I murdered a director
I used to work for a company that was run by academics. Marketing types would ring speculatively and, being academics, they hated talking to real people let alone sales people and would often hang up, not answer or just leave them on hold while they went off to do more interesting things. This often left me, acting as the receptionist, getting an earful from some very annoyed phone monkeys.

Eventually the directors and I came to an agreement where we would give marketing companies the name of a fake marketing manager, who would be "out" a lot. And when one of the academics was bored, or the company seemed useful, they would speak to them.

As the head academic was particularly keen on X-men, we named the marketing manager Dr. Jean Grey, but pronounced it John.

It all started very well

PM (Phone Monkey): Can I speak to your marketing director?
Me: So sorry, he's out on the road
PM: Can I have his number?
Me: He probably won't be able to pick up, he's in China, you can send some literature if you like, address it to Dr. Jean Grey.
PM: Okay, I'll call again after I've sent some information

All very nice, no-one got hurt, and everybody was more productive.....

Until we met the jack russells of the sales and marketing world. They started ringing, and I gave them the above speil.

After a week or two, they rang again

PM: Hi, can I speak to Jean Grey?
Me: It's Dr. John Grey and I'm sorry, he's "out" on the road.
PM: Did he receive the material we sent?
Me: Yes, I'm sure he did
PM: Do you know if he read it?
Me: No idea, I'll ask him to return your call when he comes in.
PM: Great, thanks

*sniggers from office*

And again:
PM: Hi I called last week to speak to Jean Grey
Me: That's Dr. John Grey
PM: Okay, sorry, has he read the material?
Me: Oh yes, he said he was very interested and he was going to get back to you. Did he call?
PM: No I have no record of that
ME: Well not to worry, I'm sure he will soon, he's in India at the moment.
PM: Thanks

*sniggers from office*

Another week passes:
PM: Hi, could I speak to Jean Grey?
Me: It's Dr. John Grey, I'm sorry, he's not here at the moment
PM (getting irritated): Do you hold his diary? I've been trying to speak to him for weeks
Me: I'm sorry, Dr. Grey *sniggers* is a very busy man, I'm sure he will get back to you when he's available
PM: Well, make sure he does...

I had a bit of a "handbags at dawn" moment there, and everyone thought it was hilarious, but I knew we weren't going to be able to do this all the time, afterall, Dr. Jean was supposed to be saving everyone time, and phone monkey was being a bit of a pest.

So we decided to hurt him (Dr. Jean that is, not the phone monkey)

The beginning of the end:
PM: I would like to speak to Jean Grey please
Me: It's Dr. John Grey, and I'm sorry, he's not available
PM: Look, I've been ringing for weeks, I know what my company is offering is not hugely important, but it could be highly beneficial, if I could just speak to him once, I'm sure arrangements could be made very quickly.
Me: I appreciate that sir *sniggers* but unfortuntely Dr. Grey has been involved in an accident and I'm not sure when he'll be returning to work.
PM: Sorry to hear that, I'll ring next week
Me: You do that, thanks!

I'm sure you can see where this is going can't you? We had to kill Dr. Jean Grey, it was a hard decision because he was such a valued member of the team, but he had finally become a bit of a millstone, he had to go.

Next week:
PM: Hi, can I speak to Jean Grey please?
Me: *sniffling* it's Dr. John Grey, and I'm sorry, but no, he's unavailable.
PM: He's always unavailable, is there someone else I can speak to?
Me: There's no need to speak to me like that sir *sniffle*, Dr. Grey was the only person you could speak to
PM: Was?
Me: Yes, he died yesterday, he stubbed his toe at the Australian embassy and contracted gangrene, it spread to his abdomen, they tried to amputate, but he just didn't make it.

(Think about amputating an abdomen - honestly! Australian embassy? Don't ask, I don't know why)

PM: I'm so sorry.....*BIG Pause*...have you found a replacement?
Me: That's very insenstive sir, I suggest you don't call again

*SLAMS Phone down*

Everyone laughed like horses, we toasted Dr. Jean Grey at the pub later.


ADDITIONAL
The whole company agreed that Dr. Grey had to be killed, and that I was the person to do it. Although there was no mess to clean up, no body to hide and no snooping by the cops, this dirty secret was particularly guilt-free and legal (and nonsensical).

But the emotional price was high, not only did I "give birth" to my very own fictitious marketing director, I then killed him with the Australian embassy. I still miss Dr. Grey, sometime I feel a deep ache of longing, he'll be forever in my heart

Most of this story is true.
(Jugular, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 12:21, Reply)

When I use to write for magazines..
As a hard up grad student I use to write for a few magazines , but your now thinking thats cool... no I use to write for girls "teen" magazines specically the letters section. I wrote both the letters and responses every month for 2 years... now you know why your children are screwed up. click I like this and I will scan in the secret messesage I planted in the mag...

Mod Edit: OK - so where's the scan?
( Super piat I am the owl, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 17:08, Reply)

By Popular Demand, Funeral Directors Stories - Part 2.
During my tenure at the funeral directors I was also privvy to the following terrible and shameful events.

1) The funeral of a local civic dignitary where the bereaved relatives had requested that 'Jerusalem' sung by Kings College Choir be played during the commital to the flames.
The task of sourcing the music was given to the rookie, who - unable to find a copy of Jerusalem, had decided to substitute a 'similar song'.
It was for this reason that the dearly departed's coffin sailed through the curtain to the sound of "Achy, Breaky Heart" by Billy-Ray Cyrus, the deceased having died from a coronary

2) There was an occasion when the driver of the hearse containing the coffin saw his car driven by a car thief go through the lights ahead of him. Cue a wild 'Starsky and Hutch' style chase through the streets with a 1989 Vauxhall Cavalier being chased by a coffin-bearing 1998 Ford Scorpio Hearse.
As he rounded a particularly tight bend, tooting his horn for all he was worth, the coffin slid back, hit the boot door, opening it and shot out of the back like a cork from a champagne bottle, straight through the window of a branch of Phones4U, much to the chagrin of its staff.

3) During one funeral at the local crematorium, the head funeral director slipped behind the main curtain (which opens for the coffin to slide through at the comittal to the flames) and disappeared.
Imagine the horror of the collected mourners when the curtains opened to reveal him being expertly fellated by one of the crematorium staff! By the look on his face he was within a hair's breadth of the vinegar strokes, his face contorted into a mix of ecstacy and anguish which changed to horror when he noticed his newly acquired audience.
Of course he was too far gone to stop now, and in full view of the crowd uttered a groan of pleasure of which Peter North would've been proud.
(Vic Flange, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:31, Reply)

ugly kid battleships
im a teacher and until recently part of my job involved invigilating exams. deathly dull work until we brightened it up with ugly kid battle ships. each seat had a reference number, and myself and the two or three other staff would stroll around writing down the numbers of where we thought the 8 ugliest kids sat. we would then meet and try to guess each others numbers. Endless variations - smelly kid, geeky kid etc. We also played slow pacman, one would be pacman and the others were ghosts and we had to chase around the exam hall at slow envigilator speed, if the ghosts got to a corner spot the tide was turned for 5 mins.
There was also a chap who brought a game with him from another school but i could never play it, it was just too cruel. Idea was that you sent ugliest/smelliest/stupidist/geekiest kid from your class to another teacher with any random piece of work, and that teacher would say ..ooh tell him thats a 7 out of 10 and send them back, not realising that they had infact just been graded on the pre-agreed category. That teacher would then send their best challenger to you with another bit of random work so that you could grade them.in theory you could carry on all day. never had the heart for that one though
(bambambambambam, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 20:08, Reply)

Putting the 'Fun' In Funeral
I worked for a couple of years at a firm of undertakers. Most grieving relatives thought we were the paragon of virtue but would they have choked on their post funeral vol-au-vents if they had know of the following malpractises.

1) A young drunk funeral director who photographed himself naked with an also naked corpse of a recently departed local councilor. He had adjusted her face into a gurning smirk, placed a raw haddock in her mouth and and a multicoloured clown wig on her head. It looked like a promotional photo for the Little and Large Summer tour.

2) The Funeral Director who stole all the gold fillings from a deceased businessman's mouth and had a large, and I felt, rather unsightly sovereign ring forged from it by a goldsmith in the next town.

3) We used to provide a cremation service as well. Quite often the ashes would get spilt or lost, so we'd burn off a pile of newspapers in the furnace and fill an urn with that. Relatives would sometimes question why their deceased relatives had been cremated with a copy of Razzle.

4) Have you ever wondered what funeral directors keep under their top hats? Well one of my colleagues kept 2 smoked salmon rolls, a bag of smiths salt and shake and a yorkie bar. One summer, the yorkie melted, and rivulets of chocolate dripped down his head and into his eyes, making it look like he had a small creature under there which was having some sort of dirty protest.

5) When the mortuary was out of space, we used to dress the deceased up in evening wear and leave them propped up around the showroom, to make them look like customers. Every so often some doddery old codger would try and hold a conversation with one, and would be slightly non-plussed when one of my colleagues would turn up and load the body onto a sack barrow to take them into the chapel.
(Vic Flange, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 16:26, Reply)

Databases
I worked in a video shop for 10 years and we had handy little notes on all the customers' accounts.

Helpful things like

"never rewinds"

"will try it on"

"likes a bit of porn"

"fucking deviant"

"you know you would if she offered"

"stop looking at his ears"

"she gives me wood"

"lying bastard"

"i know she's 14, but I really would"

We had to wipe them all off when a lad with autism did work experience there because he kept reading them out loud.
(smorgasbord, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 20:54, Reply)

The cost of RAM...
I work in a semiconductor plant, where we manufacture RAM that goes into everything from computers to cell phones to your Xbox.

To manufacture these things, you start out with a wafer of extremely pure silicon, with as close to a perfect crystalline structure as can be managed. (Give you an idea of how perfect: if you break a wafer, it usually splits along lines that form 60 degree angles, because all of the atoms line up in a hexagonal structure. I shit thee not.) These wafers are only about a millimeter thick, so they're extraordinarily fragile. By the time a full lot of wafers (25 wafers in a lot) makes it through to the point where it's ready to be cut up into individual little boards of RAM, each wafer has had about $1800 of work invested in it, so one of these lots is worth about $45,000. These wafers are 20 cm across- about 8"- so a full lot fits in a box about 12" on a side, and the lot, the cassette holding the lot and the box together weigh about 8 lbs. (The box is shown on the left; inside said box is the cassette with the wafers, on the right.)



You know how they say that familiarity breeds contempt?

I've seen guys pick up these boxes by the corner with one hand to carry them across the room. And I've seen them carry two at a time this way.

To put it in perspective: if that box's latches fail and it opens, or if the box slips out of his hand, $45,000 is instantly lost. If this goober trips and drops both lots, that's $90,000. That's the equivalent of paying three of the manufacturing associates for a year to not even be there. That's a fully loaded Porsche. That's half of a mortgage on a decent house.

And these clowns carry them around like bowling balls.

Another good one: because it's a Class 1 cleanroom environment, everyone has to wear a cleanroom suit, sometimes called a bunny suit, which covers every bit of you except your eyes and nose- and you have to wear safety glasses, so it's really just your nose. To give you an idea of what it looks like:



(This is not our plant, but that's pretty close to what it looks like up there.)

Since even wearing perfume can cause problems with the wafers, they're ultra paranoid about any sort of contamination, so there are no bathrooms in the factory. Gotta take a piss? You have to walk out to the gowning room, take off the suit and walk out of the factory to get to the bathroom. It takes a good ten minutes to get there, and another ten to return- so you don't do it often.

Some of the associates have gotten very sneaky and pissed down through the grate floor into the lower area of the factory where the things like the canisters of hydrogen gas and other chemicals and the slurry pumps and whatnot are. What one guy didn't realize, though, was that the place he chose to piss was right next to one of the ion implanting machines. He was in fact pissing right next to the power supply for the machine. A 480V, god-knows-how-many-amp power line. Had he hit it, the current would have gone straight up the stream, up through his urethra, vaporized the contents of his bladder and kidneys, and blown his crotch apart like a pinata.

I sometimes regret that he missed. It would have made for a great Darwin Award.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 28 Sep 2007, 20:02, Reply)

Cinema Projection
Ah the hallowed back rooms of the movie theatre. Things I and other people have done when you either haven't been there (late at night) or have been watching your film.

1. Someone is watching you in the movie theatre. We can see you make out, we can see you stupid simian fuckers who insist on texting all through a film (you useless limp dick half brained visigoths fucking die). We can see if it's a half two in the afternoon session and you are an old man who feels a need to wank and it's us who open trap doors and yell 'Stop wanking you fucker'. Best thing I ever saw was two hot girls who thought they were alone make out. Alerted other via intercom and soon there was three guys watching from the rear window.

