Air Force intelligence
Most Air Force types are pretty switched on, but occasionally a howler slips through the net. Both of these happened to me years ago, when I was a flight simulator tech posted to Germany.

The routine when repairing a fault is to fill in a form documenting the symptoms, parts used, what you did to fix it etc. This form is then passed on to the Coding Cell, who convert the information into numbers that the computer database can understand. Thats the scene set.

So I'm in the office having a cuppa, when the phone rings. Its one of the young ladies from the coding cell with a few queries about a recent job card.
"Whats the problem" I ask.
"Well, I'm having problems understanding one particular fault symptom; it seems to be something about a black man" she replies. Confusion reigned for a while until I asked her what the symptom actually was.
"No raster on monitor" came the reply. I swear that is true.

Same place and another phone call, this time from a Chief Technician in the RAF Regiment. He's looking for some parts to help construct this very high tech power supply that he's building.
"what do you need?", I ask
"I just need a 74 series chip (the most common type of chip on the planet with lots of different devices available)
"No problem, we've got lots of those. Which type would you like?"
"You mean there are different types?"
Somehow I doubt he ever got that supply to work.

I now work on electron microscopes and we get so many stupid things happening it beggars belief.
One customer had their machine stolen. As far as I know this has never happened ever, anywhere. This machine was the only one of its kind in the country. They are quite big and heavy and require a fair amount of time to remove and install. Two weeks later we get a call from a guy asking for advice about his newly acquired machine, that he bought from a guy called Ali who had it in the back of his truck. No prizes for guessing where that came from. The new "owner" was a well known shady character who didn't think we would notice an enquiry about a unique machine recently stolen from our customer.
(ianisme, Thu 1 Jan 2004, 1:49, Reply)