Despite HR reminding their companies that good onboarding matters, most managers don’t get the message. A recentsurveyfound that only 52% of new hires feel satisfied with how theirs went, with 32% finding it confusing and 22% disorganized.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
In Germany a spirit level is called Wasserwaage (water scale). So the kids are sent out to get the Ausgleichgewichte (balancing weights) for the Wasserwaage.But I’m glad that my company doesn’t allow that st. You got a little kid in front of you. That kid is 16/17/18. They are nervous as fk. No need to take them down even more just because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling of being smarter. If that’s what you are aiming for… Seems like a sad life.Be a mentor, don’t be an a*****e.
I’m a nurse and used to work in hospitals. We had little biohazard bags that we would use to send tubes of blood and other assorted bodily fluids to the lab for tests. I had a fellow nurse who would blow a bag full of air and label it “fart sample”, then give it to an unsuspecting unit secretary. One poor secretary failed to find any fart test orders in the computer and asked us how to enter it in 😆.
When I was in the Marine Corps, I was in the air wing as a repair squadron as a tin bender. My Sargent told me to go to the supply building and get 100ft of flight line. I already knew about this since my buddy worked in supply. So I said “sir, yes sir” and just spent two hours hanging out with Buddy. When I get back I pretend to be confused and he has a good laugh. Win, win all around.
“WD-40 isn’t gonna be quite strong enough. run to the supply room and get a can of WD-41”.
In anesthesia, sometimes we ask the patient, “let me know when you’re asleep.”.
Rock climbing guide. I constantly get people asking how I get the ropes up. My coworkers and I all have different answers varying from “there’s a ladder/elevator in the back of the rock” to “we retrained old mail carrier pigeons” or “grappling hook.“I’ve had a shocking amount of people who will walk around to look for a ladder then glare at me later once they realized the joke on them.
Me setting up gas/air lines in the prenatal chemistry lab: Hey new kid, go get me a roll of fallopian tubing.
I used to work in a diesel engine manufacturing plant.We would send new people to the parts cage to get spark plugs.
I worked at Best Buy in college and we would have tell the new guy that when they clocked out they needed to hit #19 on the desk phone and say they were leaving for the day, what they accomplished, and their favorite part of the day. We told them it was an automated time and labor tool that automatically clocked them out . Really it called the stores intercom system and blared it over the loud speakers for everyone in the store. Pretty embarrassing and gave all the rest of us a good chuckle. The best part it was delayed so they typically made it all the way across the store until it started to play back.
I work on an airfield. We have the new guys stand outside holding a piece of printer paper above their heads at night so the air traffic controllers can “calibrate the light gun”. It’s literally just a fancy flash light.We had one guy stand out there for almost 20 minutes before he realized we were messing with him.
When I worked at Pizza Hut in the 90s we would send the new driver to another Pizza Hut to get our cheese grater. We would call ahead and that store would send them to KFC, KFC would send them to Burger King. I don’t recall it going farther than that.
Fun fact…I know a guy who started a company selling “blinker fluid” just to make a buck off people who still think this is funny.He gets angry email messages from senior mechanics all the time, who made the mistake of telling the new guy to get blinker fluid, only for the new guy to realise they didn’t have any, and to ask purchasing to order a palletload.Apparently, this extremely specific scenario happens enough for him to drive a current year car.
This isn’t going to all fit, go get the shelf stretcher.
Aluminum magnets, left handed screwdriver for the left handed thread.
Surgeon here. We peel tissue off bones and cartilage with various named types of “elevators” to elevate tissue. So we’d ask new scrub tech’s to pass an Otis elevator.(That’s the company that makes regular elevators in buildings).
Asking to check the to see if the new guy’s hammer has a whee. Then tossing it as far as possible. .
I like to write on a piece of paper “help I’m stuck in the copy machine” and scan-to email from a central unit to a coworkers’s inbox. Alternatively, I just write it on a piece of copy paper and put it back in the hopper so it shows up on someone’s print job.
‘Quick, go get the left handed chopping board’ or ‘Quick, I need the left handed knife’Or my favourite….‘Why don’t you go chop up some flour’.
We sent out an apprentice for some left-handed frying pans and a bacon stretcher. The other pubs in the area played into it and sent him on a wild goose chase. Guy still got paid for his time though so it was just a fun prank.
Jump up and down on top of an Army tank to check the shocks. Also walk around it and hit it with a mallet to check for soft spots.
Glass hammer… when I got my first apprentice job in manufacturing the person I was shadowing sent me to the managers office to ask for one, he was in the middle of a meeting so I knocked on, he waved me in and I asked for it in front of about 7 fully experienced upper management people… they all looked at me for a second and then burst out laughing 😭.
FYI a snipe is a bird. So one could find a snipe.Snipes are famously hard to hunt. They get spooked real easy and would have unpredictable flight patterns. That’s where the words sniping and later on sniper come from.
Ah, yes, such things are rite of passsage in the military. I have sent people (and been sent, myself) to supply for a viariety of things, such as:An ID ten T (ID10T)B A eleven hundred NST rings (balloon strings)A length of flight lineA roll of fallopian tubeA bucket of prop washA tube of squelch greaseMuffler bearingsChemlight BatteriesRear-view Mirror fluidA box of ground guidesA bag of grid squaresI’ve also given the new guy a hammer a piece of chalk and told him to find all the soft spots in the armor of an MRAP, and given people a box of trash bags and sent them into the motor pool to take exhaust samples.The one that really got me into trouble, though, was when I sent someone around the operations center to collect the EMHO Report (that stands for Early Morning Hard On); the Major in charge of operations didn’t think it was funny at all and almost brought me up on several counts of sexual harassment charges (I was 23 and stupid). My platoon sergeant was able to talk her down from that, but I was in the professional doghouse for months afterward.