2. Sometimes your projectionist will be naked.

3. Often stoned

4. Another trade secret that people always ask about since fight club is the classic 'do you splice porn into kiddies movies?' line. Most people seem to think that if you take a porno picture from a magazine you can somehow magically insert it inbetween two pieces of 35mm film, wind it onto a reel at thousands of revs per second, then shove it through steel plates and expose it to intense temperatures and magically have the image both survive and appear on screen. The answer is no, we don't splice in porn because we don't have any 35mm porn stock.

5. We do splice in violent content from other films or innocent content into violent films. Yes it's noticable.

6. Yes it is no co-incidence that the oil company adverts seem to be the most scratched and unviewable. This is because of me standing there with a drawing pin against the film as it runs through the projector.

7. Movie seemed to start late? I wanted to listen to the end of that song / album. Fuck you.

8. After hours we lock the door and have access to our own private cinema. Deluxe. You can get horrendously mashed and watch all the old films in the vault. Or fuck your girlfriend at the front of the cinema in front of Donnie Darko.

9. This activity can also be done on the job while you are watching your film.

10. I make scary faces with a torch and a mask through the windows sometimes, just in case someone turns around.
(feature_wall, Wed 3 Oct 2007, 7:26, Reply)

Not me but...
I have, or rather had (as I finished school yesterday) a physics teacher who during uni holidays worked in a pulp mill in his native canada. anyway, among many stories he told us my favourite is this:
Often employees would be drunk, the day was split into two 12 hour shifts for every job and so people would be very bored and just having to operate machinery or similar would not stop someone from getting on the drink. So one day this forklift driver is moving some stuff from a pier into a warehouse and he is drunk which is the major reason why he ends up driving off the pier into the drink. he isn't hurt, and walks off wet to tell the manager what he has done. the manager is his usual calm self, but organises for some divers and a crane to fish out the forklift. the next day the crane is there and the divers go down under orders to hook the crane onto the forklift. they come back up after only being down for 30 seconds or so, asking which forlift they should hook it onto, as there are three to choose from.
(woo who?, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 13:01, Reply)

Emissions trickery
I work in engine and gearbox development for a nameless car manufacturer.

We were fairly convinced that we wouldn't be able to make one of our engines pass the latest round of stringent emissions tests. That is, until one of my colleagues demonstrated a fairly crafty trick...

In essence, what we've done is to divert some of the air directly from the air intake into the exhaust tract, bypassing its route through the engine completely and 'diluting' the exhaust gas. Daft as it sounds, it worked, and that's how that engine's been made for at least a couple of years. It now passes the test, despite not actually producing any fewer pollutants than it did before.
( rubberduck should only be used after consulting with your GP, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 11:15, Reply)

Mobile Repairs
Perhaps the best advice I can give you that I've learnt from working in a mobile phone repair shop is this: if you have any homemade filth on your phone, remove it from your handset before taking it in. That is, unless you don't mind deviant phone engineers watching your wife pleasure herself.

I've mentioned this particular example before, but it bears repeating. This chap bought his phone in, because it wouldn't turn on. Our engineer instinctively opened the phone up and checked for liquid damage, which there appeared to be a significant amount of. So, following a swift clean-up, the phone was back in working order.

Our engineer also instinctively checked to see if there was any pornographic videos on the phone that he could add to his collection. To his delight, he saw a close-up of a nice, juicy twat getting shafted by a bright white dildo. The action was rather boring, until the very end, when the woman jizzed everywhere, at which point she told the cameraman, "it's gone on your phone," so obviously the camera was actually a cameraphone. Then, a curiously familar voice replied, "don't matter, carry on..."

Need I go on? On further inspection, his wife's twat wasn't that juicy. In fact, it was rather mouldy.

*shrugs*
(Roll Fizzlebeef enjoys a good Cleveland Steamer, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 12:40, Reply)

Just remembered another...
My cousin was a vet nurse/assistant and she once told me that after a while they just get desensitized to putting animals down and actually couldn't care less about taking the life of your beloved family pet, even if they act like they do.

Once, she was dealing with a parrot that had been hit by a car. It was basically fucked but still alive so the Vet decided to put it down and tell the owner it had died from it's injuries. Naturally, they started playing with it's dead body, pretending it was a puppet, when the owner burst through the door. My cousin tried to cover it up by saying she was trying to give it CPR. The owner ending up buying them some wine, thanking them for trying everything they could.
(yousuckattheinternet, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 7:02, Reply)

"Buy now interest-free for a year!"
... is what the sign by that washing machine says.

