Bang 'em up!
I worked for a Young Offenders Institution – or Youth Prison.

To keep the criminals docile and prevent embarrassing problems like riots and protests, they’re all given tvs in their cells. The best behaved ones get Playstations, (although this was a few years ago, they’ve probably been updated to Xboxes by now). This is common practise in a lot of jails, as is regular access to a gym, so that when they get released they’re built like brick shit houses.

But by far the worst thing about our prisons is the treatment of paedophiles, who get secured away in their own separate unit with each other so they don’t get killed by the non-paedos, and so end up networking and making friends with the other child-molesters; when they get out they’re organised, connected and a lot more dangerous than when they went in.
(scoppie, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:45, Reply)

Not one of mine but....
This one did the email rounds a while back and is only just on topic but for what it is worth...

Remember it takes a University degree to fly a plane, but only a GCSE's to fix one. Reassurance for those of us who fly routinely.

After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form, called a "Gripe Sheet", which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then the pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight. Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humour.

Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by Qantas' pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.

By the way,Qantas is the only major airline that has never, ever, had an accident.

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what friction locks are for.

P: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny. (I love this one!)
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

And the best one for last..................

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding
on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget.
(bugboybeast, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:45, Reply)

Car Auctions
Surprise, surprise, car auctions are a bit iffy.

Many auction houses who are offloading ex-fleet cars for contract hire companies etc. will often 'pretend' to sell a vehicle to an imaginary bidder in an attempt to make it look like they are doing good business. Of course the car will reappear a couple of weeks later, possibly at a different auction.

More worryingly, if there is only one interested bidder bidding on a vehicle, the auctioneer will invent an imaginary rival bidder (no doubt towards the back of the hall) to help to drive up the price. Unbelievable, but true.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:44, Reply)

How many exams did you do at school?
Shitloads, I bet. Mocks, pop tests, mid-terms, modulars; all a complete mockery of the education system. And all that homework too? Essays, exercises, projects, groupwork, fieldwork, research. Fair ground your nose down at that grindstone, didn't you.

Takes a hell of a lot of strain off the poor overworked state school teacher, that stuff. Get the kids to do the hard work. Genius. Like it. Bonus.

Now take that concept and apply it to private sector language teaching, where adult students happily pay 20 quid an hour for you to throw photocopies at them and babble on about your domestic situation in the name of "REAL native language experience." Or going off to swanky companies, drinking their coffee and leering at the secretary's tits whilst talking about Great Films You've Watched.

I'm not a teacher. I'm a Language Learning Co-ordinator. I use the FOFO method.


Fuck Off and Find Out.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:43, Reply)

Ruddles
Yup - we've all done that.

When I was doing my masters, I taught undergrads. There was a leap between my first degree and MSc, though, so I wasn't wholly familiar with what I was teaching. Things went well for the first few weeks, when I would learn something in detail on the Tuesday and teach it in less - i.e. fresher-level - detail on the Wednesday; but after late October, the u/g syllabus overtook mine, so I'd teach stuff on the Wednesday and learn it the following Tuesday...

EDIT: that refers to the teaching post a bit below, not the prostitutes post, which you added while I was writing this. I have never lied to anyone about the size of his cock.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:41, Reply)

Prostitutes
Apparently they fake their orgasms. And when they say your cock is the biggest they've ever seen, it's a lie. Sorry if that shatters your illusions, but it's da truth.
(Smale is stuffed, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:41, Reply)

I once walked into the sick bay/rest room..
To find a member of staff without his trousers or underpants on, lying doubled over on the complimentary sofa, attempting auto-fellatio.

Hilarity ensued.
(Vic Flange, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:31, Reply)

Record beer sales
Legend has it that a well-known member of Corby's club/pub community managed to cheat a pair of first-class, all expenses-paid tickets to Australia in the early 1980s from the manufacturer of (what is these days) an inexplicably popular Aussie lager.

The brewery was trying to break into the UK market at the time so it ran a promotional competition for landlords, offering this fantastic prize to the licensee that could sell the most fizzy yellow pisswater per square foot of premises. The landlord of the tale only ran a small pub and a nightclub in the town at the time, but being of an unscrupulous nature (he regularly recycled the drip trays into customers' drinks) he decided to change all his variously-branded lager taps to pour the same Antipodean poison, but with slightly different mixtures of gas and liquid for each one.

Corby was (and still is) full of alcoholics and his idiot customers were prime examples. They were all so hopelessly drunk *all the time*, they never noticed that all the beer tasted the same so the amoral tinker won the competition by a landslide margin.
( chart cat has an itch, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:29, Reply)

Teachers
My brother's a teacher. He took on a new course - Sociology to A level students. He has no formal education in sociology himself so kept ahead of the students by reading the next chapter in the text book the night before he gave the lesson.

