Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Having worked my share of boring retail, restaurant, and security jobs with groups of mostly guys I've seen a lot of stupid games and activities created to help pass the time and fight boredom. Many of these border on downright dangerous stuff that would be well suited for an episode of Jackass.

At one restaurant that I worked at we had a game we called "beanbag" which was basically an excuse to hit the other employees in the nuts with randomly thrown objects. The only rules were that it had to be an underhand toss (softball style), it couldn't be anything heavy and you had to call beanbag right before you threw. This of course resulted in a long line of people getting hit in the groin before things escalated to the point that the management clamped down. It started in good fun and then just got downright mean spirited as one of the cooks underhand throw was like watching a pro level girls softball pitch and the small objects got replaced with harder and heavier stuff. Watching somebody pegged unexpectedly in the groin by a salt shaker is hilarious, until it happens to you then yous start to question how much you want to participate.


At a pizza place we had knife throwing competitions which started out with the small pairing knives being thrown at a stack of cardboard boxes, this eventually upgraded to ginsu style chopping knives being thrown and in it's final and most seriously dangerous form; the pizza cutter being used. It seemed harmless but it was all being done in a very narrow hallway that somebody could easily walk right into the line of fire, which combined with the 20 inch long pizza cutter was almost like throwing a machete in a very confined space. Thankfully nobody ever got hurt but it had serious injury potential written all over it.


A bar I worked with had rib night every Tuesday, later in the evening dozens of raccoons would descend on the dumpster out back. Most of them were huge from being over fed and very aggressive typically chasing after our kitchen staff or anyone trying to take out the garbage. This prompted multiple efforts in how to best drive them away, spraying them with water or chasing them with hockey sticks, slamming the dumpster lids closed to trap them inside, etc most of them would work a few times then the raccoons would get wise and either ignore things or you couldn't surprise them anymore.Eventually somebody brought in a blow gun with darts and raccoon patrol became a 5-6 man SWAT like operation, a pair of spotters in the upstairs window with radio headsets, a person to silently slide the door open, one person manning the blowgun and somebody manning the exterior building cameras to spot their approach. The bar was mostly an after hours place so it was dead for most of the evening and the weekly raccoon chase provided hours of entertainment for the bored staff.


Couch slalom sledding - at the same bar we had an old couch in the upstairs that had been subject to all sorts of defilement and abuse, eventually somebody came up with the idea that it could be ridden down the back stairs for fun. You'd load somebody into the couch at the top of the stairs while a pair of co-workers gave them the push off. If the push was right and you kept your weight towards the back you could manage to ride the couch all the way to the bottom. If the push was weak or you sat too far forward the couch's feet would typically bite into the stairs then stand up on end before flipping over, at which point your job was to leap from the couch and outrun it down the stairs before it flipped over and came crashing down on you. The couch only held up for a few days of this punishment and then we switched to riding on the empty CO2 cylinder canisters which we found out slide much better and you could also tie a rope to the front to help hang onto it.

How are you still alive Jon?

 Eldarain wrote:
How are you still alive Jon?

Pure dumb luck. My luck is legendary, but it only kicks in when I'm doing something incredibly stupid.

It also helps that I pray to my patron saints everyday.








While not a work game, one of my friends in college had an old Bronco 4x4. We tied a rope with water skiing handles to the trailer hitch and we'd use it to take turns towing each other up and down the street on skateboards or roller blades. One winter we were using it to tow people on one of those round shield type sleds which was going great until his younger brother ended up sledding too far out to the side went up over the curb and hit a fire hydrant at 30mph. It knocked him out cold and at first we thought he was dead, thankfully he came around but had to go to the ER as it'd broken four ribs and punctured a lung.

I try to one-up the dude that sits at the desk next to me in suicide fantasies. Currently, I'm up to "cooked rare and eaten alive by Appalachian hillbillies while on vacation next week because it's still a better outcome in the end than the Deliverance treatment" while he's been sitting on "The jet engine or wtf ever it was from Donnie Darko smashes through the building, splattering himself everywhere, while leaving everyone else in the building untouched."

Given that I sit between him and the window, and we're not on the top floor, I'm rating mine as more likely at this point, though I have a soft spot for Donnie Darko.

Learned this working in the mall.