See Also on Bored Panda
Go grab the box of f-stops from the camera bag.
I don’t know if there is something like that in my profession (MEP/building engineer) but one of my professors told a story when he first got out of school and got a job, and the first thing they asked him to do was figure out the transformer to feed a panel. So, he spent the next few hours calculating turn ratio, iron core thickness, and other parameters of a transformer. Wrote it all down and took it to the senior engineer to review his work. The senior engineer took one look at what he did, pulled a catalog off his shelf (this was before the internet), opened it up and pointed to a transformer available to buy. “That’s all you need to do”, he said.
Press the “any” key.
Continue reading with Bored Panda PremiumUnlimited contentAd-free browsingDark modeSubscribe nowAlready a subscriber?Sign In
Continue reading with Bored Panda Premium
Unlimited contentAd-free browsingDark mode
Unlimited content
Ad-free browsing
Dark mode
Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber?Sign In
At Domino’s when we’re stretching the pizza dough and accidentally rip a hole in it it’s common to ask the newbie to get the Dough Patch Repair Kit. Once I had a new guy running around the store for a good 15 minutes trying to find it, asking everyone he could if they’ve seen it.
When I worked at Starbucks we had a spout that produced hot, filtered water. We would occasionally tell newbies they had to drain all the hot water before closing.
I work on hospitality, I grab a corded landline phone and walk down the hallway pretending I’m talking to someone and say “yes xxxxx is here let me hand them the phone”.
Stir the tank water on the fire engine with a broom handle, then add lemon juice to keep the Ph juuuuuuust right.
Pneumatic fluid. Or in scouts sending someone around to find a left handed spatula.
Grab the wood stretcher.
In the medical field, asking a student or newbie to fetch some “fallopian tubes” is a tongue-in-cheek task. It’s particularly funny in contexts where such anatomical parts aren’t relevant, adding to the absurdity.
Waffle House. (Or any restaurant really)Regular omelettes use eggs whipped in a high-speed blender.Got a new cook? After training the regular way, ask them to make an EGG WHITE omelette with no further instructions.And now they know how to make “fried merengue” :).
So in cinematography, the iris of a lens is measured in T stops (photography measures them in F stops, there is a nuanced difference between the two, but they’re pretty much interchangeable).New people usually get the “bring me a box of T stops”, or “I need a bottle of T-stop fluid” Neither of these exist. one of my mentors early in his career was working on a shoot on an aircraft carrier and was hit with the “bottle of t-stop Fluid” order, and being the eager young camera PA he was, he went looking for it. Of course, it was no where to be found in lock up, and no one would tell him it didn’t exist. He eventually finds himself standing next to a group of flight mechanics (whom he mistook as a grips).He says something along the lines of, “they’re asking me to find a bottle of T-stop fluid, but I can’t find it anywhere”.One of the mechanics responds, “T-stop fluid? oh I have a bunch of that, hold on,” and grabs him a bottle of T-stop fluid. Apparently while it isn’t something that is used in filmmaking, it is something that exists for use in fighter jets or something. The look of bewilderment on the cinematographer’s face when my mentor handed him a bottle of T-stop fluid must have been hilarious.This was a few decades ago, I don’t think this type of hazing is allowed on set anymore. That said, I have heard early in my career, “Find a long wait (weight)".Also, if you ever ask a film crew what they’re shooting, a lot of the time, they’re going to tell you that they’re shooting a mayonnaise commercial. It’s sort of an inside joke, but really it’s just a catch all to tell lookie-lous something, when more often than not they’re either too busy to actually give an answer, or are working on something that is using a codename where if someone recognized the actual project, it could pose a security risk.
A metric spirit level. It’s was great for the (I’m smarter than this) cautious lads.
A guy I knew was sent off to get a record weight.
Warehousing: Hey new guy, we gotta make some more room over here. Go to maintenance and ask em for the aisle stretcher.There was also one time we sent a guy to look for a bucket of steam, but I can’t remember the context of the situation too well.
One time someone from geek squad told me they “decouple the ram” as part of their computer service. In IT, that’s not a thing. Also never, ever, ever get computer work done a geek squad. Do you think a competent computer repair person is going to work for near minimum wage?
We need some left-handed nitrile gloves.
Modal closeAdd Your Answer!Not your original work?Add sourcePublish
Modal close
Add Your Answer!Not your original work?Add sourcePublish
Not your original work?Add sourcePublish
Not your original work?Add source
Modal closeModal closeOoops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.UploadUploadError occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermarkInstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermarkFacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermarkChangeSourceTitleUpdateAdd Image
Modal closeOoops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.UploadUploadError occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermarkInstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermarkFacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermarkChangeSourceTitleUpdateAdd Image
Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
Upload
UploadError occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermarkInstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermarkFacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermark
Error occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again.
TwitterRender conversationUse html versionGenerate not embedded versionAdd watermark
InstagramShow Image OnlyHide CaptionCropAdd watermark
FacebookShow Image OnlyAdd watermark
ChangeSourceTitle
Curiosities
