Emergency Management Plan
A former colleague now works for the government department with an office across the street. She tells me that during the recent floods in Brisbane, Australia, one of the department's offices was flooded to about knee deep on the ground floor. The emergency management plan called for all the department's vehicles to be parked in the basement garage. Thirty five government cars were towed out a few days later.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 11:56, Reply)

This bloke was a legend. He was blonde, too.
We received several week's formal training in the job I'm in now and when I'd been there a few weeks I went off to the doctor one lunch time. The receptionist took my name and asked if I liked it at the XYZ office. How did she know? Well she was Mrs G, married to my trainer, Dave G. Then she asked if I had met Cecil yet. Well, yes I had but fortunately he was not in the section I was about to join.

That didn't last forever. A few years later Cecil joined my section and one sunny afternoon came to my desk.

"Redemption, you know about these things, is one milligram per litre the same as one part per million?"

"Er yes, it is. One milligram is a thousandth of a gram and there are almost exactly a thousand grams of water in a litre. Thousand times a thousand, that's a million. One part per million, near as damn it."

"OK" said Cecil, "I thought so."

And he strolled off.

Twenty minutes passed. He was back. I was wrong. There followed an argument so contorted and bizarre that I defy even a creationist to produce its like.

I actually attempted to suggest he was mistaken. I repeated that a milligram was a thousandth of a gram. I repeated that a millilitre of water weighs about a gram. There are a thousand millilitres in a litre, therefore a thousand grams. I suggested that a million was a thousand thousands.

To no avail. After several more minutes of mind boggling hogwash, I said, "Well if you're sure of that Cecil perhaps you should go with it." And he strolled off again. What the client thought, I don't know, but of course the client probably knew about Cecil. Almost everyone in the business did.

Once in a while one of our staff goes off to work with another branch for three months, six months or a year. Cecil somehow wangled a three months position with them, extendable at their option to six. He was back in three, and the rumour was that they'd never have him again.

He surprised us all by getting married. A few months later he didn't turn up for work one day. The phone rang in the supervisor's office and it was Mrs. Cecil.

Not "Cecil will not be in, he's got a sore throat.", it was "Where's my husband?" This sparked a search of the 14 floor building we occupied just in case Cecil was asleep, in a coma or dead in some corner.

Cecil was a good lad, concerned about his health. He used to chew raw garlic at work, good for you, he said. And he'd never, never taken a drink in his life.

But he went to play chess with a friend the previous afternoon, not going home first. The friend produced a large bottle of rum and Cecil had a nip. Then he had another. And another. He woke up at two the following afternoon.

He was a very quiet lad about the place after that and soon lit out for the territory. When last heard of was alternately exasperating and amusing the residents of Darwin.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 11:26, Reply)

steaks are high
we used to test the newb young waitresses out by sending them from teh kitchen to tell the boss we have no well done or medium steaks just rare.

one girl who we worked with asked what the keg /barrel lift was for and when we explained i was about to give her ademo when she jumped away from the lift, what did you do that for i asked, well she replied the whole room lifts doesnt it i dont wanna go up in this room!
thick she certainly was.
(funksoul, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 9:54, 8 replies)

I had a student teacher give a lesson in my class when i was in grade 4
she told us all that the reason we were all stuck to the ground is because earth is spinning and if it stopped spinning we would all fly away.
So in that one lesson she managed to grossly misinform the class about the concept of gravity, AND the whole concept of centrifugal force.
(augsav forgot about B3ta, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 6:40, 10 replies)

In Trouble Again

Some girl I worked with made a particularly dumb statement and I responded with:

"If you believe that then you need your bumps feeling"

Ten minutes later, into the bosses office for sexual harassment. He'd never heard of the phrase either and I had to Google it to show him that I wasn't advocating gropage to cure stupidity.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Thu 10 Mar 2011, 2:58, 10 replies)

Becky
I used to work with a girl called Becky. She were a lovely lass, like, but prone to the odd airhead moment.

I'd picked up the phonetic alphabet somehow or other (the old A for Alpha, B for Bravo, et al) and it came in useful when speaking to customers (and indeed courier companies) on the phone when confirming spellings and postal codes amongst other things. Of course, with confidence you could begin to joke with people on the other end of the phone ("That's G for Gnome", etc) but I found it helpful and prevented the usual "F or S?", or "M or N?" confusions.

Some of my colleagues started to pick it up too, including Becky and found it helpful in their day-to-day dealings. Now, Becky, being prone to lapses in concentration sometimes, could also become somewhat absent-minded when under duress. After being stuck on hold with one courier company for what seemed like an eternity (CityLink if I remember correctly) a human being finally deigned Becky worthy of being removed from the hold queue. Prompting her for a consignment's postal code being delivered to St Albans (postal code prefix AL), Becky stated the postal code then kicked into her phonetic alphabet: "That's A; for Orange".

Apparently the guy on the other end of the phone had to pass her onto one of his colleagues as he couldn't stop laughing.