Take a small rubber band, loop it around your little finger, skip the two middle fingers, then loop it around the index finger. Make sure you have the rubber band stretched across the back of your fingers.

Now try to remove it without using your free hand, just the hand with the rubber band...not even rubbing it against you.

 ProtoClone wrote:
Learned this working in the mall.

Take a small rubber band, loop it around your little finger, skip the two middle fingers, then loop it around the index finger. Make sure you have the rubber band stretched across the back of your fingers.

Now try to remove it with using your free hand, just the hand with the rubber band...not even rubbing it against you.

I'd think the thumb would be the only shot at it you'd have. You'd have to roll it down your index finger. No clue how well it'd work.

We just had the Hour of Silly Walking.

MINISTRY STANDARDS!

I don't have any good ones like in the OP unfortunately. The closest thing I do is sneak up behind my coworkers and suddenly and loudly say their name, making them jump. It's all fair, though, as some of them do it right back to me when I least expect it. It's immature behavior, but it's fun. I have just about gotten slapped a couple of times, though...

At FedEx we would try to guess what was in the box using only its weight and size and what it sounded like when we shook it. Boxes that are obvious of course ignored.

Ramset racing was probably the most fun game I have played at work, when working in a construction yard we had heavy duty bolt guns (like a nail gun but bigger and using a black powder charge instead of gas) that are used for fixing down framing into concrete. We used to sit on them and race them like they were space hoppers...

After Air Assault school we would rappel down from the 3rd story of the barracks. I didn't even live in them, but I had to make sure everyone hooked in right. Turned into competition of course. All fun and games till someone did it while drunk and hooked up incorrectly. Just bruised his ass but that was scary.

I used Excel to build a connect4 game. Buttons at the top would select your column, and then a red or blue square would appear at the lowest row in that column. Then the game would check to see if there were any four connected cells. One of the other guys did some clever stuff to make the squares slowly drop down to the lowest cell, as if they were falling.

Then the excel boffins really went to town. Someone built Chess, that gone on-upped by Yahtzee, which led to other guy building Monopoly (which wasn't finished when I left). There was a version of Gorilla* that worked, it had varying wind and gravity, and banana's with area of effect explosions, the only thing it didn't have was random terrain for new games.





*Gorilla was the computer game where two gorillas would stand at opposite ends of the screen and throw bananas at each other, having to just strength and velocity according to wind and gravity.

 sebster wrote:
I used Excel to build a connect4 game. Buttons at the top would select your column, and then a red or blue square would appear at the lowest row in that column. Then the game would check to see if there were any four connected cells. One of the other guys did some clever stuff to make the squares slowly drop down to the lowest cell, as if they were falling.

Then the excel boffins really went to town. Someone built Chess, that gone on-upped by Yahtzee, which led to other guy building Monopoly (which wasn't finished when I left). There was a version of Gorilla* that worked, it had varying wind and gravity, and banana's with area of effect explosions, the only thing it didn't have was random terrain for new games.





*Gorilla was the computer game where two gorillas would stand at opposite ends of the screen and throw bananas at each other, having to just strength and velocity according to wind and gravity.

Thats awesome. Also I need your Excel skills.

I spent a little over a year working in a pet store as a fish and reptiles guy; we didn't have 'games', per se, but what we did occasionally have was access to tarantula molts and a number of arachnophobic coworkers.

The trick was to leave them where a coworker could see them without getting a customer by mistake....

I study archaeology, and so far at excavations we have practiced knife throwing, trowel throwing, shovel throwing, axe throwing, machete throwing and ranging rod throwing. The last one was forbidden after someone nearly got skewered.
Also, this is not really a game, but to get a good overview picture of the site we sometimes have to climb some seriously dangerous stuff. Try taking a picture when standing on top of the excavator arm

I spent a long time at university in the 80s and 90s with no money so improvised games were definitely de rigeur. The best, well the ones that I can talk about in civilised company were:

Fraggle Rock - everyone has a fist sized rock dangling from a string tied to a hard hat. Points are scored for hitting your opponent in the family jewels hard enough to make them wince.

The King's Shilling - grip a five pence piece (an old one not the new micro job) between your buttocks and walk up the stairs before dropping it into a pint glass. Lose a point every time you have to reinsert your shilling.

Barnsley Golf - like regular golf but instead of swinging a club at the ball you throw it up and head it towards the hole.

