What's the dumbest thing you've ever had to do at work?

[Chimera]

In 20 years in IT, my favorite was always when I'd be responsible for some huge mainframe money system requiring me to access a lot of sensitive file systems...

and some crazy stupid auditor (expletive expletive) would get a rod up his/her (expletive) insisting that I shouldn't have access to those files.

Yeah, buddy. Then how do I do my job???

Fortunately, most Managers I had were intelligent enough to see that the Auditor was a complete moron and ignored him/her. (Although we had to go a few levels up to get that whole thing cleared up with one hesitant/incompetent manager who hated making decisions).

 

[Harmon]

The plans of an office buidling showed an exterior wall three feet to high, the same height as the truss that sat a top it. I explained that to my boss, he agreed, but the architect that was standing right there started arguing, and even when he talked himself into a corner told us that he would pay for the wall's reconstruction if he was wrong.

Hay, I get paid by the hour. I built the wall and stood it, we placed one truss a top it and set a digital picture to the architect. He said "fix it," and we did, on his dime.

While I was building a local hospital I had five bosses- there was just me and my direct foremen wearing bags and swinging hammers, I spent the better part of my time going from project to project- "this has to be done right now!" And never spending more then fifteen minutes per project because everyone kept redirecting me.

 

[megamania]

Not so stupid as it looked stupid. I had to sort a five gallon bucket of foriegn plastic pellets from virgin material. It was yellow material with a handful of off-white. Each pellet is roughly 1/8th of an inch in size. There was 100's of thousands of pellets to go through.


At my other job, if anyone has seen the movie "Tough Guys" you can visualize this better. I was to get ice cream for a spoiled rich brat whom kept asking what flavors we had and being very sarcastic about it. More than once I considered putting that cone on his rich brat head.

 

[Richards]

The military has rules about everything. One rule is that when crossing something out on a form, you have to draw a single, non-obliterating line through whatever it is you want to cross out, and then sign your initials next to it.

One night, after closing up the codes vault, we signed off the form that shows who opened and closed the vault, and when. There are blocks on the form where you put your initials (for having opened or closed the vault), and blocks where you log in the time. I accidentally put my initials in the block where I was supposed to have put the time.

So, in true military fashion, I lined through my initials (with a single, non-obliterating line), and then initialled next to my crossed-out initials, and then squeezed the time in what was left of the box.

Johnathan

 

[player 2]

I used to work in bank in a small midwestern town. A customer walk in who we special order two dollar bills and Susan B Anthony dollars for(according to him the government can trace you through the money you use!) Anyway, he comes up to my window and the conversation goes something like this . .

Me: "You need some money today?"
Him: "You have money here?"
Me: "Yessss"
Him: "Really, can I see it?"
So I open my cash drawer and point to it, then close the cash drawer.
Him: "That isn't money. What does it say on it?
Me: : "In God we trust. Ummm, this can be used for all debts public and private?"
Him: "No! It is a Federal Reserve NOTE! It is not money, but a NOTE!"
Me: "Okay, if you say so, here are your two dollar bills and Susan B's."
He finally leaves! I think to myself, what a loon! Will this day be over soon?

Ahh, the joys of working with the public

 

[megamania]

The military has rules about everything. One rule is that when crossing something out on a form, you have to draw a single, non-obliterating line through whatever it is you want to cross out, and then sign your initials next to it.Johnathan

Yup. Mack Molding has the same rules. To worsen it, there is also color codes. And yes, I have initialed my intialed mistakes before.

 

[ceratitis]

While I was building a local hospital I had five bosses- there was just me and my direct foremen wearing bags and swinging hammers, I spent the better part of my time going from project to project- "this has to be done right now!" And never spending more then fifteen minutes per project because everyone kept redirecting me.

i used to work as a gardener in a uni campus. there were 4 of us working and we had 7 bosses +each building had its own supervisor and absolutly everyone thinks they can tell you what to do (and do it now!right away!) so frustrating. when ever i got the chance to work alone without the as*****les around i got things done so much better. some of the trees i pruned still look goof day and have not been touched since i worked there 4 years ago.
Z

p.s
hey megamania, how are you doing? thing getting slowly better i hope. as always if you want to talk...

 

[BOZ]

"Pardon me, there's a security sticker on your forehead."

Seriously.

eh heh heh heh heh heh...

 

[KB9JMQ]

While I was photographer at a small daily newspaper their was an airline crash two counties over I could not go to cover it because we were on deadline and I was the only person who knew how to use Quark and could paginate the paper. (We were switch from the cut & paste method at the time) so they sent a brand new reporter with point and shoot who came back with nothing usable

Another was sitting in a room with bosses discussing overtime issues in the editorial department when it was decided that spot news (fires, shootings, etc) would no longer be covered unless it was "Hindenburg" like or larger. Really need a rolleyes smilie here.

 

[wmasters]

I think mine was while I was working one of the odd jobs I did part-time while at university.

I was working as a car park attendent at a football (or soccer for a lot of you I guess) stadium. The job was basically to stand at the entrance to the car park, look like you're security to make sure people feel better about leaving their car there, and count the number of cars gone in so you knew how many spaces there were.

This was fine for the big car parks. About the third time I did it, I went to one of the 'exclusive' car parks. There were 15 spaces. In four hours the entiretyof my job was to count to 15, and then count back down again.