What it means is "Take it home now, Curry's get paid by a third party company to whom you owe the money. The interest rate is extortionate but we won't charge it to you for the first year (unless you ever miss a payment, in which case we'll clobber you for all of that year's interest)".

By law they have to send you a reminder letter before your first payment, when that year of interest-freedom is about to run out. The letter has to be sent at some point between two and four weeks prior to your first payment. They hate this because it means people are more likely to remember to pay.

To my shame, I used to work for a company that held lots of profiling information about pretty well everyone in the UK: your age, marital status, whether you owned your own house, when your car insurance expires, who you voted for, etc. - anything they could glean from any survey you've ever filled in, all cross-referenced and held in one massive database. I kid you not, our database had a field called "DogHasWind".

Anyway, the company who stumps up the cash to pay Comet for your new fridge freezer came to us.

They wanted to use our data to try to predict how likely people are to miss their first payment, dependant on when they receive the reminder letter. If we think you never have anything in the bank, they'll send the reminder letter as late as possible so you'll be most likely to be skint and thus miss your first payment. If we think you're quite forgetful, they'll send the letter as early as possible, so you're more likely to forget to put money by for it and thus miss your first payment.

There are not swear words harsh enough to describe these people.
( teedyay, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 13:52, Reply)

HI I'M FROM ZOO MAGAZINE
and we would like to use this qotw in our next publication
(duketh *raises rifle* everyone loves muffins!!!!!!, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 11:34, Reply)

OK, it's a friend-of-a-friend story, but here goes
My little bro' is in the RAF, and one of his mates has a confession about a training flight on which they were looking for a wind turbine as a route marker. The Nav. was convinced that it should be around here somewhere, but couldn't see it.

Puzzling.

Then he noticed it. As the Hercules passed between its currently rotating arms .
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 11:23, Reply)

helicopter pilots...
...tell customers that the heaviest people have to go in the back of the machine for centre of gravity issues (this is partially true), so the boyfriend gets in the back and the chicky babe in the short skirt sits up front.

We then use our immaculately polished instrument glass to look up her skirt.
(bellboy last hit the tit on, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 10:48, Reply)

I'M NOT REALLY A NGIGERIAN PRINCE
AND I DON'T ACUTALLY HAVE A SECRET ACCOWNT WITH $25,000,000 DOLLARS IN IT WITCH I WOOD LIKE TO SHARE WITH YOU AS I KNOW YOU ARE A GOOD HONEST MAN.

WHEN YOU SEND ME YOUR BANK DETALES I WILL SIMPLY STEEL ALL YORE MONEY.

And I know what the caps lock button is for, but I assume you'll think you're more intelligent than me if I pretend I don't.

Hey! Look! I can spell too!
(ReAndyMator has been very bored since July, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 11:59, Reply)

Well the only paid job i've ever had is as a teacher
And it didn' go well

I know that there are many ideas of what teachers get up to- and there are some fantastic stories about such wonderful things as student/teacher affairs, drinking and drugs problems and other such wonderful things.


Sadly I worked in a small village school- where there were 5 teachers including the head teacher, and a vast number of teaching assistants who all worked odd hours. Oh and I was the only bloke.... and bar 1 of the other teachers (who was a hippie) the youngest teacher by at least 30 years

In schools you kind of expect there to be a certain element of sillyness, the calling of names, the hiding of property and petty acts of vandalism

maybe from the kids...but you don't really expect it between the teachers.
Basically I was the "new kid" and so got picked on by a group of grumpy old women who found delight in making children feel as horrible and meaningless as they could- and so felt the need to lash out at the new "cool" teacher who actually cared about teaching the children and teaching them to be good people.

