Stupid Things I Have Heard At Work Part Deux 4

[AnotherHiggins]

OK, I'll start.

A Former supervisor at my company (thankfully I never reported to her) raised Jack Russell Terriers. She was discussing it with a group of us in the office. Someone asked her what the tails look like before folks lop them off. She said that the tails were often short or malformed. She went on to explain how one day they would be born without the tails.

I must have given her a strange look, because she cocked her head to one side and said to me in a supremely condescending tone, “It’s called evolution, John.”

I laughed out loud. I thought she was kidding.

She went on, “We keep cutting their tails off before they breed, so eventually they won’t even be born with tails.”

I couldn’t believe it, but the group actually started debating whether this made sense, with only a couple of us dissenting. I tried to explain that evolution can occur because of mutation, but not mutilation, that the tails were malformed because Jack Russells simply aren’t bred for nice tails so dogs with ugly tails but other desirable characteristics were allowed to breed.

She didn’t get it.

I ended the discussion by asking the supervisor if her ears were pierced. She confirmed that they were. I asked how many generations of ear-pierced women it would take before their daughters started being born with holes in their ears.
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NOTE: I do not wish to spark a debate about evolution. Dogs are bred for certain characteristics, that’s all I'm talking about.

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[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]

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[sleipnir214]

That reminds me of an incident I saw in either 1988 or 1989 on the U.S. Army airfield where I was stationed.

Someone reported to the Military Police that he had seen a suspicious briefcase sitting on the ground between two cars parked near my hangar.

The MPs called the bomb squad, who came out, built an open-topped bunker out of sandbags and loaded the bunker with explosives. Then a steely-eyed gentleman in one of those padded bomb suits picked up the briefcase and carried it out to the bunker.

Just as the bomb squad leader's voice got to "Two...One...Fire", I heard behind me the voice of an NCO running up: "Wait! That's my orders!". Then a loud "BOOOOM!"

The young staff sergeant was outprocessing the post, which means he was going to all the necessary stations (checking his weapons back into the arms room for reassignment, turning back in all his go-to-war gear [sleeping bag and mat, shelter-half, entrenching tool, etc.], personnel, military intelligence, etc.) in order check out of his current duty station and go on to his next. And the dumb bastard left his worth-more-than-its-weight-in-gold paperwork on the ground next to his vehicle.

And if that weren't enough, he also received non-judicial punishment for having put everyone through all the trouble. He also lost a preferred duty assignment because it took an extra month to reconstruct his paperwork.

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[SantaMufasa]

Perhaps the MAI gang will forgive me for repeating my entry in the "Stupid(est)..." category from a thread from last February:

...the most outrageous news faux pas I ever encountered. It was several years ago following the tragic murder outside her London flat of beloved British TV news presenter, Jill Dando.

I was reading an edition of "The Metro" (the free newspaper distributed on the London Underground). They showed a photo of Ms. Dando leaving her London flat. The caption read, "Police were unable to determine whether the photo was taken before or after her murder."

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
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[AnotherHiggins]

"Police were unable to determine whether the photo was taken before or after her murder."

That doesn't really inspire confidence in the detectives, does it?

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[grande]

He also lost a preferred duty assignment because it took an extra month to reconstruct his paperwork."

Does the army not keep backups?

-------------------------
Just call me Captain Awesome.

 

[sleipnir214]

grande:
This was in the late 1980s, and the system was not at all computerized. Also, you have to keep in mind that the Army's paperwork system is designed to work during the chaos of war, and that they don't change procedures during peacetime. When a G.I. is transferred to a new duty station, that G.I. takes an "informal" copy of all his paperwork with him. His new unit will operate on that paperwork until the "formal" copy arrives through official channels. But official channels could take weeks or even momths if he's doing a inter-theatre transfer. I heard an apocryphal story about one G.I. whose formal paperwork took a year to catch up with him, as it got lost in the shuffle.