Bless 'er...
(SonoraAeroClub "OH SWEET HELEN OF BALLS!", Thu 10 Mar 2011, 1:05, 10 replies)

I don't have any stupid colleagues
but then I've always been a pretty lucky special person I guess. That's what my nana always used to say to me anyway.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 22:49, Reply)

Stupid musicians
I'm a pro cellist. This means that I get tendinitis from time to time if I'm practising too much. It is very unpleasant, and leads to considerable loss of earnings if it gets bad enough to stop me playing entirely. I am battling with it at the moment, and earlier today I wrote, "Has anybody got any miracle cures for tendinitis?" on my facebook wall.

Now, it has to be said, this was mainly a plea for sympathy rather than practical advice, as I know the practicalities of how to deal with it - rest, ibuprofen, physio, etc. However, I got some pretty "interesting" advice from a fellow musician:

"Yes. 2000mg vitamin C a day for a month. For fastest recovery, you need mobile phone nowhere near your wrist/arm. Never sleep near wifi. And 'earth yourself' by walking around the street/garden in bare feet for at least 30mins a day, preferably more. We dont do enough of that these days as we've been insulatnig ourself from the earth 'thanks to' rubber-souled shoes since the 50s and carpets in houses. Earthing yourself will take away all the excess static electricity. Also never charge your mobile by your head when you sleep. Also buy massive rough selenite crystal (as in 50cmsx20cmx20) and hold it as much as possible. It will take away bad energy allowing your body to replenish with good."

At first I thought that this was a joke and was about to respond with something along the lines of, "Haha, good one, that did indeed cheer me up." However, five minutes on google told me that references to "earthing oneself" and to the healing properties of selenite crystal abound on the web. This is an occasional freelance colleague who I barely know and I still can't quite work out if it's for real, but I suspect it may be.

Wow.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 21:17, 28 replies)

So Thankful
I have read every post, and fortunately none of my "episodes" have been recorded here. Once again, I escape.....
(Maclir, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 21:14, 1 reply)

Told a girl I work with I was taking a few days off for Spamalot,
she said "oh lovely, is that in Greece?"
(deadly, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 20:59, Reply)

Can you make the inserts 9cm exactly please?
New start in events team asked me to re-size these ID pass inserts as they were too big when I supplied them as pdfs. I asked if she'd printed them out and measured them (maybe they were scaled up/down in her default printing prefs). No, she'd taken a ruler to her screen.
(rubberducky, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 18:30, Reply)

This I can assure you is no word of a lie
I went back to college 6 years ago as a mature student to finish my A level physics that I never finished the first time because shagging Mrs Sandettie in fields and on the back of the bus was far more appealing.

My teacher was the same teacher I had 15 years previously and we were reminiscing about the other science teachers from way back when. "Oh, Tom went off to such and such college, Graham retired, Chris emigrated" etc. Then I asked him about 'Gerry'.
"Gerry? The man was an idiot" he said. "Me and Tom were in the faculty room discussing how to better teach about terminal velocity with parachutes when Gerry walked in."
Gerry pipes up, "It's weird how when they're falling and they pull the cord, they fly upwards"
Now, Gerry was a teacher of A level physics and electronics. It's clear where he got this idea from. Freefallers with cameras on their helmets (oo-er).
He wasn't cut out to be a teacher, and is now a head of a poorly performing school somewhere. And not liked at all. On ratemyteachers, somebody put:

"Thinks the key to success is shouting at people and trying to be intimidating. Strangely in most schools thats called a bully - in ours he's the head"
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 17:50, 4 replies)

This story makes me giggle every time
A friend told me this story, no idea if it's true but it makes me laugh. He worked in the accounts division of a fairly major company who had dealings within the Aerospace Industry.

One of the women had to call Thales to check something on one of the accounts. She rang up and said 'hello, is this Thales?' The person on the other end of the phone replied 'no, it's accounts'. She didn't know that Thales is pronounced 'talis'
(muppers, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 16:16, 11 replies)

Stephen Fry has a funny voice...
Was chatting to my colleague and I mentioned I was listening to Stephen Fry's audiobook in the car on the way in to work.

She said,"But does he read it?"

"Yes"

"Oh God I couldn't stand that". She then made a strange series of bleeping noises. "I hate his voice. If I was married to him, I'd have to switch it off for a while every day to get some peace." Switch off someone's VOICE? Married to him?

I ignored the voice comment. "You know he's gay don't you?"

Then I twigged. "Do you mean Stephen HAWKING?"

Apparently she did.
(sodbiscuit sodbiscuit, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 15:47, 1 reply)

Dear, sweet Ralph
Ralph really was a lovely guy - nutty as a fruitcake, lacking in confidence but he had a big heart.

During a placement year from our respective universities, we had ended up in the labs at ICI Paints (the big ugly building you pass on the train from Slough into Paddington). Ralph was a clumsy guy at the best of times and there was an impending sense of something about to go wrong with him most of the time.

