I worked as a lead tech in a Chrysler dealership in the 1980's, and that reminds me of a particularly awesome payback I laid down on the shop practical joker.

This guy was a scrawny fellow named John, who worked in the bay next to mine. He was a lube tech, kind of a glorified oil changer and shop go-fer, who'd install license plates and change headlight and tailight bulbs, that kinda thing.

We'd play a few jokes on each other, with the whole shop of 20-somethings and a couple of older guys playing along, but John really pissed me off when he started doodling little cartoon characters on my toolbox with a Sharpie felt marker.

I would clean it off with a little bit of 3M adhesive remover, but a faint residue had absorbed into the paint and was never coming out completely. I warned him not to do this again, or I would fix his ass permanently. This, however, did not sink in, nor did he take me too seriously,and he drew a caricature of me berating and scolding him on my toolbox lid while I was on a week long vacation.

For three days, I said and did nothing, and he'd look over at me nervously and wonder what was going on. I didn't give him any clues to the fearsome retribution I was about to unleash on his sorry ass. One day, he was at lunch with three of the other shop rats, and I decided to exact my revenge...I removed a 1/4-20 inch bolt attaching the handle to his tool box top chest, and found a suitable Zerk fitting large enough to thread into it. Then I took the pneumatic overhead grease gun and snapped it onto the fitting, pulled the trigger and wrapped a heavy rubber band around it so it would not turn off and walked away.

It took him three days to get all the grease out of his top box and bench, and clean all of his tools. He never fucked around with my stuff again.