Most of my CV consists of industrial jobs,
and in my experience, colleagues who were lacking in academic achievements generally made up for it in common sense. People who are severely lacking in common sense are rare in these jobs (or at any rate, they don't last long.)

Let's start with a fairly minor example. Recently, one of the company's other sites closed - their production lines were moved to our site, and set up in the old warehouse. During the first few weeks of operation, the lines were staffed almost entirely by agency workers and there were no regular supervisors; a few of the supervisors in the main factory would check every now and then, but that was about it. It took one of the mixing operators to notice that one of the lads on the line had boxed the products up without using any tape, so the boxes didn't stack correctly, fell to bits if you tried to pick them up and were completely useless. *facepalm*

A few years ago I temped in a joinery workshop that made staircases and doors; full of dangerous stuff like bandsaws, pneumatic vices, nail-guns etc., so really not the ideal environment for mongs. The young lad who started at the same time spent most of his few days there doing things dangerously wrong, mucking around, and constantly arguing with and talking back to everyone who dared to give him instructions. Though this was poor attitude rather than outright stupidity, I have never been so embarassed on someone else's behalf before or since.

Another lad who'd been there a bit longer was apparently not aware that when you fire a nailgun, the nails exit the barrel at a very, very, very high speed. So just for a laugh, he fired a nailgun at a vice. The nail ricocheted and narrowly missed the boss's ear, just as he was showing some representatives from a major builders' merchant round. The boss was not a patient man even at the best of times - when the lad later received a bollocking I believe they were still searching for the epicentre the next day.

Finally, a (dis)honourable mention must go to a few of my fellow night-shift temps at the central distribution centre of a certain large supermarket, who would routinely wrap pallets without attaching the wrap (like extra-strength clingfilm) to the base at any point; this would have caused the stock on the pallet to slip and slide around in transit, possibly getting damaged, almost certainly getting mixed up with that on other pallets, and negating the entire point of wrapping.

When this was pointed out to the supervisor, he said something like "eh, they'll be right" and sent the pallets down to Goods Out - where the wrapping got caught on the forks just as the FLT was pulling away, wrenching the stock off the pallet and all over the floor. Brilliant.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 3 Mar 2011, 18:05, 1 reply)

Nail guns
are bad mmmkay.
( Trollman, Thu 3 Mar 2011, 19:31, closed)