Soliciting a little OT humor

[Charlie Self]

Nahmie notes:

You know, I don't recall any of that crap in the Marines. Stuff we did was meaner, I guess. Start with a thing called a bomb tester (big ol' maneto set-up to test helicopter sparkplugs, so you can guess how long ago). Put your hand on the magneto as you start the thing. The first person who walks close enough, point your hand at the back of his neck (no hers in our shop) and watch the spark leap about 6-10" with a nasty crack. It didn't hurt much, but people quickly learned to stay well away from anyone who might grip the tester.

After a time, we couldn't even get the paint shop guys, who seemed to be on a different planet (lacquer fumes?), to come "Check out this weird looking result."

Charlie Self "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. " Dorothy Parker

[Clarke Echols]

I knew a machinist years ago that used to be in the navy. The captain was always complaining to him that the coffee wasn't strong enough (he was a cook on board), no matter how strong he made it.

One day while on shore leave, he found a spoon made from eutectic alloy (low melting temperature below 212 degrees F). He bought it, and used it the next time the cap'n wanted coffee. As he delivered the requested cup and saucer, the spoon was on the saucer and he told the captain, "I hope the coffee is strong enough *this* time, sir."

The chief put the spoon in to stir the beverage, noticed something amiss, pulled it out to find it was partially gone, looked furtively about to see if anyone was watching, then quietly pitched it overboard. Nothing was ever said again about coffee being strong enough.

CE

[Norman D. Crow]

You know the difference between a fairy tale & a "sea story" don't you Charlie?

Well, you ain't gonna believe this sh*t . . related to me by family. My father had a garage & maintenance contract when they were building a local rail commuter line around here in the 30's(far enough back they were using old Model T "gravity dump" trucks). You ever hear of a Model T coil?(vibrator, feed it power, it starts sparking) Seems they had a decrepit old wooden chair in the shop held together with wire & nails, etc., and a couple nails in the seat were wired to a coil, with a switch mounted on a post nearby. You guessed it, newcomers got to sit in the *company* chair while a coffee break/BS session was going on, until someone decided it was time to energize them!

Nahmie

[Charlie Self]

Well, yeah, I do believe it, though completed the circuit might be difficult. We used to take an old Ford hotshot coil and wire it to a wall locker while a guy was taking a shower. When he came flip-flopping out, naked but for a towel, he's reach for the wall locker handle and we'd toss a bucket of water onto the floor cover his feet and the metal legs of the lockers.

Noisy.

Charlie Self "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. " Dorothy Parker

[Rossco in Oshawa]

I worked at a telecom power supply manufacturer in the QC department and part of the job was testing, and more often than not, repairing the problem in place. We kept a small box of wire scrap and, if we were lucky, had a roll of the necessary wire by the bench, but on occasion we came up short. At one point I asked the new guy to go get the supervisor and bring back the cable stretcher for a wire that was just a bit too short. We all watched as he waddled off to the supervisors area and asked for the special tool (which was in fact him).

Working part time in the post office many years ago I was asked to go get the bag stretcher from the basement for the mail bags. Yeah I looked... then caught on... :-)

[Wood Butcher]

Sometimes the newbies don't even need any encouragement from the old guys. Years ago I was assigned a newly hired tech and I told him he could fix a particular production line tester that was reported down again. An hour later he walks back with a big smile on his face, a fuse in his hand, and announces "I found the problem. The fuse is shorted!" A legend was born that day.

Art

[Dave Balderstone]

A good friend's mom used to work in a law office... Sending the summer student to the stationer's for a box of "verbal agreement forms" was a tradition there.

I work for a newspaper. Until we went direct to plate, we ran a couple of imagesetters (basically high-end laser printers that produce film negatoves rather than paper prints). One of our new staffers was sent to another department to see if they had any "liquid elliptical halftone dots" as we were out.

The head of that department ripped the poor guy a new one, ranting about the extravagance of using liquid in our department when his department had to buy the dry stuff and mix their own.

djb

[cowtown eric]

Sometimes the newbies are smarter.....

Working as a student at a Canadian Forces Base Trades shop, another student was sent to the paint shed at the far back of the yard to find the checkered paint. Took him all day. And as it was the paintshop foreman who sent him, well needless to say his frustration ws his own fault....

meanwhile on another bent.... seen in a hardware retailers trade mag....

the CEO of a major big box store being given an aura of "tool knowledge" by his PR folks was pictured on the cover holding a woodie jointer plane. Too bad the blade was upside down, and the wedge was under the blade.

Same mag, different issue, a major woodscrew mfg had a double page spread advertising their wares with a large picture of a wood screw . Someone reversed the negative, cause it was a "left handed" thread.

Or the small town hardware store being scoped out for parts for old tools....in response to the question "do you have any plane blades" clerk (the one who musta spilled the purple paint on her hair) responds "do you mean propellors??