Mind you, for Sociology that's all you need to do for degree level and you can still get a first. That's what I heard anyway.
(Smale is stuffed, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:29, Reply)

Nobel Prizewinners
Another friend-of-a-friend story, I'm afraid. But a good'un...

It is no secret that PhD students are often used as skivvies for their high-profile colleagues; it's par for the course. In some countries, they're exploited more than others. In Germany, for example, I believe that you're open to all kinds of exploitation until after you've completed your habilitationschrift - a kind of second PhD - and the more high-profile your supervisor, the less the incentive to complain.

I have it on good authority, though, that there is at least one nobel laureate (in Germany, I think, but am not sure) whose books tend to be entirely ghostwritten by his research students.

I reckon that's pushing it a bit.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:13, Reply)

Scary aeroplanes
Not my story (I work in IT and most of the stuff's been covered already), but an old housemate.

He was originally an avionics technician on Tornadoes for the RAF, but decided that more money was available in the private sector, so he left and got a job for a UK holiday/charter airline.

One of his responsibilities was to carry out all the pre-flight checks in readiness of the final inspection where the plane would be passed as airworthy. Checking one of the tires under the nose of the plane, he placed his screwdriver into the tread to guage the depth, only for the blade to disappear beneath a honking great chunk of loose rubber. If the tyre was changed, it would have meant a delay to the flight and considerable cost for the company. If the tire was left until it got to Portugal, however, they'd have a much longer turn-around time in which to do the replacement. So, he did what any safety concious inspector would do. He complained to the chap on the tractor that the plane wasn't in the correct location for the ramp and had him pull the plane forward by six feet, thus putting the flapping chunk of rubber on the tarmac and completely hidden on the final inspection.

I didn't hear of any plane crashes that week, so I assume it made it safely.
(lardyboy Next stop, Fissplap Central, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:13, Reply)

Harry's Sauna
Sometimes I pretend it hurts when it doesn't...
(wrigglesworth, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:09, Reply)

Pub drinks from bottles
Watch out when drinks are poured from a bottle into a glass. Crates of bottles often get delivered to pubs into an open yard and may sit there for hours/days before they're moved into the cellar. There's a guard dog in the yard. The guard dog pisses on the bottles.

Concientious barmen will wipe the bottles before putting them on the shelves, and make sure they don't touch the glass with the bottle when pouring. But most barmen aren't that concientious...
(Smale is stuffed, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:07, Reply)

Another from the world of television
May be an urban legend but it's a goodie.

A friend of mine at the Beeb once told me about a female presenter who may have had a name similar to Sue Lalwey. She was known for having a liking for the younger males on the crew, and frequently on outside broadcasts would teach them a thing or two about the ways of the world.

Anyway, one night, so the story goes, the crew got wind that she was about to give a lesson in the back of the OB van, and the sound guy bugged it and recorded the actions.

Allegedly the highlight of the recording was the apparently prim presenter gasping in the throes of ecstasy, "Fuck me till I fart!"

It was never ascertained from which orifice the desired flatulent sound was to emanate..


Edit - A lot of people have gazzed me about this, saying they've also heard the story, and believe it might be true. I Googled it but I'm no further forward!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 14:03, Reply)

Re: dirty devils
Partario, your story about the dead Tasmanian Devil reminded me of a story I heard about the late Mark McManus, (he of Taggart fame.)
He started his acting career in Skippy, in the 1960s, and upon turning up for work on his first day, in the middle of nowhere, asked "where's Skippy?
A large tied up cloth bag moving around on the ground was pointed out to him...
Also, you remember the cute bit at the beginning, where Skippy makes a cuddly noise, and waves his paws around in front of him? The way they managed that was, some big bloody sod of an Aussie held him tightly, unseen from behind, whilst another crew member waved the paws of a dead kangaroo in front of Mr Kangaroo.
(Bear Pookie The Frankly Challenged. Halloween is coming to town., Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:54, Reply)

The trouble is, that it's all varied
Some consultants rip you off - others don't.
Most IT people don't read your mail (it's boring), but some do.
There are some companies that are mostly crap, but others are fine.

IT is just too big an area to have any universal dirty secrets. I work at a company that is honest, and people appreciate that.

The key point to remember is that if you annoy us enough, we control all the systems. You can't disguise your e-mail, hide what sites you've visited, talk on MSN messenger, sneak away games by cunningly renaming them, etc.

