Jonathan Legard commentating on Formula 1*
Clueless, irritating, boring... and worst of all for a commentator, leaving my personal opinion out of it, unable to describe what he was seeing on the screen.

Compare Ben Edwards' commentary of last week's multi-car first corner incident - I can't be bothered to sit and transcribe it, but it was along the lines of "Hamilton's hit Grosjean! They're both out of control, Grosjean's hit Alonso! His car's gone right over the top of Alonso's! That's Perez out as well!" etc etc etc.

Now here's Jonathan Legard's commentary of Mark Webber hitting the back of Heikki Kovalainen in Valencia, resulting in both cars crashing, with Mark Webber's acheieving a fair degree of height before crashing back to earth upside down, flipping back over and hitting the tyre barrier: "Oh, and Mark Webber's gone right up there!"

Every week was a fight between trying to enjoy the race while simultaneously not smashing the TV in rage at the drivel he was being paid to spout...
"Trulli's off, he's lost his front wing" (and then being corrected by Martin Brundle that it was in fact the rear wing that had come off, said "Oh well, same thing - it's still a wing"


*Yes, lots of people hate Formula 1. Other interests are available
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 16:00, 18 replies)

The not-so-bright farmhand.
Christmas time was a coming and the geese were getting fat. There weren't many, perhaps fifty or so and they'd been rounded up into a barn and needed to be 'dealt with', so to speak, in order to be ready for the shop.
The farmer's rather busy and the task of dispatching the geese lay upon the local daft bugger.
"Gavin, get on up the barn and kill the geese. The whatdoyoucallit is leant up 'gainst the side wall"

The "whatdoyoucallit" meaning the broom handle. To kill a goose you lay the neck on the ground, put the broom handle across, stand on it and pull to break the neck.

Gavin returned after not a very long time, considering he had fifty geese to neck with a broom handle.

"Job done boss."

"That was quick Gav, how'd you get it done so fast?"

"Well, I haven't quite tidied up yet, thought I'd wait 'til it's calmed down a bit in there"

"Calmed down? What do y........." Farmer looked up from what he was doing and saw Gavin stood there. He immediately ran to the barn.


There the broom handle was, leant up against the wall.
Also leant up against the other wall was a scythe....... a very bloody looking one.

Gavin only went and picked up the scythe, chasing the birds round and loping their heads off! It was carnage, total carnage. Fucking blood everywhere with still twitching, violently fluttering headless corpses. All over the barn.

Wrong tool for the job using the wrong tool for the job.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 15:54, 6 replies)

The place where Jess used to work had a manager who was about as much use as a chocolate teapot
My personal favourite story involving him (apart from the ones I (and Jess) have already posted about her getting suspended over bullshit allegations that were subsequently laughed out of court) was when a fairly new member of staff, still keen and trying to make an impression took photographs of the night staff sleeping instead of doing their jobs.

The manager's reponse? To ban the use of mobile phones at work, as "Taking photographs of people is an infringement of their privacy, as well as that of the service users whose house the photographs were taken in".

That was it. Not one single thing was done about the sleeping staff.
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 15:52, 5 replies)

Michael Owen
When leaving Spanish Giants Real Madrid, Michael Owen's agents put together a brochure in an attempt to show off this talent of theirs, or as they put it: 'the athlete; the ambassador; the icon'. Numerous mentions to his fitness, his quality, his brilliance. So for a measly £16 million, my beloved Newcastle United purchased this Englad 'legend'. 4 years later he left to join Manchester United for free. He was quoted as saying that he'd prefer to sit on the bench at a great club than play every game for an average club. He now Plays for Stoke City, which, in my opinion is the best match ever based on talent, neither have played what you would call football much of late. The statistics whilst at Newcastle are thus:

Transfer fee: £16million.
Wages over 4 years: £20million
Games played: 71 (out of a minimum 152 league matches)
Goals scored: 26

Now granted, not a lot of people like footballers/wages/etc but if anyone else were to give this sort of return for those sort of wages, you'd last maybe a week. £105k a week that robbing bastard was on, even when injured.

