Top 10 April Fool's work pranks

Does April Fools' Day (or the mere thought of it) strike fear in your heart? Do memories of walking into your aluminum foil-covered office still haunt you at the end of every March?
Or, do you spend 364 days of the year plotting the mother of all pranks against your co-workers?
Whichever side you fall on, 32 percent of workers say they have either initiated or been on the receiving end of an April Fools' Day prank at work, according to CareerBuilder.com's annual April Fools' Day survey.
"Pranking at work can be risky business," says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder.com.
"When determining whether a prank is a good idea on April Fools' Day, employees should consider the worst case scenario of their joke. Will his or her joke simply result in a laugh from fellow co-workers? Or could anybody, including you, lose their job?"
While faking a resignation, gluing office supplies to the desk and covering someone's cube in aluminum foil are among the most common office pranks, here are 10 of the most memorable pranks from this year's survey:

1. Placed a pair of pants and shoes inside the only toilet stall in a men's room to make it appear someone was using the stall. It sat there for hours until someone called security to check if the person had died.
2. Sent a fake love note to a co-worker from another co-worker.
3. All the women in office individually spoke to the president, confiding that she is pregnant. By noon, he 'knew' that all of his female workers were pregnant and he could not tell anyone because each asked for confidentially.
4. Called the electric company, used a co-worker's name and told them he was moving so the electricity got turned off at the co-worker's house.
5. Filled the vending soda machine with cans of beer.
6. Rigged the boss' chair to drop suddenly during a staff meeting.
7. Placed a sign on the restroom door that read, "The company ran out of toilet tissue; please use your own resources."
8. Paged a co-worker over the loud speaker claiming the CEO was looking for him. The worker went into the CEOs office and the CEO didn't know who he was or why he was there.
9. Shrink-wrapped everything in a co-worker's cubicle.
10. Put a 'house for sale' ad in the newspaper regarding a co-worker's home.

Experts shed light on origins of April Fools' Day

Washington, Mar 30 (ANI): For an average person, April Fools' Day might be a date to play pranks, but for some experts the day has more to it than just the fun element.

April Fools' Day is believed to be several hundred years old. However, experts say that its origins are still shrouded in mystery.

According to the most popular theory, France changed its calendar in the 1500s so that the New Year would begin in January to match the Roman calendar instead of the start of spring in late March or early April.

However word of the change traveled slowly, and many people in rural areas continued to celebrate the New Year in the spring.

These country dwellers became known as 'April fools'.

Alex Boese, curator of the Museum of Hoaxes in San Diego, Californiaoese, who has studied the holiday's origin, however, disagrees with this interpretation.

"[The French] theory is completely wrong, because the day that the French celebrated the beginning of the year legally was Easter day, so it never really was associated with April first," National Geographic quoted him, as saying.

"Traditionally it was only a legal start to the year-people in France did actually celebrate [the New Year] on January first for as long as anybody could remember," he added.

Instead, Boese believes that April Fools' Day simply grew out of age-old European spring festivals of renewal, in which pranks and camouflaging one's identity are common.

Joseph Boskin, professor emeritus of American humor at Boston University, has offered his own interpretation of the holiday's roots -as a prank.

In 1983, Boskin said that the April Fools' Day idea came from Roman jesters during the time of Constantine I in the third and fourth centuries A.D. As the story goes, jesters successfully petitioned the ruler to allow one of their elected members to be king for a day.

So, on April first, Constantine handed over the reins of the Roman Empire for one day to King Kugel, his jester. Kugel decreed that the day forever would be a day of absurdity. Incidentally, Kugel is an Eastern European dish that one of Boskin's friends had been craving. (ANI)