Stupid Things I Have Heard At Work 6

[AnotherHiggins]

I've been thinking about starting this thread for a long time....

My company has recently gone through some pretty major layoffs. As a result, a lot of my reliable sources of stupid-things-I-overheard-at-work stories are now gone. But I have collected some pretty outstanding stupid-people stories.

I don't have time to list them now, but here is something from an email that was just sent out to literally thousands of users in the company.

.... All and all, we are on track....

This is followed by five paragraphs that seem to have been lifted straight out of a Dilbert cartoon, replete with more buzzwords than you can shake a stick at (stick-shaking is a common standard of measurement here in the South).

Any good examples you'd like to share?

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

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
[tab]-George Bernard Shaw

Help us help you. Please read FAQ181-2886 before posting.

 

[grande]

At my last co-op job, I overheard this gem. It was said by the woman next to me, over the phone:
"Excel is pretty much the same thing as Word, but there's those boxes to help keep things organised."

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

 

[zarkon4]

At a former place I worked, we had a checkboxes to signify
the category of the tech support call. It was "PEBCAK".
(Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard)
A large number of calls were place into this category!

 

[Toshilap]

grande,
it is a winner!

I just heard on Friday behind me 'Sometimes it works, sometimes it's not...that's how it is. But I have tool at home that makes it work.'


I finally got it all together and forgot where I put it.

 

[Turkbear]

Hi all,
Save some typing and just refer folks to:

http://rinkworks.com/stupid/

or

http://www.techtales.com/

or

http://www.shadowstorm.com/tech_support/

They are the modern 'urban legends' and all claim to be authentic..( many are - in our shop, they are called BESAK - between seat and keyboard - like the biggest problem with cars is the nut that holds the steering wheel )





To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[SantaMufasa]

Your BESAK is our PICNIC: Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.

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

http://www.dasages.com:

Providing low-cost remote Database Admin services]
Click here to join Utah Oracle Users Group on Tek-Tips if you use Oracle in Utah USA.

 

[Toshilap]

Turkbear,
thanks I am dying laughing...

I finally got it all together and forgot where I put it.

 

[MikeLacey]

probably the best thread on tek-tips

Mike

I am not inscrutable.

Want great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at faq219-2884

 

[JediBMC]

True Story:

A department director reported to our helpdesk a problem with his computer shutting itself off. He further stated that this occured after he left for the evening and disrupted a process scheduled to run every evening.

After checking the power settings and exhausting the possible technological causes, our techie started asking what the director did each night when he left for the evening. His process was pretty simple, he cleaned up any papers on his desk, turned off the power to his little desktop fountain, and left. Of course he used the switch on the power strip to shut off the fountain... wanna guess what else was on that power strip?

For the next 1 1/2 years, the first question asked when he called the helpdesk was "Is your fountain running?"

-Brian-
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV.

 

[johnpoole]

late childhood and very southern, my brother and i had taken a short summer job. lodging was provided in an old run down bunk house.. racoons kept us awake under the house for 2 nights. third night, one 6 pack and little brother breaks out a 44 mag and crawls under after the varmit.. 10 seconds no sound, then a very large bang and my beer can explodes on the table in front of me.. seems large bore cannons travel quite a distance when fired through the floor.. to be 15 and stupid..

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[tsdragon]

Don't remember how old I was, definitely old enough to know better. I was trying to split a giant Sweet-Tart in half so I could share it with my brother. The hacksaw wasted too much and was taking too long. I thought the hatchet would be faster. It was, too, except that I shouldn't have been holding onto the thing when I split it. I nearly took off the top 1/2 inch of my thumb. My Dad had just sharpened the hatchet too. I still play with sharp objects, but I'm much more careful now.

Tracy Dryden

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

 

[AnotherHiggins]

I used to work with a girl, let’s call her S. S was nice, and not entirely stupid, but she lacked the common sense of a fern. I collected a lot of stories about this girl. Here is a quick one:

S was involved in a car accident within a few blocks from her home (she had lived at this place for about a year already). She was on the way home, driving in the right lane. She needed to take a left, so she merged into the middle lane. She slowed down, made sure no one was coming the other way, and turned left.

Then *BANG* she gets side swiped.

She was on a one-way road.

So she turned left directly in front of another car traveling in the same direction as her in the left lane.

Apparently she had made this turn before; I guess she had just been lucky – and astonishingly unobservant – up to that point.

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

Help us help you. Please read FAQ181-2886 before posting.

 

[PaulTEG]

Heard a story of a guy who travelled into deepest, Darkest Donegal, to install a PC, way back in time.

The tech was on his way back to Dublin, when he gets a call on his cell from the office, "The pedal's not working on this new PC", he had to see what this was, so he turned around and drove 40 miles on bad roads, and the client had the mouse upside, ala "Singer Sewing machine" mode

...

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story ;-)

Spend an hour a week on CPAN, helps cure all known programming ailments ;-)

 

[strongm]

That's an ancient story, probably counts as an urban legend by now ...

 

[jebenson]

I once had a boss who was a great guy, salt of the earth and all that. I really felt for him because his wife was...well...a little...ditzy, shall we say. Once I heard him recieve a phone call, the portion of which I could hear went something like this:

<ring ring>

Hello honey....calm down, calm down! What happened? Uh huh, uh huh...did anything catch on fire? Well, that's good. Did you just forget to look before you drove off? Okay, where are you again? Okay, I'll be right there.

What had happend was that his wife had been filling her car with gas, and drove away from the pump without removing the nozzle from the gas tank. She ripped the nozzle and hose loose fron the gas pump. My poor boss had to go to this gas station and write a check for the repair cost of the gas pump.


I used to rock and roll every night and party every day. Then it was every other day. Now I'm lucky if I can find 30 minutes a week in which to get funky. - Homer Simpson

 

[gmmastros]

Probably not your boss' wife, but I saw this a couple weeks ago, and you just reminded me of it.

-George

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. - Fortune cookie wisdom

 

[GwydionM]

Checking a specification, someone found a reference to a Development Manger. Just the thing if your top bosses expect miracles, of course.

I've found myself listed as a Program on a circulation list. One of the many perils of spell checkers.

------------------------------
An old man who lives in the UK

 

[tgreer]

Spell-checkers check spells, presumably. However, even a spelling-checker would have missed those.

Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[rosieb]

Two goodies from the last month:

I'm paraphrasing slightly

"Well we've got the scanners, but we'll need another photocopier. If we photocopy the documents first, we can put them into the hopper feed for the scanner, it'll be much quicker."



[In the context of a major management reorganisation which has taken over a year, a round of redundancies, and a major outsourcing proposal]

"The Unions have stated that morale is low, but others disagree. If we find that morale is genuinely low, we will address the issue"

[The others are the senior management team, who are clearly on another planet.]


Rosie
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think" (Niels Bohr)

 

[Madawc]

Regarding scanning and photocopying, it can make sense if the document won't feed easily. Especially if it is one you need to hold open.

Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK). Using Windows XP & Crystal 10

 

[Toshilap]

???????????LOL

I finally got it all together and forgot where I put it.