The twat. The worst person for the job twat.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 15:49, 9 replies)

Not so much "out of his depth" as "merely dipping his toe into the shallow end"
Another NHS one.

At an NHS trust I worked at a while back, a very senior radiologist (radiographer? I can never remember which one takes the pictures and which one does the analysis) killed someone with a slip of a pen. He meant to write 3/52 and instead wrote 3/12. Meaning that the patient in question had an appointment booked in three months' time instead of three weeks', by which time no amount of radiotherapy could bring them back to life.

So he lost his licence to do his job for a number of years. Five, I think it was.

Given that he was on around £120K, you would have thought the trust would say "we aren't paying you £10K a month if you can't do your job".

But no, they found things for him to do.

He was instrumental in getting the flower beds around the place in a lovely condition. He helped plan office moves. Whenever a new IT system came in, he'd help support the users at go-live (which is how I came into contact with him). He helped to pick colour schemes when places got repainted.

He just did little things around the place to keep himself busy.

For ten grand a month.
(ScousersPet, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 15:46, 13 replies)

Virgin Media
The people who work on Virgin Media's helpline, all of them. If I wanted to to hear "have you tired switching it off and switching it back on again?" repeatedly, in a funny accent, I'd watch The IT Crowd.

"Helpline" is a misnomer in this case. They are no help, therefore it should just be called "line"
(ScousersPet, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 15:31, 17 replies)

My previous post has reminded me of this...
I've worked at three NHS trusts in my time, and they all seem to be the same in this. Perhaps some of you other FUHLs* can chip in...

Never mind best/worst man for the job, the person who gets appointed generally seems to be the one who was there the longest. I lost count of the number of times people turned up to my "Basic Computer Skills" training course because they'd just been made team leader and needed to learn to use "Spreadsheets, whatever they are" to make up rotas and holiday charts. The rationale being that they couldn't give the job to the 19 year old lad who started last year who's a whizz with all things IT, as "He's only a kid, he's only been here five minutes and no-one will listen to him".

Imagine giving a guy an HGV licence, then telling him that he's got to learn to drive an articulated lorry by Monday because he's got a delivery to do in Southend, or taking some guy from the factory floor at Boeing and making him the new Chief Executive because he's been there longer than anyone else? Madness.

Okay, this is just a rant, there's not really any point, I'm not offering a solution and it's not funny. Feel free to move along/abuse/ignore me :)

tl;dr version: RRRAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!


*FUHL = Fed Up Hospital Lackey
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 15:16, 15 replies)

Pffft, wrong man for the job?
Pretty much the whole IT department where I used to work - especially the managers and supervisors. Not really any funnies out of that though, just tooth-gnashing fury at the ineptitude and waste of NHS money.

For light-hearted relief, a couple from one of the helpdesk operators, who surprised me every day by remembering the way to the office:

1. Asking me for help with a call - "User wants to attach something to an email twice as the recipient needs to print two copies. It will only let him attach it once though"

2. Asking me for help with an email someone had sent her. When I told her to email it over and have a look at it, she replied "Well, ok. Will you email it back when you've finished with it though please? I need it!"

Seriously, your taxes are paying her wages O_o
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 15:10, 2 replies)

Whoever designed and implemented ignore 2.0 shouldn't be allowed near a computer.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 15:02, 5 replies)

Ken the Coding Cockbag
Usual IT story, but he was a complete horseraping fucktard and it's nice to purge sometimes...

He was a rabid scot with an overinflated opinion of his limited talents. For example, we were both stuck on a problem, I found the answer, showed him to help him out, then a week later he called me over to show me how he got around it - the exact way I'd shown the dozy twat. This happened numerous times.