So everything I did was seen as being "wrong" and "inappropriate" Funny that when i was the one who made sure of n bodily contact with the kids,compared to the scary old woman who would hug kids all the time *shudders*

I had my mark book and lesson plans stolen or defaced, resources sabotaged and plans changed for my class (oh...your taking half the class out to do singing practice....when I'd set up a science experiement that you knew full well about...thanks)

Luckily I was the only one in the whole school who knew how the computers worked- I sadly had to leave due to health problems- but would have done the following things on my last days at the school:

Change all the computer passwords for everyone
Hide the backup tapes for the server
Move (hide) all of the school's date in weird places
Hide the desktop on all the computers so that it appears as an image (all the icons appear there but can't be used)
Change all the mouse-speeds to the lowest settings
Add interesting auto-corrects to most of the computers (Name of school gets a few profanities added)
Gently loosen all the cables so none of them quite connect, but all look like they are
Removed all of the mouseballs from the school


I'm sure there would be more

hmmm....I might still have the password and login for the school website somewhere
click I like this if you want me to find them and maybe post them ;)
(bignutter, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 20:24, Reply)

Fashion
I club baby seals on the head with a big stick in the Arctic and harvest their skins for coats and hats and stuff but, and don't tell anyone this, if its particularly cold, we just stay on the boat and say we couldn't find any seals. The deception sickens me.
(Rich T has a clever and witty sig, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 11:06, Reply)

I used to work for an IVF Lab in Sydney (go on, just TRY and work out the name)
They frequently exchange sperm/eggs with more fertile ones from other people. You can usually tell when this has happened - if you have friends who have had an IVF baby and either the father is remarkably effeminate or the mother is extrememly butch, recommend a DNA test. Seriously, it's standard practice across the world. If you can't get a baby by spunking in your girlfriend's muff, it ain't your baby (or possibly hers, but more likely it's not yours, you inadequate excuse for a man). There was at least one case while I was there where the baby didn't belong to either of them.

They're a lot more careful about it these days, after there was a case in the UK where a blonde white couple had a big black baby boy. You might remember it from the late 90s. These days they make sure it'll have the same colour skin, eyes & hair as the parents.

I should mention that my confidentiality agreement expired a couple of years ago and the only reason I don't talk about specific cases is because of personal morals (I don't think it's fair on the individuals).

Also, one day we all cloned ourselves for a laugh. We killed the embryos after a couple of weeks. They were kept inside cut-off straws and we dropped them in acid.

I killed a mini version of myself.

I wasn't religious before that moment, now I honestly believe that my soul has been destroyed.

Redemption is a bitch.
( gronkpan https://twitter.com/VomitingLarry, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 15:16, Reply)

Post Office
OK, it's Wednesday....

A little old lady is hard up just before Christmas, so she writes a letter to Santa Claus explaining how she's needing money to pay for food etc over Christmas, and that if he could send £100 she would appreciate it greatly.

So off it goes in the mail, and the workers in the sorting office find the letter addressed to Santa and open it. Moved by the story, they have a whip round in the office, and gather together a total of £95. They put it in an envelope, and send it off to the woman, pleased to have done a good deed.

The next day a letter addressed to Santa comes back.

"Dear Santa, Thank you so much for sending the money to me. It means the world to me and I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you for giving me a happy Christmas.

PS I asked for £100 and you sent me £95, but don't worry, I know it's just these thieving bastards at the Post Office helping themselves".
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 3 Oct 2007, 16:00, Reply)

My dirty little trick...
I'll share with you one of my best secrets, the one that has been of more use to me than any other.

Ready?

My secret to getting people to do my bidding, which almost invariably works, is...














I ask nicely, with a smile, and say thank you after.

I smile a lot, and am polite to everyone, even if I'm a lot farther up the food chain than they are.

I speak gently to waiters, cashiers, janitors, security people, secretaries, and all of the underling types I come into contact with, as you can never tell when they might make your life a LOT easier simply because you treated them with respect. As a result, I tend to get people to do me an awful lot of favors, both great and small, and have a much easier time of things.

Now that I've told you this- don't tell anyone else, okay? I mean, imagine what would happen if everyone did this! Then where would we be?
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Mon 1 Oct 2007, 18:18, Reply)

Bindun...
.
Yup, us IT admins have access to everything on the network. And I mean *everything*.

Now one place I worked actually had an Internet Security Officer. His job was to check the logs of the firewall (one of the first versions of Checkpoint if anyone’s interested) and then to come around to your desk and ask you why you were on a particular site.

The thing was though that the guy was a dickhead. A non-technical dickhead. All he knew IT-wise was how to download the logs from the Checkpoint server and even that had been set up for him by a techy. So, in my first week working there as an Uber-Geek, this guy turned up at my desk and introduced himself by saying.

"Hi, I'm the Internet Security Officer and I want to know what you were doing accessing the site www.lottery.co.uk on Thursday morning at 7.05am?"