Big box, small box, they all dumb down at the same rate.

Eric

[Roger]

We used to send the young ones out for some ST-1's (Spelled out it stone's.) But beware. When it was tried on me I spent three days at home drinking beer and getting paid. I'd call in every few hours to say I was sent to different places to get them. The people in the shop thought it was funny until the found out what I did.

[Alan McClure]

Oh, come on! No wonder he couldn't get one. Everybody knows fallopian tubes come in pairs.

Other items to be sent for in the USN:

100' of water line sound powered telephone batteries gas tight envelopes

Or you could be sent to the galley with a message for Barney Noble. (The barney noble is the air vent over the stove.)

ARM

[Dave Balderstone]

I work for an agricultural newspaper in western Canada... a number of years ago we ran an ad for a dessicant for field peas (dries the peas prior to combining).

The press crew thought there had to be something wrong with the "after" photo and worked their asses off to make it nice and green... Too bad it was supposed to be brown.

djb

[nuk]

I'll have to remember the ST-1's. Almost better than the 1D-10T switches we used to refer to in the Navy.

nuk

[Wayne K.]

My first real job was with a sheetmetal contractor. Nasty old coot with a heart of gold. When he sent me out to the truck for a pair of left handed snips. I told him your not going to get me with that old one, left handed snips HA HA. He jumped all over me and told me to get my ass out to the truck and bring him the snips with the green handles. They really were left handed snips.

[cdg]

When I was framing houses, and working with a new guy, there were, of course, times when he would cut a board 1/2" or so short. So he got sent to the tool trailer for the left-handed board stretcher. Later he would come back saying that he couldn't find it ;-), we would send him to ask Barry (our foreman) if it is in his truck. If the guy hadn't figured it out by then, he needed the chewing out from that fiery red-head.

[Robert Bonomi]

Many years ago, I went into a Radio Shack, looking for a piece of TV test/alignment equipment. Ask the saleskid if they had a "bar dot generator" (it generates test paterns, including color-bars and a grid of dots.) He looked real puzzled for a second, then his face lit up, as he replied "Sure! If you want to generate them yourself" and showed me a Morse-code key.

I couldn't decide whether to laugh, or cry.

[Robert Bonomi]

TRUE story -- this also happened during the making of at least one of the STAR TREK episodes. Don't remember the precise name of the episode, it's the one where they're on the planet, with the "Servers of Baal". The planet has a -green- sky. For most of the first _week_ of shooting, the prints kept coming back with the sky turned blue. So the prop department makes it greener. On day 4, the film lab sends a note:

"What ARE you guys doing out there?? It's getting almost impossible to process this and maintain a sky-blue color."

The memo that was fired off in response, was, well, *memorable*.

[Mike.Hejl]

Along the mechanic lines:

Back in the days, we hired a particularly dim-witted mechanic. We knew he wouldn't last long when he arrived the first day with a grungy yellow plastic bucket (more on this later) full of rusty tools. So much for that fancy Snap-On tool chest he claimed to own.

His first task was to pull the head on some long forgotten 4-banger and hand it off to the machine shop for a valve job. Things seemed to go pretty well: manifolds, crusty head gaskets, carbs laying everywhere. So, I ignored him and his plastic bucket until...

...A couple of days later (hey, I had my own stuff to work on), I wonder why the head isn't back on and he's been sitting on the upturned yellow bucket with his head in his hands. All his other jobs were "on hold".

Well, turns out Mr. Bozo was the religious type (no offense!). He was PRAYING for God to show him where the head bolts were. Furthermore, he INSISTED that I and the shop owner help him pray for his head bolts.

"WTF?!?"

I walked over to the poor headless car and the head bolts were laying on the fender well, right where he had put them.

He exclaimed: "Oh Glory! I knew God would show me where they were!"

I think I broke my toe when I kicked that yellow bucket, and him, outa the shop. It occurred to me that the aforementioned grunge on the bucket must have been boot prints from uncountable previous employers.

Mikey

[Bruce Rowen]

We had a new kid that was shown how to load a car on the rack and do a simple tire rotation. We told him we pride ourselves on neatness and stuff so we told him to clean the hubcaps, do a quick brake pad inspection, air pressure check, etc. The fun part was how we told him to be sure and install the hubcaps with the emblems all oriented the proper (upright) direction. After lowering the car and backing it out of the garage, we'd point out that all the hubcaps were put on crooked. Being the good kid he was, he'd pull them off and put them back on straight. He never did catch on....

-Bruce

[Silvan]

*snort*

That's just *mean*! :)

[Mark Hopkins]

We used to get the rookie to "help" adjust a brake light switch by telling when the brake lights were on and when they were off... I just about died laughing when he stood at the back of the car saying "on" and "off" about a thousand times before he caught on...while i was just pushing the pedal in and out after installing the switch... hehehehe

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