He would also bore anyone he found in the office kitchen with how he'd "paid off his mortgage early" and the company could kiss his ass.
Then he would moan about whoever his current manager was and how they were bullying him. Several times this ended up being brought to HR, usually concerning meetings between him and the manager alone, so it was his word against theirs.

He was finally kicked out the door when he tried this one too many times...the final manager he accused being a born again Christian with an attitude that would've made Jesus look like a militant.

Last heard of back in Scotland, where hopefully they're a lot less likely to take his brand of shite.
(CharminglyShallow incarcerated for a crime he probably did commit., Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:41, Reply)

In my time 2 particular bosses stand out:
Boss A, hated me and me him. Mainly because I undermined him at any opportunity because he simply didn’t understand what the company did. He came from a job where he sold stationary and was now in charge of a software company. He once tried to tell me that the head offices for one of my customers (one that spent in excess of 100K a year with the company) was not where I said it was but was in Bolton. He thought this because that’s where he used to sell them stationary. You should have seen his face when I grabbed the FD who had been on a meeting with me only a month earlier and asked him “where are BAE based again?” and he replied “Farnborough, we went there last month”. Boss A sank into his chair and then tried to tell me that another customer of mine didn’t make software despite being the largest producer of mobile phone billing software in the world, to which I simply called them up from his desk phone and asked the receptionist what they do and she quickly confirmed “we’re a software house” and hung up on me for asking such a stupid question. He lasted under a year.

Boss B (who incidentally replaced Boss A) was worse. He used to be the MD of Dell but knew nothing about software, in fact in his 12 month tenure never actually learned what software we made. He didn’t even learn the names of the products never mind the functions. He gave me a motivational speech once which consisted of “I want you to imagine you are getting on a plane, that plane then flies south passing over thousands of buildings, in each of those buildings is a company and within in each company there are workers and every worker has a desk and on each desk there is a computer, and on each computer there is software. Think about that” and turned away happy that he’d motivated me enough to forget the huge racial slur he’d an hour earlier spouted in front of the entire sales force that I’d gone in to his office to complain about.

And believe me this is the abridged version.
( The only Dave is pushing things forward, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:34, 6 replies)

The school I finished at a couple of months ago...
...had a new Principal this time last year.

He started the year by introducing himself to the faculty and giving a speech on trust. Anyone who feels the need to drivel on for half an hour about trust is not to be trusted. At the end of this mind-numbing spiel he took a deep breath, surveyed his audience, and with all the gusto he could muster said

"Follow me, I'm right behind you."

He was actually a really nice bloke but had no idea about education or managing a group of teachers.

He's gone now.
(Mud the Far Car can and will, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:34, 3 replies)

I nominate myself.
In February next year, I will have worked for 25 years in the same industry.

I know FUCK ALL about what I'm doing.

I spend days at a time surfing the net, wondering if I should go and do something.

I go on many business trips, and achieve nothing. Sometimes I achieve something, then forget to do anything about it when I get back.

I am supposed to manage whole offices of people, but they know far more about what they're doing than I do, so I leave them alone, other than to go to the pub with them.

My desk is usually clean and tidy. That's becuase I have a large cupboard behind me where I put papers after they have been on my desk for more than a few days. Every 6 months I empty it out and shred everything.

The best bit - I don't work in a bank, so I have no excuse for this profound crapness.

Only 20 years to go and I can retire!
(username failed moderation, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:18, 8 replies)

Seated one day at the organ
Many Oxford colleges have an organ scholar, who gets a fairly substantial amount of money and a nice room in college for three years in exchange for playing for services and, often, conducting the chapel choir. My old college appointed a new organ scholar some years ago, who, shortly after the contracts had been signed, told them that he was Jewish and his Rabbi had just told him he wasn't allowed to pray for Christian services. He got the money and the room for three year while a friend of mine was paid to do all the actual organ playing and conducting.
(ubergeekian, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:17, 7 replies)

I don't know much about homeopathy, it's the less is more thing?
Apparently a lot of people swear by it.
(Bear Pookie The Frankly Challenged. Halloween is coming to town., Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:17, 13 replies)

My dad
Quite a tenuous link…

Before he retired my dad was a carpenter. He worked on building and construction sites.

