Funny tales from work

A company I do work for had, had a meeting with the workforce this week to tell them that due to lost orders, they were going to have to make 2 redundant.

They were to be interviewed 2 at a time by the directors to sell themselves and explain why they should stay.
The atmosphere was tense all day as 2 by 2 they went in to the office.
Suddenly, over the PA system it was announced that there would be no more interviews and the matter was settled.
Half the workers had not even been in so there were lots of furrowed brows.

It turned out two had gone in and one had said the other was useless and he should be one of the ones to be made redundant.
A fight broke between them and a director tried to split them up.
The director caught a stray punch and was felled.....

Both were sacked on the spot. Job done.

Quote: Stephen Goodlad @ 3rd November 2017, 8:56 PM

A company I do work for had, had a meeting with the workforce this week to tell them that due to lost orders, they were going to have to make 2 redundant.

They were to be interviewed 2 at a time by the directors to sell themselves and explain why they should stay.
The atmosphere was tense all day as 2 by 2 they went in to the office.
Suddenly, over the PA system it was announced that there would be no more interviews and the matter was settled.
Half the workers had not even been in so there were lots of furrowed brows.

It turned out two had gone in and one had said the other was useless and he should be one of the ones to be made redundant.
A fight broke between them and a director tried to split them up.
The director caught a stray punch and was felled.....

Both were sacked on the spot. Job done.

View original

Blimey, that's harsh to be called in to the office to give reasons why you shouldn't be made redundant and similar to what happend to me in a job I had working on a small team with people who were constantly cocking up and because the bosses didn't wan't to single them out it resulted in the whole team getting it in the neck. One day the team were called in to a meeting with the bosses and our manager asked us one by one "why should you still work here?". As someone who didn't make mistakes there and who had two interviews to get the job in the first place I felt like saying I didn't wan't to be part of his Apprentice fantasy and walk out but of course I had to go along with it.

If a manager is too stupid to know who are the least productive, least useful workers, fire the manager.

Quote: Kenneth @ 4th November 2017, 11:13 AM

If a manager is too stupid to know who are the least productive, least useful workers, fire the manager.

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Good point well made Kenneth. Also Barry Humphries IS a comedy genius, you are right there also. So that makes me think he must be British. I mean the great late Hancock proved Australia is where comedy comes to die. Just saying.

I used to visit GP practices in Warwickshire as part of an upgrade of all the IT gear being planned. I had to audit all the IT gear in every practice and the job was very simple and just involved plugging a USB stick in to the computer which would capture key information such as the amount of RAM, CPU and Operating System and Service Pack and record it to the USB stick. All over in about 20 seconds and the only hard part was finding the right moment to pop in to the Doctor's office to get it because it was obviously out of the question if they had a patient in there or were writing up notes.

They will have been briefed by the practice manager but it still needed some polite door knocking and thanks to my disarming charm I never had any problems and all the Doctors were always very laid back about it but one day I was at a small practice and there was one GP who was very unhappy that I asked if I could come in to take the reading and she kept ranting at me "I'm in surgery" even though she was in her office alone. Being a real pro I realised it was best to come back later rather than retaliate the way she wanted me to by punching her really hard on the arm.

Having to wait around was no big deal because I wasn't being timed and I could sometimes have a chinwag with the reception staff and pretend I know a lot about IT until they asked me something I didn't know when I could just make my excuses and leave. Perfect. Fast forward a bit and the door to the grumpy GPs office is open so I siezed the oportunity and walked straight up and knocked on the open door. She was sat at her desk writing and invited me to come in and sit down without looking up which I did as I didn't want to incur her wrath again. At the same time an elderly lady hobbled in with the aid of a walking frame and stopped in the doorway.

At that moment the GP turns to me and says "so, how can I help?" I start explaining to her, for the second time, that I'm there to plug my USB stick in to her computer and while I'm talking she then notices the old lady standing in the doorway.

The doctor invited me in thinking I was her next patient and then realises I'm sitting in the only seat forcing her next elderly patient to stand bewildered in the doorway. I ran.

(We're due to have a new member of staff; they passed the interviews all fine and we're just making sure that their workspace will be set up a-ok. Keep in mind we're an Internet software company. As part of this we ask if the employee has any special needs for their workplace; for instance I'm disabled due to arthritis so I require a special chair and keyboard set up. I got a phone call from the new employee about a day before she was due to start

New Starter: "Hey, yeah, just calling about my workplace set up. I do have a few requirements."

Me: "Okay, no worries; do you want to go through them now or send them via email or post?"

New Starter: "Nah, phone is fine. I need an ergonomic keyboard and mouse because I have RSI."

Me: "No problems at all; I've got a setup like that myself so we'll get those installed for you."

New Starter: "Right, and I'm deathly allergic to WiFi, so you'll need to shut off anything wireless in the office."

Me: "...pardon?"

New Starter: "Yes, I'll die if I'm near a wifi signal. You need to shut down anything that works wireless."

Me: *noticing at this point she's calling me from a MOBILE PHONE* "Erm, that may pose a real problem as a lot of our systems and phones work on wireless."

New Starter: "Tough. Disable it. Rewire it or whatever you have to do. I'll die if I'm near anything wireless."

Me: "Can I ask a question?"

New Starter: "Yes."

Me: "How did you protect yourself against the signals when you came in for your interviews then? That meeting room actually houses two of the main wireless points for the office."

New Starter: "I'm going to sue." *hangs up*

(She DID in fact call a lawyer to claim we were refusing 'disability accommodations' who then called our corporate office to complain. We'd already sent the notes from my phone call up so they knew about her 'issue.' We never heard anything further aside from a single note from HR saying we'd withdrawn the job offer 'on agreement with the interviewee.')

Quote: Sanjeev Nanda @ 6th November 2017, 12:27 PM

We'd already sent the notes from my phone call up so they knew about her 'issue.'

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Her 'issue' is that she's mentally unstable, so you dodged a bullet. Nice one.

She sounds like a total idiot as she could have had a decent job in a nice working environment but perhaps she didn't actually want it and was looking for an excuse. I bet HR breathed a sigh of relief.

A young lad started in my team and was a nice guy and seemed eager but he was forever surfing the internet instead of working. He sat next to me and whenever I glanced over he would be looking at music websites while all his colleagues around him were busy doing work. He was given plenty of warnings and a few times I quietly said to him he should leave personal internet time to lunch when he could do whatever he likes. My boss even tried to remind him a few times he should be working and not surfing and it would do the trick for about 30 minutes but then he would be back to his old habits.

One day he decided to illegally stream a TV show on the company network which was flagged by the system admins who had to come over to him and tell him to stop as it was overutilising bandwidth. That was the final straw and resulted in his dismissal. I felt bad for him but he had been given plenty of friendly warnings.

While working in the conservative field of high-end CPA reference material, I was sending an email to a large account client regarding an oversight on our part that delayed processing. I mangled the word 'inconvenience', but my email spellcheck caught it and offered a suggested fix. I clicked accept without double-checking. And I ended up sending the client an email saying that I "apologize for any incontinence."

Sorry, the manager may be second rate, but look at the people he hires!

Many years ago I worked for a small electrical contractors (6 men) and we used to gather at the shop at 8.AM to find out where we were going that day.
The boss told us a new man was starting this morning but he was already late.
Suddenly the door burst open and the new man came bustling in. His first words were 'Terry, can I use your toilet - it's rather urgent'
Terry told him it was an outside loo and it is locked - but here are the keys.
He gave him a bunch of keys with about 20 different ones.

We could hear a frantic jingling of keys as he tried each one.
It went quiet and then he walked back in the shop.

'Terry, I will have to go home and change...I've had an accident'.

Was bound to happen. But your boss must've known which key it was, he could have been helpful.

Got a few and nearly all of them involve me getting very wet, as pipe fitters are wont to do. I'll start off with a not so funny one in which my mistake resulted in others not getting wet when they were supposed to. Not long into my new role as an inspector I had my first treatment plant to survey and it was a big one. Water treatment sites have a lot of hazards mostly involving drowning or being 'burned' by chemicals as there are a lot of chemical vats and sprayers around. I had to check that the site was properly maintained and serviced and ready for all potential incidents. It was a full day's survey. After the site manager showed me the internal engineering and processing plant he gave me the external plan so I could survey the outside on my own.

After a long walk around and noting only one fault in my report - Site manager to stop letting the paddies in zone G - bank works from filling up their kettle with raw water. Maybe fit a clean water line for them. They were supposed to get their water from the welfare block but evidently they couldn't be bothered to walk the few hundred yards all the time. So yeah sorry, after this I just had the reservoirs to do which meant checking life belt posts and emergency showers next to them. I had the stand alone showers to do last and there were about six of them on the site. By now it was getting very dusky and my torch had developed a flickering habit which I'd forgotten about. However I could clearly see a yellow handled rod to pull to make sure the shower was working so I pulled it and out came the water - actually a mild chemical solution from a high up tank to clean off other chemicals like chlorine. I pulled it again to stop it but nothing happened. The shower was on full bore and was emptying the tank. I got a bit stressed and decided to go back to my van to get batteries for my now useless torch.

When I got back to the shower the tank had almost run out and I used my torch to see what I'd done wrong. I very soon found a much shorter rod with a green handle on the other side. 'Oh!' Then saw a notice board I didn't see from the other side. The board was on the side where deluged workers would be scrambled out of the reservoir and I'd come at it from the left/front. I shone the torch and read the board. 'All emergency shower use must be reported to safety officer/site manger and protocols followed in line with - (plan of measures pertaining to each specific reservoir or treatment pool with their own chemical formulas.) ((The tank would also have to be refilled with that same specific solution)) Oops!

Oh dear, drowned in a pool of poo and piss.

That reminds me of a childhood "joke" that did the rounds in the late 1950s - Would you rather swim in a pool of shit or a river of snot?

A woman I used to work with had an obsession with celebrities, whatever new diet or fashion statement they created she would follow.

When she found out she was pregnant, she kept thinking about the benefits of eating her own placenta. Her husband was not so happy about the idea, wich he considered a form of cannibalism. They would often argue about it but always make up at the end.

When the baby was born, she couldn't go through with the delicious dish and was then constantly mocked by her hubby.

Even though she did not eat the fleshy thing. She did store it in the freezer. So one day when her significant other was starving during a lunch break, she offered him some cookies with pâté.
He asked her what brand was it that tasted so good.
-''My own recipe''- she replied with a smile.

At a works christmas party I saw a girl who I fancied sitting on her own so siezed the oportunity to go over and say hello. I told my colleagues I was going for it and they all eagerly watched me go over. I saw this girl every day in the canteen but we didn't work together and I had never spoken to her before so was feeling very nervous. I had plenty of Dutch courage in me and I wasn't drunk but certainly wasn't sober.

It went really well. I said hello and introduced myself and asked if we could have a drink sometime. She agreed and we arranged to sort out a date the next time we saw each other in the canteen. Success! I turned around and headed back to my group who were all watching me and I got my leg caught in an empty chair and then while trying to free myself I got entangled in another chair. Before I knew it I was engulfed in chairs and it seemed to go on forever while I was trying to keep my balance so I didn't fall over. I could have died of embarrassment and we never did go out for a drink.