WTF? So I looked at this beanpole and said:

"Checking my fucking lottery tickets. What do you think I was doing?"

So he went into his spiel about how the Internet wasn't for personal use and I could only use it for work purposes blah blah blah. I let him finish and told him to go and annoy someone else as I was busy. He gave me a look that clearly said:

"I've got you marked and I'm going to drop you in the shit as soon as I can."

And off he beetled.

So, acting on the premise that the best defence is a good offence, I looked up his username, located his workstation and logged on remotely as local admin. Found his cache directory, cookies etc etc and downloaded them onto my machine. Then I ran a couple of sorting programs and looked at the results. And smiled.

A few days later, dickhead scuttles up to my desk again and asks, with an oily smile:

"Why were you accessing Hotmail, B3ta, Deja-News and the BBC website? I'm afraid that, as I've already warned you previously, I'm going to have to report you to the IT director and disciplinary action *will* be taken"

Then stood there bouncing on his toes waiting to see me crumble and beg him not to report me. I smiled at him.

"OK. Let's go up and see him together shall we? But before we go, I just want to ask you why *you* were accessing the following websites. And why you spent so much time on them. I mean this one - you spent 4 hours in the chatroom on Monday."

And I clicked on a link and brought up his last 6 months of web usage.

www.trannychat.com
www.gaydar.com
www.scat.com

And so on. ( I can't actually remember exactly the real names of the sites, just that they were all hard-core Gay and transvestite sites.)

He went white.

"Err. I was on those sites as part of my job. I have to check out the sites that appear in the logs to make sure that they're not work related before I take action."

"Really? I mean you have to check these sites *every single day*? Just in case they've changed in the last 24 hours? But, that being the case, perhaps you'd like to explain these chat logs as well?"

And showed him fragments of his online chats. And pretty explicit they were too. Well, more brutal than explicit. Well, with that he caved in. After a little more talking by me he agreed that he wouldn't bother me, or indeed the rest of the IT department about what and where we went on the Internet. And, just to make sure, I put myself and the rest of IT in the exception list on the firewall so that none of our future Net usage was logged.

So you see people. I've said this before but never, ever, piss off a techy. We know where the bodies are buried.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 3:47, Reply)

anti-cellulite creams are rubbish
I worked in the cosmetics industry in Australia, for a large, snooty and rather expensive department store that rhymes with "David Bones". I was the only straight guy at the head office, it was insanely fun going to cosmetics launches and being surrounded by beautiful women, but it's all smoke and mirrors. A couple of years ago one of the multinational cosmetics brands we sell was caught using a 12 year old boy in their Australian TV commercials for anti-cellulite cream. Any close-up shots of ladies' bottoms where you can't see their front or face? That's a 12yo boy's firm wrinkle-free botty. Even wafer thin models weren't good enough. Take heart ladies.
(Bungo wombling free in Melbourne, Australia, Sat 29 Sep 2007, 7:57, Reply)

I don't bother listening to travel bulletins anymore...
...because I used to read them.

it's pretty busy on shift, there's not always time to check with all the police HQs and traffic cams... and unless there's a big accident, the traffic's completely bloody predictable.

...so you develop a routine that goes something like this: (say it's 5pm)


*presenter cuts to you suddenly: spit out your mouthful of crisps into your hand*

"Good afternoon! Well, it's pretty solid through [mention lots of towns here, everyone likes hearing their town mentioned], in the usual hot-spots.

Motorways pretty busy too, especially [name motorway junction that's always busy, it'll be busy now, it's 5pm FFS].

*flick the Vs at arsehole co-worker, who's mooning against your studio window*

And those roadworks on the [insert A road number, known to approx 2% of your listeners] are still causing a few delays.

And something to watch out for tonight... "
[for 50 bonus points, invent problem on fictional B road.]

*suddenly remember that for 100 bonus points, you could try and fit in the word "buttplug" like your colleague has dared you to do*

..."If you're stuck in a jam, don't suffer in silence! Phone our Jamline on [whatever the number is], but plug in your handsfree kit first!"
*100 points! result!*

*Repeat until your shift ends. Or you lose the will to live.*

*Drive home from shift through all the troublespots you mentioned, knowing that NONE OF THEM ARE REAL*
( biscuitbiscuit is in ur garden, watering ur plantz, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:56, Reply)

A while back
When I was a chef, we'd often spill the beans.



