry77, RN · Jul 10, 2013

Years ago we used to send difficult to identify food items (usually left in a drawer for too long) to the lab unlabeled. They had no idea which department was sending the items and started to collect them as trophies. Most popular was a very old spicy cheeto--they had no idea what it was.

When I worked night shift (long time ago), we used to have wheelchair races and when it snowed we would sled down the ambulance bay with backboards...

emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B · Jul 10, 2013

Don't have nursing pranks (yet), but here's a few from waaaaaay back in the day in the corporate world.

- pre windows, change the ms-dos screen color to 128. That's black characters on a black background. Most annoying when saved as default.

- butter on ear piece of phone. Call them & watch.

- remove mic from mouthpiece of phone. Watch them try to make call.

- program computer to auto-dial someone every 10 minutes and then disconnect after call established. Very special torture for someone you really didn't like.

RainMom · Jul 10, 2013

A nurse on my shift told me last weekend about how she & another nurse on nights several years ago pranked another floor by calling early that morning pretending to be day staff calling off. They had the night charge panicking for a bit that nobody would be showing up to work!

IrishErin · Jul 10, 2013

We took the outer tubing from the chest tube kits one night and made really awesome pea shooters out of them. It was an epic battle that lasted all of..... 10 mins because we got busy again. Lol

LifesAJourney · Jul 10, 2013

I don't work in ER, but in my unit, we would have water fights with the saline flushes. Gotta love night shift!

SweetMelissaRN · Jul 11, 2013

I don't work in ER but in my unit, we would have water fights with the saline flushes. Gotta love night shift![/quote']
Haha, we do this one too!

SweetMelissaRN · Jul 11, 2013

Don't have nursing pranks (yet), but here's a few from waaaaaay back in the day in the corporate world.
- pre windows, change the ms-dos screen color to 128. That's black characters on a black background. Most annoying when saved as default.
- butter on ear piece of phone. Call them & watch.
- remove mic from mouthpiece of phone. Watch them try to make call.
- program computer to auto-dial someone every 10 minutes and then disconnect after call established. Very special torture for someone you really didn't like.

Butter on the ear phone... Genius.. Our secretary is going to hate us tonight haha

emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B · Jul 11, 2013

Butter on the ear phone... Genius.. Our secretary is going to hate us tonight haha

Glad you liked that one, it was a classic. There's also super glue, 1001 uses, strong stuff. (bonus points to whomever knows which 2 movies those last 2 lines came from). After a move once, we superglued a collegue's moving boxes closed and then all together in a pyramid.

wooh, BSN, RN · Jul 12, 2013

We had a break room attached to a bathroom. One of the nurses had said she had never been to a code. So while she was in the bathroom, we called a code overhead (but only into the breakroom) on one of her patients. She comes running down the hall, tying the waist of her scrub pants, looking quizzically at us sitting in the nurses station giggling when there's supposedly a code going on.

shoegalRN, RN · Jul 12, 2013

We used KY jelly on the phone instead. Someone got me really good, it was all in my hair LOL

KittyLovinRN · Jul 12, 2013

The very first unit I work on out of nursing school won some award for having the least number of falls one month. The fall committee felt the best prize was a full size cardboard cutout of Austin Powers complete with a voice recording of someone on the committee with an impecible AP voice telling patients not to fall, call for help, etc.

We were motified, nobody wanted this thing out on the unit for patients to see, especially when most of them were over 70 and had no idea who Austin Powers was.

Instead we used it to torture each other for MONTHS. Hiding it behind doors to supply/med/break rooms. Hiding it in empty patient rooms getting prepped for new admissions. It was the most fun I've had at any job.

Another job we would empty out the bottom of the linen cart and hide (our carts have to be covered by tarps per the state) while another nurse would fake a request for supplies from someone in the hall.

Terrifying coworkers is so fun :roflmao: