Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation 1

[l3city]

He fellas, what is the most rare and strange/awkward situation you have encountered at work (and personal if you would like to share it)?
For example, talking with your co-engineer about a design issue/problem while sitting at the toilet (ya'know). Or coming by surprise to your bosses' office and hearing or seeing something you rather not see.
Jaja, how you deal with this situations??
Any input is well welcomed..
regards

 

[lewtam]

KENAT - Gotta here the rest of the story.

ONE of my embarrasing work moments:
The boss at my first job was a chronic leave-fly-opener. As an awkward young graduate, I didn't have the confidence to tell him straight away, and the longer I let it go without telling him, the more awkward I felt. He would stand there talking to me for 10 minutes, then someone else walking past would go 'You're flying low Maverick, pull up!'



LewTam Inc.
Petrophysicist, Leading Hand, Natural Horseman, Prickle Farmer, Crack Shot, Venerable Yogi.

 

[plasgears]

Right after 9-11 an engr from north africa called with glee to report, "they did it, they did it!" I advised him to hang the biggest American flag from his balcony and shut his stupid mouth.

I didn't turn him in because he was one of the best engineers I have ever encountered. He called later to apologise. He must have been monitoring the websites with predictions of a special event.

 

[EddyC]

plasgears,

Looks like some folks that you knew were demon possessed.

 

[fglass]

During my intern, I worked with those bosses and the president of the company at the same area. One day, someone (I swear, it's not me!!!) was doing a very serious business in the restroom. The smell expanded to all over the office. I could even smell it from my office although it was the furthest from the restroom. The staff kept coming in and out from our office area. Nobody dare to question about the weird smell and nobody knows who did it besides the person himself. The smell stayed in our office for some time before it went off. Later on, I went to the restroom. The exhaust fan and the air refresher were functioning. I wondered what did this boss/president eat for his lunch on that day......

 

[ScottyUK]

Anecdotal: a long-time friend has worked on construction sites all his life. The 'facilities' on one such site were what we in the UK know as a 'Portaloo', a square-based plastic moulded cubicle about 3' across the base and 8' tall containing a chemical loo. The said structure, with an occupant, were toppled by a reversing vehicle with all too imaginable consequences. The truck driver made it off site alive, being chased by a man covered in the now ex-contents of the Portaloo, blue liquid chemical and all, who was having problems seeing the funny side of it. I wouldn't have dared laugh!

----------------------------------

Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

The 'Portaloo' is called a "PortaPotty" or "Johnny-on-the-spot" here in Ontario.

​

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[ivymike]

I know a guy whose friends tipped a porta-potty with him in it, as a prank... bummer of a prank.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

What a "crappy" thing to do. I bet the guy was "flushed" with embarassment.

​

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[soiledup]

Portaloo's,,,

A friend of mine was using a portaloo on a site in central london, he was working the flush handle too vigerously when his brand new flashy mobile phone fell from his breast pocket of his overalls into the loo!
He was most upset and decided to retrieve it. He placed a large, heavy gauge, plastic rubble sack on his arm and proceeded to go fishing for his swanky phone. After some groping about he found his beloved new phone and proceeded to rinse and clean it. Amazingly it still worked, the only problem being, he had sh*t reception thereafter!!!!

I apologise for being crude, no offence intended.

 

[FACS]

We had a customer in for a training seminar. He was a real nice guy and a good customer.

Our bathrooms were fairly new and we had the fancy toilets that hung from the wall instead of mounting to the floor.

Our customer was sitting on one, doing his business. He weighed over 350 pounds.

The toilet broke from the wall; you can imagine the mess.

We had to scramble to get him in a safe room to hide his embarassment and "dirty" wet clothing. We had to stop the water and get the mess cleaned up without anyone knowing what happened. Someone had to go to his hotel and get him clean clothing.

We felt real sorry for him because no matter how hard we tried, the incident was well known in less than a day by everyone.

Charlie

http://www.facsco.com

 

[jmw]

I did experience one embarassing incident which you will find at thread731-141441 (Faux Pas) which I won't bore you with again.
But one incident still makes me laugh after all these years (and I appologise, I can't come close to the toilet stories above):

When I first started work, in the days of typing pools and Grundig dictaphones, we had quite an office full of "girl fridays".
This was an old building with metal and glass partitioning dividing everything up into offices: the acoustics were terrible.