Quite often we know what you're doing, or could find out - it's just too much hassle to do so.

In particular remember that it's not your computer, and you're there to work; don't whinge about things that don't directly relate to your work, or that make life harder for us - we'll just start blocking you from accessing places and running programs, otherwise. The price of us being laissez faire with monitoring, is that you don't abuse the privilege.

One final warning about statistics, monitoring and error handling. Most people wouldn't know a standard deviation if it bit them on the bum, they have no idea how to monitor service reliability and rarely consider how systems recover when they unexpectedly run out of memory, for instance..
(EssY, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:52, Reply)

Computer Games Reviews
Used to work in computer games. Worked on some seriously shit games that got some seriously good reviews. Why? One of two things:
the magazine got an exlusive on the condition that they gave us a certain percent score
we got the journo pissed and laid

I now rely mostly on word of mouth for game recommendations.
(ScousersPet, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:52, Reply)

LIght bulbs
So the UK government are going to ban incandescent light bulbs because they waste energy and make the ice caps melt and polar bears homeless.

Is it just me, or is this not bollocks?

This sounds like a government ploy to regenerate investment in manufacturing and high-street sales and look green to boot?

The incandescent light bulbs in MY house produce lots of LOVELY HEAT which keeps me toasty warm and reduces my overall heating bill. When the switchover occurs I'll have to turn up my heating to compensate for it! Not to mention I'll have to replace all of my perfectly good dimmer switches with new ones (this cannot be environmentally friendly).

All of this will require new factories, distribution channels, international deals and most likely flying plane-loads of the bulbs out from China to Europe. Net result - lots of wasted energy and a slight shift in the source of heating in our houses: from light bulbs to gas (or other).

Suppose it will create some jobs but I pity the poor polar bears.
(JuanTheMan "hair-color:#FF6600", Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:42, Reply)

on application forms...
we used to give a score out of 10. If you were fit (or had fit tits), you would have a 10, if you were ugly you would have a 0.

Amazingly, the girls also used to go to this male applicants.
(drain_bamaged, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:41, Reply)

Cheap International Phone calls part II
Oh Rilux, you are merely tipping the iceberg of scams here. As I mentioned before, I used to design the pricing methods that someone like yourself implemented. Here's a few more tricks...

1. Many of the phonecards advertise the rates you get for a 20 or 50 pound card. These are not the rates you get for a 5 or 10 quid card. Quite often you won't be able to get the 20 or 50 card so you have to buy the cheaper one and hence, you don't get the rates advertised. The rate you pay per minute is up to 30% higher

2. Free 5 pound worth of calls with every card. This fiver worth of 'free call' is already reflected in the advertised call per minute price so you don't really get extra at all.

3. Continuous call. This is one I thought up myself. You advertise rates really cheap and put 'prices are based on a single continuous call'. vast majority of people do not use their entire card in 1 call. From your 2nd call onwards the price per call is increased by up to 50%. best bit? When people check their balance after the first call the price seems correct. People rarely check it again so it's a trick that's never picked up.

4. Card Expiry - We printed loads of cards that expire 7 days after first use. We justified this by saying 'that reflects the fast moving nature of telecoms pricing'. The reality is that a lot of people could not use their remaining card value after one week. Last report showed apprx 40% of unusable credit which is money in the bank for the card company.

5. DTI - The DTI test prepaid phonecards by checking the balance on the first minute and checking the duration of a single call from new to zero balance. Another trick here is that the card companies charge you normal for the 1st minute, then increase the charge minute by minute (about 25% extra per minute) until minute 6-8 and then charges less so the total duration works out. The average phonecall duration is 3-4 mins so you end up being charged about 20% more per call on average.

I could go on, I have loads of these....but I won't because it's probably boring to everyone here except maybe Rilux.
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:18, Reply)

word of the week
I used to work in a translation agency as a project manager. A large amount of my working day was spent proofreading and editing translations.
At the same time, I was an active member of an internet forum. I launched a thread called 'word of the week' where other forum members could post their favourite words and I would find a way of working them into the translations and then post the result. The thread got so popular that I started briefing the other proofreaders on my projects so that they would do the same.

sabotaging translations and leaking confidential documents over the internet - EXCELLENT
(ellen smellen, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:14, Reply)

Managing IT Development
Always promise to deliver next month the work you completed last month. Always plan to deliver the month after what you have done this month.

That way, you never miss a dealine and people actually believe you are shoot-hot with your estimates.

With the added bonus of "I need to conduct a risk assessment on that" you can actually manage upto a full month of no-work work days!

