Whats the most unusual thing you ever had to do at work?

a reply to: nonspecific

It was nearly a month before anyone realized they were not from IT or any part of the company.

Lol, yah our pilfering boss got away with steeling for a while, until they installed cameras out back. i used to see him throwing computers in the dumpster, too.

Did anyone get caught for raiding the fifth floor? Almost sounds like an inside job…

a reply to: nonspecific

So many things because so many odd jobs.

The weirdest was a vaguely titled "chief of security" insisting that I go to dinner with a gentleman from the Philippines..who then, at dinner, asked me to marry him asap and go back home there with him.

WTH?

Most definitely my job depended on going to dinner. I said no to the proposal though, obviously. LoL! But was worried about my job for a while.

Not that I recall there was no cctv at the time and it was a month before they even realised. Consenus was that they were an out of town high end firm that knew exactly what they were doing.

It does sound like something out of a movie though.

a reply to: intrptr

For about a decade in the UK Civil service one of my additional roles/titles was 'Centenarian officer' and it involved a home visit the day before a citizen turned 100 years old, then phoning an office in London to give the go ahead for the birthday telegram from the Queen to be sent.

I was supposed to visit under the cover of a 'welfare check' but I just found it hard to lie to someone who's lived nearly 100 years, so used to show my ID and say 'Hello, you've got a very important birthday tomorrow and I'm here to make sure you're still breathing before the Queen sends your card' ...I always got a laugh or two, and a very interesting hour or so of chat, usually with a nice cup of tea.

a reply to: sn0rch

I don't even want to know what you were doing with it. The way you said it, it just sounds so wrong. Then again, my mind could be in the gutter.

a reply to: nonspecific

Some great stories here!

Well for a lot of years I was wiping peoples' bottoms for them. I was a male nurse and care worker.

I have wiped the bums of rich old ladies and men, young disabled men, 6 foot 6 biker men, etc. I've wiped black bums, white, bums, Asian bums, Christian bums, Muslim and Jewish bums. Man, I've wiped everybody's bum.

This has taught me equal care and respect for all humanity.

I am very proud of my ass wiping days. I wish I could have continued in that work but I cracked in the end (no pun intended, lol).

A friend of mine told me about an incident when he was at work on day.

Apparently the whole network went down suddenly, The managing director rang IT and asked what the problem was to wich they replied

"one of the servers has fallen over"

"you mean crashed?" replied the boss

"no It's fallen over" said IT

"What are you talking about don't give me geek speak explain what fallen over means"

"We were playing football and Pete went for a diving header, missed and knocked one of the units over, hense the server has fallen over, Dont worry we picked it back up now."

originally posted by: nonspecific
Juicy gossip maybe?

Or worst day ever?

a reply to: Psynic

Hmmm? Gossip eh.

Okay. Which A-lister made the mistake of repairing to his Winnebago for some fan interaction and forgot he was wearing his radio mic? I'll never forget his instructions to his guest, "...cradle the b...s, cradle the b...s".

Worst day ever?

I try to forget about those.

Spending hours inside a prop meat grinder slapping sausages onto a conveyor belt?

I can not imagine you would ever reveal there identity and rightly so.

I can only imagine your relief at knowing being a fake conveyor belt was a one off job.

a reply to: Psynic

a reply to: kosmicjack

The weirdest was a vaguely titled "chief of security" insisting that I go to dinner with a gentleman from the Philippines..who then, at dinner, asked me to marry him asap and go back home there with him.

Lol, that reminded me. As a supervisor at another company I worked at one of my charges asked me to marry her sister from the Phillipines so she could get residence status. The offer was 5000 dollars (we would never meet) and the marriage was name only.

I thanked her kindly and thought it through. She could later divorce and California loves to dole out alimony. Not that that was intended out the gate, but divorce never is…

crazy # at the foundry every day.
wouldnt call it weird but crazy

way back at one of the shops i was at, a dude brought in a new, 02 ford thunderbird.
he had it delivered to him on a truck. when he started it, it was running like # and vibrating.
turns out it was missing a piston. came from the factory like that. ive never seen that happen

i was breaking down a tire once to repair it and i found a dead, flattened frog on the inside. still have no idea how it got there.
found a fork all the way in a tire once too. i mean in as in, all the way. not sticking out. same with the frog

when i first started i was at a junkyard stripping cars. we did not exactly follow the reclaim laws. i was like 17 and didnt care at the time. i went to cut through an ac line with the torch. i was nervous cause i thought it might 'blow up'.
my boss said no worries, freon is not flamable. so i cut right through it and got a fireball in the face.
apparently it was filled with butane. that was nice.
nice trick i learned though.
before the retrofits when cars were still using r12 as opposed to r134a, you could fill your ac line with butane for a short lived ac 'charge' for lack of a better word

ive seen so much crazy # at the foundry. literally every day. i wouldnt even begin to know how to explain the stuff to you.

i dont have any pics of my foundry so i will link one off google to give you a hint of the environment

usarmy.vo.llnwd.net...

www.newcastlefoundries.com.au...

just picture that going on all around you. 10,000 pound ladles of liquid metal passing by over your head. linde's passing by with ladles of it. people pouring jobs.
deslagging or throwing mag or nickel mag before they pour and it shoots rain drop size droplets of liquid metal all over. sometimes you get hit with it.

