Most Absurd

[Kiwi]

What is the MOST absurd thing that has happened in your working life?

Something that is so stupid, all you can do is shake your head and pray for humanity....

The most absurd thing I have ever had to deal with was chocolate biscuits.

Part of my job as office support (read office bitch who did all the jobs no one would demean themselves with) was to ensure that the 4 kitchens we had in our office were stocked with product. Twice a day we had a "tea lady/cleaner" go around and restock coffee/tea/chocolate biscuit jars and it was my job to make sure that each kitchen had a stock of these.After our cleaner who (was innocent) was caught with her hand in the jar so to speak, it became my job to fill the jars instead of her. She still had to do everything else but these PRECIOUS chocolate biscuits could not be handled by a "contract employee" any more.

If you want to see people bitch and whine, give them FREE chocolate biscuits everyday. I was accosted at least twice a day, more than that most of the time about how everyone other kitchen got better biscuits than they did and it wasn't FAIRRRRRRR. People would whine that we didn't have biscuit X any more or that people were taking more than one biscuit and people weren't washing their hands any more..... all of which are NOT my problem!

To combat this I started putting identical biscuits in every single jar in every single kitchen so that vultures (people who would go to a different kitchen for their department) would stop.
I even had a manager threaten to file a complaint about my "abuse of power" over the chocolate biscuit tins because she had missed out on chocolate biscuits for a week and I was deliberately putting cookies in her kitchens tin later than her break...OMG its been almost a year and I still can not even eat chocolate biscuits. I won't even walk down the aisle at the supermarket any more!

So fess up, what's the most idiotic thing you have had to deal with at work?

[Bright_Star]

Behavior like that is childish. Grown men & women acting like whiny 3 year olds! Get rid of the damned things alltogether & not have anymore & then see how they act.

[Bandit]

What is the MOST absurd thing that has happened in your working life?

Way back when, I replaced a phone system at a 500,000 sq. ft. auto parts plant.

Then I had to answer a union grievance.

The previous phone system, when someone would hit the "redial" button, it would show a long-distance code if the last call was long-distance. Now, this was a yes/no deal - if the code worked, you could call the world - ANY number. Including porn numbers anywhere in the world.

When the new system came in, that loophole was eliminated, and the bill dropped by about $15,000/month.

So, the union, missing the porn calls, complained that "...Members were un-necessarily restricted, showing a lack of confidence of the Membership by Management..." because none of the phones on the shop floor could not call outside.

That cost a month of digging up phone bills, HR records, security footage, and getting sworn statements that the sweet little old lady in accounting was, indeed, not at work at 2:00 am on a Sunday and calling a $7/min porn line in Sao Tome.

<wibble>

Waste of bloody time and money.

B

[elsporko]

Working at a group home for teenagers. We got a new big screen tv when the old tv died. It was super nice and awesome, but defective and stopped working. So we took an old tv and used it instead because we can't have court wards not watching telivision. We were suppose to get a new tv from the company since the old one was defective, but then the program director just decided that was fine. No new tv even though the old one was defective and we should have been getting one for free.

He also hasn't replaced the van that was wrecked in an accident during the winter. Its a shame since none of the vehicles we have works properly. I guess we're only transporting children, but still it would be nice.

[Difdi]

Most absurd? That would be the time I was volunteer plant safety inspector (on top of my janitorial job) at a local dairy bottling plant.

Fire codes require a fire extinguisher every so many square feet of floor space. During a remodel, they expanded the refrigerated loading dock, without reworking the safety gear layout. This resulted in not one, but two extinguishers in the ice cream freezer, as well as an eyewash station (perpetually frozen solid).

The extinguishers in use at the plant don't operate very well at -50 Fahrenheit. Odds are, they wouldn't work at all until they had thawed. But that eyewash station? THAT you'd need a flamethrower to use. As part of my safety inspector duties, I had to test and verify weekly that all eyewash stations were operational, and make sure fire extinguishers were charged and inspected.

Now, the ice cream freezer, aside from being -50 degrees, is made entirely of metal and contains literally thousands of gallons of ice cream. Short of a meteor strike or volcanic eruption, I honestly cannot imagine a fire that could survive in there. Any fire that lasted long enough for you to need an extinguisher would be smothered by melting ice cream. If it actually kept burning through that, the refrigeration system would snuff it out instantly when the system overheated and ruptured (the coolant displaces oxygen).

After two months of weekly checks in arctic conditions, I drew up an altered layout proposal for the extinguishers and eyewash, that met fire and safety codes, but put them in places that weren't below the minimum operating temperature of the equipment.

Apparently there was some sort of crossed wires in the company office, because they accepted the proposal, issued a work order to the maintenance guys to move the equipment...and once it was all moved, they issued another order to move it back. And all future proposals I submitted just vanished into bureaucratic limbo.

The screwiest part was, even though the equipment got moved back into the freezer, the old mounting brackets had been removed, and were never replaced. So the extinguishers were just set on the floor and left there...I never did figure out what had happened.

[LillFilly]

Heehee, when I always volunteered to make the coffee for my Civil Air Patrol group (a search and rescue group that is something like the boy scouts meets ROTC) during a meeting, some woman (I think it was one of the kid's mothers) took me aside and said something like I was setting women's liberation back years and was setting a bad example for the young boys.

I dunno. I just made the coffee because A) I drank most of it and B) I was the only one who made it right!