Works best in a team of one, or at least a team of equally devious lazy gets.
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:14, Reply)

b3ta IT bods
Perhaps the good b3ta overlords can tell us just how easy it is to read all the gaz messages we b3tards all send to each other every day, and how much of a laugh they get from doing so?

I have started to be more careful about what I send in e-mails ever since I realised a few years back how insecure the system is.

Here's another science-y factoid - I think Mythbusters tried this, but there's a virtually negligible risk of igniting fuel vapours at a petrol station using a mobile phone (unless you rob two boy scouts and rub their phones together very vigorously). I did hear that the real reason the petrol station operators don't want you using your mobile while filling up is in case the transmissions interfere with the pump electronics and you get more fuel than you pay for.

I find this hard to believe too though, as I would imagine the designers would put in good shielding to prevent this.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 13:07, Reply)

If you're buying wine and ask the shop monkey for a recommendation,
chances are he hasn't got a clue either and will just recommend something he's tried or is on special offer. At least that's what I used to do when I worked in one.



EssY; if adding contingency days to an estimated timescale comes as a surprise to people then those people really need to speak to a good project manager; that applies whether you're in computing or any other business. That's what I mean by time management. Actually billing for days where no work is carried out is very wrong - it's always better to deliver slightly early as it pleases the client and increases the chances of repeat business. Don't confuse what I do with what major consultancies do to investment banks. :)
( S tr app y, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 12:59, Reply)

Cheap international phone calls
My first job after leaving university was to develop a billing system for cheap international phone calls. I was in a development team of... one. Just me. Fresh out of university with no experience of programming in the real world. I could rant on and on about exactly how bad the company was but that's an answer for a different QotW. Perhaps I should get to the point.

The billing system allowed our customers to manage all sorts of international phone call methods (call shops, phone cards, NetMeeting), allowing different rates to be applied to different phone lines for all destinations. The real push was in phone cards - which was where the real rip off came in.

When I learned of the requirements I had to develop I felt pretty sick. I have a good friend in Australia and back in the day I'd buy phone cards to call her up from time to time. I shall pass on what I had to do.

* Most people know of the connection charge. These have to be advertised in the small print. The call connects and you get stung with 20p - sometimes more.

* Next comes the billing period. For example you will be billed for every 6 seconds you use. Make a 1 second call, be billed for 6.

* After that we have an expiry date. Cards will expire 30 days after first use. Fair enough, I guess - but if you still have some money left...

* Lastly we have the biggest swindle. They vary the number of seconds in a minute. Some of our customers would set the number as low as 40 seconds in a minute. One of their customers would call somewhere like Sylhet on a promise of 45 minutes for the fiver the parted with for the card. They'd get 20 minutes.

This was calculated was in a big Oracle stored procedure which would return two values. The first was the amount of time the person had for a phone call, the second was the amount of time we'd tell them they had. The difference could be huge.

We had a support line with an answer phone. It was always fun to come in in the morning to find 6 new messages full of colourful insults that our customers didn't have to hear - until the day when the office shut and I was working without pay because the Americans didn't want to bail us out anymore for making a loss.

In conclusion. Don't buy phone cards. They rip you off something chronic.
(Rilux might be pregnant and has bum-aids, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 12:58, Reply)

I used to work for HMRC
You REALLY don't want to know the rest....

If you do, click I Like This and i'll tell you next week ;)
( ogwen69 has returned from Reddit, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 12:47, Reply)

Ver meejur
So I've read the QOTW ("It's not like the newspapers currently kicking TV whilst it is down are all that innocent") and the memories of dodgy computer game magazines earlier on.

I edit a magazine (sells 17,000 copies, so not big-league stuff but respectable enough). Here are the dirty secrets of jetsetting international media life according to ChaRleyTroniC:

- the advertising department don't tell us what to do, ever
- we, in fact, don't know who's advertising in the magazine until the copies come back from the printers, i.e. the same time you do
- we don't make up stories, gratuitously libel people, or any of that
- if someone has a pop, we offer the other side a right of reply, in the same issue if we can

Does anyone ever believe me? Do they bollocks.

Because we have a dumb-arsed moron culture of imbeciles in this country who are way too lazy to think for themselves. So instead of figuring that, hey, maybe there are two sides to every story, and maybe they should make up their own mind rather than simply accepting everything on face value, people relapse into received opinion about "huh, the media, what do you expect", conveniently shifting the blame for their own stupidity onto someone else.

And then they go and buy the Daily Mail.
(ChaRleyTroniC is invincible with his chips and cheese, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 12:37, Reply)