picture a kiddie pool. you know like a foot deep and 10 foot round. when you are done pouring a job you empty your ladle into something that size. its called pig out. there might be 5 of them next to each other all full of liquid metal.
of course at a certain point during the cool it would start to solidify but be far from solid. people would take short cuts by walking right on top of them.
used to trip me out. like walking on quick sand.
i suppose they knew the temp was right and they would not fall through.
i used to think though what if the linde bumped it or bumped one next to it while they were walking across and they fell. they could go through then.
people did it every day

for the record, this is a linde
www.portstrategy.com...

like a super sized forklift

There are a lot of good stories here. I used to clean the depot for GM, where they drive the trucks out of the factory and onto the car carriers. Some of the late night office managers had to drop paperwork off in their supervisor's office and it was locked. I had to show them how to break in with a card.

a reply to: nonspecific

This may qualify as a good combination of novel and stupid:

I was a tech for SPC accepting a pair of tool chests *big brown
ones", top and bottom for the drill test lab. I had quite a few
of my own instruments being used, so the collection eventually
warranted the personal purchase to hold my non-calibratable stuff.
I was pulling the large box by one top ear of the carton BACKWARDS
into the lab, past a co-worker doing a test on an automatic drill press--
accidentally tripping on the outer dimension of a shipping skid that
had just returned after its cargo completed a salt spray test. Contents
oriented business side up, news at 10. Actually it was about 10:25 AM.

My only digression, I swear. One of my oldest friends after we were 40
said once,"It is impossible for the human mind to remember pain."
I rebuffed, "You may do well to speak with your analyst about that--
because you could be subliminally shopping around for a little more."

They were quite rusty, all those twist drills pushed into 1 by 6 pine
frames-- and as I tripped over the end of the skid, ithought "What's
that skOWWwww" doing there as a six inch square pillow, not bed
of rusty nails entered my left bum and a good portion of my "panty
line" in the back as I sat dOWn.
Another two centimeters to starboard and I would have been
an unwilling backup singer as well as a passable-plus bassist.

The Indian lady MD in the ER after I was down to my tighties
and attending that shift said "Oh, you have fabric in those holes!"
and proceeded to tweez out the navy blue cotton. It was IN there.
No romance or Parabellum to bite down Rich, just tough it old boy..

That last part because I never punched out-- and they damn well
know they'd pay me for it or the Safety Engineer would have got
his before the Stromberg. Unusual? I vote for using almost all my
strength to pull away from career changing into a failed fakir.

The Purchasing Main Go-To Girl, after that called me Spike.

originally posted by: nonspecific
I can not imagine you would ever reveal there identity and rightly so.

I can only imagine your relief at knowing being a fake conveyor belt was a one off job.

a reply to: Psynic

Of course I would never reveal his identity. I was sworn to keep it on the sly.

You're right about my stint inside the sausage making machine. At least I could see the lights at the end of the tunnel.

The next day I filled 500 test tubes with sperm (simulated, half and half Dove detergent and KY jelly. Very realistic).

a reply to: derfreebie

i lost a finger in a band saw and ripped my middle finger length wise. a chunk of the bone is gone.
i knew i lost the finger as soon as it happened. i picked my finger up and went to leave. told the supervisor on that side that i cut my finger off and had to go to the hospital. he said i had to go fill out an accident report first.
believe that?
someone gave me a ride and i had my finger on his dash board. i called my wife and told her and she got pissed cause she thought i was messing with her.

and i very much remember what it felt like when it happened.

got pics if you want to see

Flagging unexploded bombs/grenades from WW II during a deepening of a harbor in East Germany, every scoop had to be inspected when reaching the water surface.

I was a tad nervous...

originally posted by: Psynic


I was sworn to keep it on the Sly.

so it was sylvester stallone?

I'm good on the pic thanks!

I had a similar incedent with a hand and a barbed nail gun nail.

That one hurt more coming out than it did going in.

a reply to: Grovit

originally posted by: Kangaruex4Ewe

I had to wait on a guy one time that had a huge cockroach crawling all over his neck and chest. I didn't understand how he couldn't feel it, but man... If there was an award for stone faced?? I would have had to win it that year. I swear it was all I could do not to say Ewwwwwwwww.... And shrink back.


I have a similar Ewwwwww story. I was managing an electronics store years ago and a customer brought in his VCR (remember those?). He said it wasn't working and his tape was stuck in it. I told him I could send it for repair for X dollars. He said he didn't want to spend the money, but could I get his tape out? I grabbed a screwdriver and removed the cover shell from the chassis.

As I slid the cover towards the back and exposed the internal workings, hundreds of roaches woke up and started moving about! I slid the cover back on and started doing the heeby-jeeby dance up on my tip toes behind the counter while repeating O.M.G. and a few "Holy Craps". I handed him the screws back without replacing them and told him to get it out of the store immediately! He was laughing at my reaction as he carried it out of the store.

The drive tape was stuck because it was crudded up with squished roaches. I get itchy just telling this story.

Whats the most unusual thing you ever had to do at work?

Making sure the robot stayed plugged in.