BS: Odd Job

Subject: Odd Job
From: bradfordian
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 08:40 AM

Just a bit of summer fun

When I was an apprentice I was sent to the stores for a "long weight". It took such an awful long time to find one! Then I had to ask for a left handed scew driver.

I heard a story of an RAF cadet at an airfield who was sent across to the control tower with orders to flood the runway because a Sunderland flyinf Boat was comming in.

What nonesensical job have you, as a greenhorn, been instructed to do?

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 08:43 AM

As an apprentice chef, I was asked to fillet a load of whitebait...

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 08:43 AM

They tried the long weight/long stand one on me, but fortunately I'd heard of it before. My friend was told the spirit level didn't work because it needed a new bubble, and they were going to send her to the hardware shop for one, but she cottoned on quick enough.
In a restaurant where I worked for a while I was told a "Mr. C. Lyons" had phoned for me and I was to call him back on a given number - which was of course the number for the zoo.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 10:58 AM

In my younger days I did a short stint as a production assistant for a studio that did photography for catalogues and stuff. My first day on the job, the photographer I was working with (Jim) told me to "Go ask Earl (darkroom guy) for the 'paper stretcher'". Earl told me he would give me the paper stretcher, but first I had to go get the 'henway' from Jim. When I asked Jim "what's a henway", he said, "Oh, about four pounds".

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: gnomad
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 11:31 AM

Fake errands I've come across (and I won't admit which I fell for):

Go to the boiler room and ask for a bucket of steam.

Go to the stores and get me a new bubble for the spirit level...(at the stores) Does he want a round bubble or a square one? Dunno. Well go back and ask him...(back at the site) Stores know I want a round one, did you say it was for me?Hurry on back and stop wasting my time.

Go down to the post office and get three verbal agreement stamps, we need one for each copy.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: C-flat
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 11:44 AM

I've been sent for a tin of tartan paint!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: C-flat
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 11:46 AM

....and a "Long Stand"..Br>That took ages!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 11:46 AM

Skyhooks
I can't say I was ever asked to fetch spoof things but the stories of those who did have to were legion.
Was I too knowing as an apprentice?
I once printed a label "Spirit Level Bubbles" and stuck it on an empty blown-up toothpaste tube. Never got to use it in anger but it did cause mild amusement.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: Bardford
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 11:47 AM

"Go to the welding shop and get a bucket of sparks."

"Go to stores and get a hundred feet of shoreline."

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 02:09 PM

During army basic training, at a demolition training site, a rather goofy fellow trainee was sent a LONG way to a supply room for a bag of explosions.

Of course there was the tale of others being sent for "the key to the flagpole".

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 02:37 PM

A pub I used to work at used to send newbies down to the keg room to do "The Quarter Turn"...

Every keg had to be turned 1/4 clockwise, once a day, to keep the stuff from going off...

An hour later, you had to go back down and re-set them though... turning them 1/4 widdershins... Otherwise "They'd pour too fast"... (groan)

They tried it with me when I started but I knew it was bull, so I just took the time to go hang out downstairs... had a smoke or 2... read a mag... and got paid for it...

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 05:15 PM

I was never asked to do a bogus thing, but here's a real one that happened to me.

My boss went to NYC a couple years ago for the Thanksgiving Day parade. She left the information about the parade route on her desk, here in the office. She calls me, from NYC, and asks me, in Nashville, could I get the parade route off the Internet and fax it to her? I said, did you check in the hotel lobby? Well, no, she said, just go ahead and fax it...

So we paid for two long distance calls, for information about the event in the city she was calling from!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 06:25 PM

My boyfriend at the time used to work in a coach building factory. He had to supervise a group of young (and somewhat naive) apprentices. He would often come home chuckling over what he had asked members of the group to do, these included going to find.....a long stand.....a glass hammer......2ft of fellopian tubing.......a bucket of sparks.....tarten paint.....etc the list was endless and the young apprentices always fell for it!

cat

Subject: RE: BS: Odd Job
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Jul 02 - 08:09 PM

when I was 16, I was hired to bag groceries, and they tried to send me to another part of the store for a "left-handed cash register crank"....so I went home on my lunch hour and down to my Dad's shop and cobbled together a silly complicated thing of pipe and fittings & knobs and presented it (in a box)to the guys with apologies for being so long!

I passed whatever test it represented! *grin*