Murphy's Law in the Workplace

[digilight]

Copy machine can work great for weeks, with only small jobs that don't have a tight deadline. Once a big job or a rush comes in that sucker will go tits up and throw up an error code on ya. (translation: needs a repair technician to come out and replace hopefully minor part that he has on his truck and can get in and out quickly). had this happen last week in the middle of a run that should have taken about 12 straight hours of printing time, luckily the tech was out the following morning and I didn't loose a whole lot of time on it.

You just picked up a rush job to bind 50 books, only problem is that you only have enough binding combs for 35 books, and the local printers supply store can't get the size you need in tommorow, your normal distributor takes 3 days to ship them to you. this also calls for loudly repeating the phrase, "Shit what the fuck am I gonna do now".

DVD Duplication job, well one burner decides to not read discs at random (doesn't turn the discs into coasters) it just doesn't read them on initialisation at times.

Gotta go do some "Paperwork" and take care of that mexican food you had for lunch. Well phone won't stop ringing.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Let's see here . . .

If I have a short day or am leaving around noon, either the DSD printer will stop working (which means the DSD person will usually call ME to come fix it), a vendor shows up with a delivery BEFORE the DSD person comes in (meaning I get to check them in), the wine EDI (Electronic Downloaded Invoice) will not be in the computer (requiring it to be manually entered and the DSD person doesn't know how to type with more than 2 fingers while I can use the numeric keypad with 3 fingers without looking and have it ready for finalizing in 2 minutes or less) OR the Pocket PC will continually show low battery and cut off several times, requiring an emergency plug in for more juice (aka smoke break) while trying to get the HBC order ready and sent off that day.

Or, if you're stuck on a register for a short shift, everything goes smooth until 20 minutes before you're scheduled to leave. Either you have a customer who wants to argue over a price/multiple WIC vouchers and half the stuff they've got isn't available on WIC/argue over the amount of change/take longer to write a check than it did for our forefathers to write out the Declaration of Independence/have at least 2 buggies overflowing and their EBT card won't go through.

Even worse is when you have a moron who can't figure out the pinpad for the debit/credit card machine . . . or the display on the register quits working.

Or, if you go in on your day off for a couple of hours to help move displays back to the floor after a strip and the opening cashier has called out . . . . guess who gets stuck at the register until the next person can come in.

Yep . . if it can go wrong, it WILL

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The busiest day of the week will be the day Numbnuts is scheduled to do carryouts, which means you will end up doing them because Numbnuts is doing his best paperweight impersonation.

As a result there will be nobody on the floor to assist customers, which will lead to call boxes going off 5 times with nobody responding, and the managers indignantly paging you to answer it, but you can't because you're doing carryouts.

The day the forklift is taken away for repairs needed due to safety issues will be the day the regional team lead orders you to rip apart and re-arrange the entire backroom, which requires moving merchandise and shelving up and down the stairs. And the repairs will take longer than you thought because the repair company takes its time before looking at the forklift, and then they find other things that should be fixed.

[KellyHabersham]

When I was at Macy's, it would be totally dead in the department as far as customers go, but once my co-worker went on break/lunch/dinner, that's when all the difficult watch sizing/returns would come up, people would want to look at things in the cases at different ends of the department, someone would want me to take the sensor off a pair of sunglasses so they could try them on......oh, and we can't forget the person who wants me to call another store to see if they have a particular item in stock.

[ArenaBoy]

Whenever I worked the West VIP lot I would get more guys trying to enter without passes. As soon as one sneaks by, 3 or 4 more will attempt to get away with it.

When you are on a day off, you always seem to get calls to come in because they're short staffed.

When you look away from the barrels for a brief second some idiot will try to move it.

One guy will try to use a different pass and will get yelled out for telling him where to go.

[skeptic53]

Leave 5 minutes later than usual for work, and invariably arrive 15 minutes late due to garbage trucks, school buses, little old ladies shuffling across crosswalks, speed trap cops preventing going over the limit, cell phone morons not noticing the light is green until it turns yellow, construction flaggers, etc etc.

[JustADude]

My own little bit of Murphy is truly hellish.

Basically, the busier we are, the busier we get. It seems like the more pies are up on the screen to be made, the more phone-calls we get and the bigger the orders they all seem to have... not to mention the fact that I only seem to get bad customers during a rush.

This happens so regularly that I've begun to think it's a law of nature that there's some astrological phenomenon that makes all of mankind crave pizza at the exact same moment.

[Aldous]

This happens so regularly that I've begun to think it's a law of nature that there's some astrological phenomenon that makes all of mankind crave pizza at the exact same moment.

It's called the Munchies.

[Geek King]

I forgot to add my Murphy's story in...

The elevator in the building will work fine right up until you press the call button with 100+ pounds of old CRT monitors on the cart to be put into storage on the fourth floor. This has happened twice in two weeks. I even called ahead to make sure it was working.

[Kelly Lynne]

When you're about to leave on your vacation, you've already worked a 10-hour day, and you have one last document to email off before you can go home and start actually *packing* for said vacation, the network connection will die just as you're about to send the thing off....

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Here's another one:

A week before Inventory, you will get a double forceout delivery (foreceouts are items on sale for the upcoming ad, which are automatically sent to every store regardless of how much they actually need.)

Bonus points if the backroom is already at low level and already set up for Inventory counting.

[draftermatt]

When you have nothing to do, you will have NOTHING to do, and will beg for work. Then when work starts coming in, it keeps coming, and coming.

From Burger King: On a Sunday when we have so many people call out and are short staffed, the biggest rush will occur.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

From Burger King: On a Sunday when we have so many people call out and are short staffed, the biggest rush will occur.

Bonus (or Boner) points if it's on a Holiday . . . such as Easter Sunday.

If it's dead and half the front-end people are sent home to cut hours, then the customers will flock to the registers like it's a snow storm warning and you'll have lines going down the grocery aisles.

[Jak_O_Lantern]

Had this one happen

The only day where you need off, for whatever reason, is the day that you're called no less than 3 times to help fill in because your co-worker decided to not show up.

Except they called me in because someone had put in for a personal day in advance, to pick up a family member from the airport, ME!

[DrFaroohk]

I do the bookkeeping crap on Saturday mornings, and we are frequently stricken with unreliable saturday workers. Gotta have fun on Friday, dude!

Anyway, I usually go in early, since it's usually just me and one other person, and I need to do a buttload of paperwork, and I can't do that and run register at the same time (let alone stock coolers, clean stuff, place orders, take phone calls, etc...)....so I usually go in a little early, get everything done that I NEED to get done that day, and the rest of my day is cake.


On rare occasions, I will sleep in and actually go to work on time....those are the days when everyone calls in sick. Phuckers.