Being a shortish, portly fellow who likes his cheese, beer and other flatulence-inducing goods, he used to produce farts on demand, the type that stick to the back of your throat and make your eyes water.

He’d often clear an area of the workshop, especially if he was ‘upwind’ of his unsuspecting comrades.

However, after a hernia operation on his stomach, his sphincter control lessened somewhat and he had to be much more careful with his impromptu bowel orchestra.

So it was that on two occasions he managed to shit himself at work and had to go home after throwing caution to the ‘wind’.

The second time my mum was called in to pick him up and arrived with a Tesco’s bag carefully laid on the front car seat. Much to the amusement of his fellow workmates.

So, I think my dad would be the wrong man for the job to teach toilet training.

Length? More like shooting mud through a leather gun than a solid Snickers-esque turd no doubt.
(Deskbound You insignificant speck of dust, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:08, 2 replies)

Rick the not-IT Manager
My first ever manager in IT, it soon became clear that - like a male version of Jen from The IT Crowd - he had absolutely no idea about computers, computing or even where the computer room was. In all the time I worked with him, his idea of "management" was to call us up to his office at regular intervals, and test us on the operating system commands from out of the manual.

By the time he was let go (after a period of two years where he was taken off any work that might cause him to break anything, resulting in a botched attempt to get us to buy dozens of the world's most expensive telephone "because they look right pukka") the user system had changed so much we were constantly failing his "little tests" because his manuals were so out of date.

Saw his Facebook page recently. He's got no photo, has updated it twice, and has managed to "like" Manchester United.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:07, Reply)

Wavy lines back to the 1970s
Back when the councils used to run what was laughably described as a bus service in Stoke-on-Trent, it came to light that buses on one particular route weren't stopping to pick up passengers.

The councillor responsible for the Potteries Motor Traction (yes, PMT - insert menstrual jokes here) buses, Arthur Cholerton, showed a complete absence of gorm by allowing himself to be quoted as saying, "If these buses stopped to pick up passengers they would disrupt the timetable."

I'm not criticising Cllr Cholerton so much as whichever wonk in the Stoke-on-Trent Shitty Council press office thought he was an appropriate person to speak to the press, because they mustn't have had a fucking clue what they were doing.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:06, 2 replies)

Marketing department - a Bill Hicks moment
I worked for 12 years in the R&D department of an engineering company. In theory, Marketing would identify a need in the marketplace, then tell us about it so we could develop a solution.

After a few years, it became apparent that their actual function was to wear brash suits, take long drunken lunches and compare cars. I realised that I had, in fact, never seen a single input from them; it was left to us to decide what to develop.

One day I was faced with a choice, which made little difference to me but would significantly change the way the user used the product. So, I fired off an email to the marketing department to see if they had an opinion on the best choice.

Having received no reply, I made the choice and got on with it. I did eventually get a reply - some months later, on the day AFTER the product was launched...
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:01, 2 replies)

Malcolm
I've only just left my last job as a park ranger and one of my colleagues was most certainly the worst person for the job! He has 33 years experience in the role and should be a senior manager or advising on a much higher level.... Not Malcolm though.

This is a small selection of his notable achievements:

* Can't use the phone in the office (far too complex for him)
* Has difficulty leading a small group of volunteers on his own (despite this being his role for the last 30 or so years)
* required my help to show him how to start a fire (WTF!!!)
* needed directions to a park in Birmingham (he should know this considering he has lived there all his life and its his JOB!)
* spends weeks trying to organise an event which would take another ranger a few hours to sort out
* Was sent on the 'special' task of counting cows in Sutton Park as he's so fucking useless and can't be trusted
* Often cries or has a tantrum in the office if he isn't taken as a "serious ranger" - will call his union rep and complain after
* Missed all the critical risk assessment deadlines for his parks and open water sites... so he printed last years and thought no one would notice!!!!!

