At a movie theater a worked at in 1990, I was moving furniture out of a manager's office and found an old job application behind a filing cabinet. The applicant was a high school girl and was dated 1985. I called her up and talked to her mother, who told me that she no longer lived there because she had gotten married and moved away, but gave me her new phone number. I called up the girl and tried to set up an interview with her, but she was no longer interested. It was funny, but could have gotten me in trouble if she actually wanted the job.
In 1995, I was at Burger King picking up some lunch. While I waited at the counter, I noticed a giant stack of job applications sitting on the counter, all of them filled out. I slipped them under my tray while nobody was looking, then carried them to my table along with my food. Later that day, I called all the applicants from home and set them all up for interviews at the exact same time. Some of them I told to go to the Texaco gas station across the street for their interview at Burger King, telling them that I was the manager for both businesses. I loved the idea of people going to Texaco and asking to speak to the manager about their Burger King interview. I was too lazy to get up in the morning and watch the chaos, though.
I'd like to do some more job application pranks. How could this be done in 2010? I know a lot of businesses still use paper job applications, but how could we get those? Pretend to be the district manager on the phone and say you're sending someone in to pick them up? That's a little risky. Hack the job application kiosks at Target or Wal-Mart?
There's always the "looking for work" section of Craigslist or Monster.com, but those wouldn't be nearly as hilarious as calling up minimum wage seekers from job applications.