Fun times.

the in shop baseball games should have gotten someone seriously hurt, but we were professionals Pitcher throws a nut (5/8 hex) at the batter, the batter swings a hammer handle and tries to hit the nut. Our shop was the size of most people's kitchens with about 10 people in the shop during the game.

first base: hitting the opposite wall
second, hitting the pitcher
third hitting a small circular fan on the overhead
homerun if the fan cover falls off

Another game is hard to explain because you have to know what a "megger" is, what happens when you push the button, and basically how much current can you take it was even a team sport with everyone holding hands and the first one to let go loses.

While working third shift as TX prison guards, we would get the Hall Boss to sneak us into a cell block where we would then drop a garbage can right behind the guard working the block - from the run above.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I think I peed a little the first time that was done to me.

 daedalus wrote:

 ProtoClone wrote:
Learned this working in the mall.

Take a small rubber band, loop it around your little finger, skip the two middle fingers, then loop it around the index finger. Make sure you have the rubber band stretched across the back of your fingers.

Now try to remove it with using your free hand, just the hand with the rubber band...not even rubbing it against you.

I'd think the thumb would be the only shot at it you'd have. You'd have to roll it down your index finger. No clue how well it'd work.

Thumb does help a little. It will only get you so far though because the skin starts to bunch up right around the first knuckle of your index finger when you try.
Being extra flexible in the fingers helps in getting the rubber band past the fist set of knuckles.

At a department store, we would sneak up on co-workers and spray them down with the worst smelling combination of perfumes we could find.

While working nights at a hospital we invented a game called "tape golf".

Everybody picked a roll of medical tape (Transpore surgical tape being the preferred by all) that was the most likely to roll in a straight line. We mapped out a series of hallways on the different floors as a course (Hole 1 was our nurses station, around 5 corners of hallway, ending at SPD, Hole 2 was Surgery suites to Oncology, Hole 3 was 5th floor elevator to employee break room, etc) and did a week worth of test runs to determine the Par for each hole.

After that two people at a time would play a round of golf, trying to use the fewest rolls to make it to the end. You couldn't chuck the tape down the hallway, it had to roll. Winner would advance and at the end of the night a champion would be crowned. There was a lot of technique involved.

When I was in high school we had an "Assassins" game where you'd get one of the Zebra brand BB guns from Kmart or the dollar store which shot little yellow pellets. They were spring loaded so it would sting a bit but they wouldn't break skin and weren't anywhere nearly as high powered as airsoft or air powered bb guns. The only real danger was if you got hit square in the eye and being kids nobody worries about that.

Each day a target list of all the players was posted in the hallway and if somebody was shot they were crossed off the list and they were out of the game for the rest of the day. The objective was to be the last person on the list that hadn't been shot. Everybody chipped in a dollar for the day and whoever stayed alive to the end got the pool which in the later days was ranging upwards of $300.

This was back in the early 90's so it was a few years before mass shooting like Columbine would become a hot button topic but even back then the teachers really didn't like the idea of what toy guns could represent. It was supposed to be played only in the halls during passing period between classes but then it spilled over into class period and some students started barging into classes they weren't part of so that they could gun down a target gangland style. Because money was involved people started taking it too far and got in physical fights over who shot who first and it got disruptive to the point that the dean threatened automatic suspension to anybody that was caught carrying any of the bb guns on school grounds. It was a blast while it lasted and had a run for about two months.

Paulson, between the OP and your follow-ups, I have to echo Eldarain's "How are you still alive!?" (and, presumably, still in possession of both hands / eyes / etc to sculpt with!)

At school, some chem nerd friends and I made up a batch of touch-powder (potassium tri-iodide). Usually we would paint it on the windowsill in the science lab in summer, and flies coming in to land on it went *poof*.

We had a shop teacher who had a habit of belting his bench with the metre rule to get our attention if he didn't feel like raising his voice.

We painted that rule with touch powder (goes on like a paste when wet - it's also stable when wet). One day, he picked it up and gave the desk a whack, and it went *boom* blowing the end of the rule apart and leaving a charred mark on his bench. It got our attention - and left him looking at his mangled rule with a puzzled expression.