On the day in question, Ralph was staring quizzically at one of the many sinks in the lab. He had removed the plug, but the liquid was still in the sink. Another colleague pointed out that that sink blocked up a lot and Ralph needed to get himself a bucket, go under the sink, undo the U-bend to drain it into the bucket and it would clear. Ralph raced off and returned with the bucket and did as explained. He was very careful - cleared everything out of the cupboard under the sink, put paper around to catch any splashes and gently eased off the U-bend. To his amazement, it had worked a treat. All the gunk came out, the sink drained and he had caught every single last drop in his bucket below.

Ralph was very proud. You could tell from his face that he felt he'd showed the rest of the lab that problems like this didn't faze young Ralph. He then proudly poured all the contents of his bucket down the newly-cleared sink and half-flooded the lab!

Put the U-bend back first Ralph, the U-bend back first.........
(dolbster, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 15:44, 11 replies)

I hope I didn't appear racist for laughing.
I work part time at a Cinema, a place where most of the staff aren't too bright, but one lad, J, beats the rest. Like most cinemas, there is an extortionate ice cream stand. One day we were being trained by a lovely black lady from Baskin Robbins. She asked J what his favorite flavour was.

'Black. Wait, I mean Chocolate'

Nobody laughed until he very loudly whispered:

'I was lying, it's vanilla'.
(Mr.Butlertron, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 14:46, 2 replies)

Bus pass shenanigans
One of my mates where I used to work used to get a "Trio" bus/train pass, and as she was a desktop publisher at the college where we worked was able to scan in the date stamp part and use paint or some other computer programme to alter the date, print out the new altered date sticker and stick it on to her pass. OK for hopping on and off busses and trains cos the driver/ collector never really looks that closely (to prove a point I once got on a bus behind a bloke who just waved a leaf at the driver and got away with it, buts thats another story). This escapade saved her a pretty penny and also added a frisson of excitment to riding on public transport! Foolproof plan Right??

Well yes most of the time, but the time she put down the expiry date of the pass as 31st September. This made the ticket collector on the train come back three times trying to work out what was wrong. He eventually twigged and gave her a telling off on the train, he found the whole thing quite funny in the end. But took the pass off her as a precaution.

My mate went back to the original plan but used busses for a good 6 months afterwards!

Actually that's pretty clever.....
(superkitty is neither super nor a kitty, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 14:33, Reply)

Well, B3ta colleagues...

(luckybluecoat, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 14:29, 53 replies)

(May contain roasted peas) Not me but Mrs Sandettie
A biomedical science degree does not necessarily mean you have a grasp of basic maths.
Mrs SLVA is a medical lab assistant and had to make up some solution or other. A bio-medical scientist (BMS) told her it's a 1:2 solution.

Wife: "So, 100ml of chemical to 200ml of water?"
BMS: "No, 100ml of each"
Wife: "But that's a 1:1 solution"
BMS: "No, it's a 1:2 solution, you use 100ml of chemical and you get 200ml of solution"
Wife: "That's not how ratios work. 1:2 means 100ml of chemical and 200ml of water"
BMS: "no it isn't"
Wife: "Yes it is."
BMS: "No it isn't" (with an air of I've got a degree in medical science and get paid way more than you do.)
Wife: "Ok, so what amounts would make a 1:1?" (with an air of I know what I'm fucking talking about and I've only got a C at GCSE Biology and a D in maths)
BMS: You can't have a 1:1 solution

Mrs SLVA face-palmed so much that she actually beat her face into the shape of a wok.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 13:49, 10 replies)

Email
I heard this back in the day...

A friend wanted my email, sure thing, says I, whipping out my cell phone, thinking I can send it to him in a text message.

"Oh no need for that," he quips, "here take down my email id and password, then send it to me."

....still laugh about it to this day!
(Ymob is a kaburu, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 13:17, 2 replies)

my mother
Who is technically a colleague because she works for me, once asked me while watching 'walking with dinosaurs', where they got the dinosaurs from! Luckily I'm adopted.
(Kip, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 12:34, 5 replies)

How do you solve a problem like Maria
It was no secret that Maria and I did not get on. I thought she was a thick as mud east end fish wife and she probably thought I was a stuck up posh git. She didn't get a good start to life hailing from a family who she proudly confessed to be, for the most part, illiterate and she was the off spring of cousins!!! Apparently she saw no problem with this and was convinced that it was a normal part of life to hump ones blood relatives.

Fantastic arguments included, but are not limited to:

Her informing me that there is only one type of average. Apparently the mode and median are entirely made up.

Her being 100% certain that there are only four dimensions, one of which was "feel". (She had gone to a "4D" cinema at the weekend)

The problem didn't lie with her lack of brain power it was simply willful and proud ignorance. Science was alien to her and University was a waste of time as "it never taught me nuffik tha I use in real life" so in that sense was actually a waste of time for her.

Sorry about the length but I really hate the willfully ignorant!
(The Liquorice Allstar I need cricket, Wed 9 Mar 2011, 12:17, 9 replies)