The list just goes on and on! Every time he is taken to parks management for his incompetence he gets signed off for depression and blames his employers for bullying him. He really is a monumental fuckwit! I'm glad I don't have to carry his useless ass anymore!
(RJWEcology is just sharpening his axe on, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:44, 4 replies)

FIRST
wankers
(Concerned of Tunbridge Wells "my apron comes down and crushes the handle", Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:37, 3 replies)

Scared of sheep
A couple of friends and I went out for a day in Dorset. We visited Athelhampton House, West Bay and finally Maiden Castle. On Maiden Castle there are quite a lot of sheep - hundreds, in fact, and they run about freely with no fear of humans.

Bad news for my friend, oh what shall we call him, Jason. On seeing the sheep running towards him he began running in the opposite direction, emitting shrieks of terror, and legged it all the way back to the car and wouldn't come out.

Of course we took the piss out of him and still do to this day.

His job?

Animator on Shaun the Sheep.
(Dr Skagra glorious glargzhem, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:31, 1 reply)

Spectacularly out of their depth in a job?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsm8D5CDAxo

Nuff said. Pearoast. First mistake.

wavy lines........


Cheers.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:30, Reply)

I'm sure they'll be a lot of "My boss...." type ones,
...but, my old boss:

I used to sit next to him but with some weird perspect divider that barely muffled any sound coming from his desk - he needed it as he would regularly discuss 'confidential' matters - apparently.

I was sitting there one afternoon after a few down the pub next door, when he had one of these 'confidential' meetings.
The chap he was speaking to was also notoriously useless and both had in fact been shuffled sideways to our out-of-town office where they couldn't cause too much damage - they'd both been there decades and the general consensus was that they would cost too much to make redundant.
The conversation went along the lines of:

"So, shall we use Windows NT or Oracle?"
"I think we should use Oracle. It costs more. It's surely better."

There were many like this.

Now, aside from the fact that they were asking a question in keeping with "Shall I use a fork, or a slice of wholemeal toast", they also had a managerial attitude of "it costs more, therefore it must be good".
The managerial people skills were also very badly lacking. On one occassionm, I'd had around 10 days off sick - I'm rarely sick and there was a lot going on in my family which had run me down and meant I was getting pretty much every bloody virus in the air every few weeks.
A year after this happened he pulled me up on it. He'd looked at previous years and had seen that in the last 4 years, I'd had one day off sick, yet still concluded that I was a serial sicky-taker.
That evening, the automated mail responder had stopped working. We finished work at 4. He phoned and asked me to come in and fix it. I wasn't paid overtime, and had no call-out fee. I'm sure you can guess my answer.

So, in short, an IT manager with the IT skills of a dead hedghog, and the people skills of David Brent.

Apologies for lack of funnies. This bloke was such a nob it's making me feel depressed just realising that he's probably still out there somewhere - probably running some global IT dept. for BA.
(dchurch bah, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:29, 4 replies)

Can't help but think employing John Wayne Gacy as a children's entertainer might not have been the best idea.

( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:20, Reply)

Scaryduck, vv poor moderator
out of his depth, a disaster. Trying to clean up qotw with prickish bannings. He should like ban himself and take a drive to beachy head.








Nuff said
( Light In Chains maker of the ikea sofa, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:07, 15 replies)

David CaMORON!!!!!
nuff said i think!!!!!!!

LOL!!!!!!!!!
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 12:58, 10 replies)

Best
Edit: Oh, hairy chest.
( tangledupinblue hairy badge with moving eyes, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 12:57, Reply)

I'm worst at being first

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 12:57, Reply)

Worst

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 12:57, 1 reply)