Airsoft has never (to my knowledge) been legal here, so we just used to do the shooting/assassination game with rubber bands (make thumb/forefinger "gun" gesture. band loops around fingertip, around back of thumb, and little finger holds it in place. To fire, release little finger. If you couldn't manage that level of dexterity, around the end of a 30cm/12" rule and stretch to 25cm/10" mark).

Rubber bands were used pretty often and after the bb guns were banned somebody figured out that you could use plastic bread clip ties as projectile weapons that stung really bad. You'd break one of the tabs off about 1/3rd of the way down so that the inside nub was still intact (leave the opposite side unaltered). That lets you fit it onto the tip of your middle finger and it'd grip pretty well, then you could hold your middle finger against your thumb and flick it which would cause the tie to come whipping off with surprising speed and range, with practice you could get amazingly accurate with them. Because of the rather square edges and little nubs they'd often leave a welt and in some instances people got minor cuts. A few times I managed to get them embedded in drywall while practicing. The squares ones work best as they are balanced where the long rectangular ones tend to fly erratically.

Best part of it was that the supermarket produce section had strings with hundreds of them on it so we'd hit the grocery store on the way to or from school and nab a string we'd be set on throwing ammo for days. If you've ever watching people doing throwing tricks with playing cards or credit cards you have an idea of how nasty these can get and because it's just the flick of a finger tip instead of a whole arm movement it was very hard for the teachers to spot as the flicked tie was small and usually moving fast enough they had no idea where it came from assuming they even saw it in the first place.

If you can't already tell I got in a lot of mischief in school and was certainly no stranger to detention hall

 redleger wrote:
Thats awesome. Also I need your Excel skills.

All I did was connect4. I got left for dead by what other guys did after that.

At the waterpark I used to work at we would throw scissors like knives.
The other was deep-frying whatever we could think of. I think the best was rolling an entire Pizza up and battering it.
The other was the hiding spot challenge. Where you would make hiding spot to see the best.
Mine was the little spot tucked away behind the palates of beer at work.

 chromedog wrote:
At school, some chem nerd friends and I made up a batch of touch-powder (potassium tri-iodide). Usually we would paint it on the windowsill in the science lab in summer, and flies coming in to land on it went *poof*.

We had a shop teacher who had a habit of belting his bench with the metre rule to get our attention if he didn't feel like raising his voice.

We painted that rule with touch powder (goes on like a paste when wet - it's also stable when wet). One day, he picked it up and gave the desk a whack, and it went *boom* blowing the end of the rule apart and leaving a charred mark on his bench. It got our attention - and left him looking at his mangled rule with a puzzled expression.

Airsoft has never (to my knowledge) been legal here, so we just used to do the shooting/assassination game with rubber bands (make thumb/forefinger "gun" gesture. band loops around fingertip, around back of thumb, and little finger holds it in place. To fire, release little finger. If you couldn't manage that level of dexterity, around the end of a 30cm/12" rule and stretch to 25cm/10" mark).

You made functional Explosives in school...
Never get away with that nowadays!

If you took a band and a folded paper V shape they could be quite powerful and hurt if well crafted.

Now if you modify one with like metal... That got a tad dangerous.

We had a great chem teacher.
He didn't tell us per se how to make the compound, but he was a good teacher and we had a good school library reference section and knew how to use it, and had a decent grasp of the chemistry needed to do so. It was yr10 (so around the 16yo mark).

So from his pov, at least we paid attention. We also kept our noses clean for the rest of that school year, so we were never unmasked as the perpetrators. Our teacher probably suspected us, and the chem teacher likely also did, but no proof and no cc tv to catch us on.

I've done the folded strip of paper with a band thing, too (that was at work, when one of the other storemen started flinging rubber bands at me. Got him back with a bit of folded paper flung from the band.

"Do you want to start a war? Because this is how wars start. Welcome to the escalation game." thwack!

He ended up with a few welts that day. I got a couple from his shots, but my shots to him hurt more.

ingtaer wrote:
Ramset racing was probably the most fun game I have played at work, when working in a construction yard we had heavy duty bolt guns (like a nail gun but bigger and using a black powder charge instead of gas) that are used for fixing down framing into concrete. We used to sit on them and race them like they were space hoppers...

Bolt guns? Is your job Space Marine? A quick Google shows some pretty cool stuff though. I want to race on a bolt gun..