The last time I out-processed, the paperwork packet had a stations checklist of two legal-sized pages, each divided into two columns. Each column of each page had about 30 stations in it. So you had something like 110 different places and people to talk to and get paperwork signed off. Typically, you were given two complete weeks to do all this. Some of the stations are run by civilians and are only open a few hours every week, others are run by fellow G.I.s that have other duties all but one day a week. If you are properly strategically lazy and can get your timing right, you can do it in four hectic days -- then you can screw off the other week and a half. (I think I still hold the record for out-processing the Mainz Military Community by doing the whole think in three very hectic days.)

A lot of the time, once you've outprocessed a station, all the paperwork you had ever generated there goes with you. One of the very last steps is for someone in your Personnel Action Center to separate out all the paperwork, setting aside copies of paperwork that will go in your "informal" and "formal" sets, as well as copies for your permanent records, etc. But if you get your paperwork blown up by the bomb squad for leaving it lying around during a German summer (which was the terrorism season), you are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

To be honest, it will not necessarily take a month to reconstruct the paperwork. In another case where a G.I. lost is paperwork because a water pipe burst behind his wall locker while he was doing P.T. got his packet reconstructed in a few days. But military personnel tend to drag their feet when dealing with the chronically stupid. And I say "stupid" because the very first thing you are told as you begin the out-processing process is that you will be collecting the only copy of a lot of the paperwork and if you lose it the consequences will be dire.

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[donbott]

I went to work at a company that had a poster on the wall of a meeting room that had one of the "Quality is never an accident....." quotes, but it actually said "Quality if never an accident...".

DonBott

 

[tsdragon]

For all the reasons sleipnir mentioned, one of the LAST people you ever want to piss of when you're in the military is the guy who handles all your paperwork (the "unit diary clerk" in the Marines). Your permanent record may end up being sent to Adak, Alaska or some other remote location, where it will probably sit for months while they wait for you to show up. When you don't they may or may not send it back where it came from. People have been known to simply file them away somewhere, or throw them out.

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[CRilliterate]

I've completed request for internal department and received call from a lady who was in charge of something.
She asked 'how did you get data for this file?'
I said 'I extracted it from database'
She said 'But HOW?' (sounded 'AHA-OOOOO')
I said 'I wrote few queries and exported result into Excel file'
She said 'But HOW you wrote the query?'
I said after hesitation for a sec 'I used SQL...'
She said 'And HOW did you do this using SQl?'
I said 'Would you like to come and I'll show you?'
She said 'Will you show me everything you had done?'
I said 'I'll try'
She is coming tomorrow.I can run but you know...

 

[grande]

CRilliterate, I think you might be sick tomorrow ;-)

So this happened yesterday to me. I knew we were having troubles with one of our printers (the Hewitt-Packard). It was jamming on pretty much every other sheet.
So I'm sitting at my desk "working," and I hear someone yell, rather loudly "FUNCAKES*!!! HP must stand for HUGE PENIS, cause that's what this PIECE OF SHRAPNAL** SUCKS!!!"



(* Please note that he chose another word which begins with the letter F)
(** Please note that he chose another word which begins with the letter S)

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Just call me Captain Awesome.

 

[DansDadUK]

The 'bomb' story triggered a memory of an account in a book ('Most Secret War', author R.V.Jones) regarding a change in the method of packing bombs in crates (during the First World War); a delivery was received stating:

Caution! The bombs in this crate are packed in a different manner from that formerly used. Compared with the old methods the bombs are now packed upside down, and the crate must therefore be opened at the bottom. To prevent confusion, the bottom has been labelled "Top".

 

[KenCunningham]

So, what I'm getting from the above is that the US Rapid Reaction Forces (or whatever) might have to complete reams of paperwork before redeployment. This rather negates the 'Rapid' doesn't it ;-)

Clearly every unit needs a MASH Radar to sort the whole mess out!

 

[sleipnir214]

Trust me, every unit needs more than one Radar O'Reilly to sort things out.



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TANSTAAFL!!

 

[flapeyre]

After we pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is NOT our friend.

Feles mala! Cur cista non uteris? Stramentum novum in ea posui!