What?
( petuniadb, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 15:53, Reply)

I've got a good one.
I posted it on the main board, because it's easier to tell with visuals. Take a look.

Think of this the next time you go into a high-end subdivision...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 27 Sep 2007, 14:14, Reply)

we're not ALL playing mindgames you know -
- some of us aren't that clever. Mr happylittletulip is very pleased when things along the following lines happen because it means his bollocking is over in less time than the half-time break, he understands what is happening and can therefore remedy it quickly and nicely and everything is lovely again.
So the upshot is that I get my own way all the time and he doesn't even mind.

Him: What's wrong?

Me(crossly): You've really annoyed me.

Him: Oh. How?

Me: I cooked and you haven't washed up. It's really unfair. I always wash up when you cook. Please go and do it.

Him (all naughty little boy): All right. Sorry. I love you.

Me (appeased and imperious): And buy me some flowers as well.

Him: Ok. Would you like pink ones.

Me (utterly won over now): Yes. What a good boyfriend you are.

Him (all manly and proud): I know. Let's go and have sex.

Me: OK then. But do the washing up first.


Have just re-read above and am not entirely sure now who wins. Hmm.

Click I Like This if it's me.
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 17:02, Reply)

UHT/Sterilized milk
When I was doing my A-levels, I spent a long summer working for what was, at the time, a well-known milk producer whose name sounded an awful lot like 'Crazy Dairy'. They also produced milk for most of the big supermarkets as well, so nobody was safe.

The thing with sterilized and UHT milk - as well as the fact it tastes rank - is that the processing kills anything nasty in it. This single fact guided every activity in that factory. Because ANYTHING could go in that production line and come out the other end and be sold, anything did.

This batch of milk was overcooked and stinks of burnt feet? Throw it back in - nobody will notice by the time it's diluted.

This batch fell off the loading bay and is full of gravel? Ah, nobody will notice.

But what's this? A forklift collided with a pallet full of cartons? (This happened several times a day.) The pallet has been sat outside in the sun for four days? It's swarming with maggots? Chuck it all back in! Don't worry about the maggots, Olembe - we do strain it before it goes in the cartons, you know!

Me and the other student grunts used to spend days tipping punctured cartons into vats. When I say there were maggots, I mean it was like something from a horror film. After 30 minutes your boots were quite literally full of them so that you felt them squash between your toes; after 60 minutes your gloves were full too. After a week you give up caring. Not about the maggots: about life.

The really fun bit was when the supermarkets came to inspect. On those occasions we grunts, and all the foetid milk we were working with, would be locked in a small airless, windowless room where the activity couldn't be seen. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.

You know that rancid bacterial stink that wafts from the back of refuse trucks when you walk nearby? Every time I smell that I'm transported right back to that factory in Oswaldtwistle.

Get your milk fresh, if at all. That's all I'm saying.

Edit: I've also worked as a waiter or kitchen worker in quite a few restaurants and contrary to many of the stories here, never saw anything untoward happening to food. The Aladdin's Cave takeaway, which used to exist in Padiham, though: that's a whole different story...
( Olembe Refuses to write in this space, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 17:36, Reply)

friday phone tennis
In my office on a Friday afternoon we are generally besieged by cold callers selling various crap, anything from mobiles to bog rolls.

Anyhoo, nothing gives us more pleasure on a Friday than a game of phone tennis. The rules are simple: when someone asks, for example, to speak to the person responsible for ordering your paper clips. (like we have a whole department for that) you pass them over to another chap in the office.
Unfortunately you have accidentally transferred them to the wrong department. Much fun ensues:

caller: can you put me through to the person that deals with paper clip ordering please?

me: oh yes no problem. (leave them on hold for one minute and transfer them to the person sitting two feet away from me. (rob)

rob: hello, canteen.

caller: oh, I need to speak to the paper clip ordering department.

rob: we don't have any need for paper clips in the canteen love. Although we do recommend a staple diet! I'll just transfer you. (leave on hold for a minute first though to ensure maximum hilarity)

me: (in strong pakistani accent) Ello, delivewies how may I be helping you.

Caller: Can I be put through to the person who......

repeat until it is time to go home. The record is 9 or ten transfers, with at least 4 counts of casual racism.

have fun with it.
(SPLUFFMYPANTS, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 17:02, Reply)