One day one of the girls, who was normally very good humoured, had a ruck with the boss and stormed out of his office closing the door witha little extra vigour.
This drew our attention to a potential "groundhog event" (see language forum for a definition) very effectively.
Then she found she had immediately to go back in with some file or other, which she did.
Swinging the door wide she flounced in and slammed the file down on his desk.
She turned to leave and as she was coming out we all heard him calling out "AND DON'T SLAM ...." but he was unfortunately cut off mid voice by the door slamming extra hard (I think she was distracted by the grinning expectant faces she saw on her way back)The noise reverberated round the building. The glass threatened but didn't actually break.
Several people were reduced to near basket cases not so much by the door slamming as by the consequences:
Caught by surprise, my coffee cup and I parted company and I spent the next several instants trying to retrieve it from its cartoon-like suspension in mid air.
It was my failure that caused the final break up of so many people who watched it attack the nearest electrical equipment (thank god computers hadn't been invented yet).

All the boss could hear (over the ringing in his ears) was the sound of uncontrolled hysterics from the outer office and I can tell you he was well ticked off for some time thereafter.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[sms]

I was working a construction project out in the jungle in southern Mexico. Went to use the portaloo, and my car keys fell in.

The only way to get back to civilization was to go fishing with a coat hanger....

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

 

[fribby]

I had a good one last week. I had a prototype piece of kit coming onto plant for function testing. A few days prior to the manufacturer of the primary components sending one of their service engineers in to assist, I had set this panel up in the Drive Room/Switch House and got it all ready to go and then left it ready and waiting.

The day came round and we went down to the plant, only to walk into the workshop to find half a dozen of our plant techs engrossed in sorting out a vast pile of porno magazines.

Luckily the service guy saw the funny side and the techs had the good sense to clear up damn quick.

 

[vpl]

This is a story frequently told in my office:

We had a manager who was well known as a "button-pusher." He always had to see what would happen. So some of the guys put together a box with several "important looking" gauges, levers, buttons, etc., -- all rigged so no matter what he touched an alarm would go off. The box sides were screwed together with dozens of little screws. Box was put off to the side in a conference room with a "DO NOT TOUCH" sign on it, and a meeting was called for that room (to which the manager was invited.) Later that day, the box alarm went off and everyone ran to the conference room -- only to find the guy frantically trying to unscrew one of the sides to get to the alarm and turn it off.

Let's just say, he was much better about not touching stuff after that.

Patricia Lougheed

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of the Eng-Tips Forums.

 

[jmw]

For "egg on face" stories, this is one of my favourites. Of course, I was told this at a time when my company was involved supplying instruments to the project but I have no idea if it's true, probably not, but it would be nice to think so.

When developing the high speed train (In the UK: this was the train with a tilt mechanisms for cornering) they decided to run a bird strike test on the drivers cab and consulted Rolls Royce who lent them a pneumatic cannon to fire birds at the target.
"What do you use?"
"We just stock up with frozen chickens from the supermarket, they all graded with the same weight."

The first and last test did not go well, with it they pretty well destroyed not just the window, which would have been an affordable mistake, but they wrecked the whole traction unit which was not. They rang Rolls Royce for advise.
The engineer at Rolls Royce thought for a moment and then asked:
"Did you remember to thaw out the chickens first?"

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[JAE]

jmw - I remember that news story! Thought it was funny then and now. Thanks for bringing it up.

Patricia - that's a great story too. I love set ups. And this one was so pure. Thanks.

 

[ruggedscot]

embarassment ?

Not me but I knew an old boss of mine that actually switched an HV SF6 breaker to the earthed position while it was still energised. Nothing spectacular happened except that the building plunged into darkness, and they managed to have a co-ordination issue with the 'breaker that resulted in quite a large area being blacked out for a few hours.

The power company wasn't very happy at all....

lets say there was a removal of an authorised HV status from said individual in the immediate aftermath of the incident.

 

[Guest0527211403]

I also posted this in a thread in forum731.

A few years ago at my first intern job (I was around 20) we had a company picnic. I had recently broken up with my girlfriend so I went on my own and spent the better part of the day minding the bbq. It was good times, and I finally got to see all of my bosses in a relaxed environment.

The following monday, one of my bosses came by my desk and told me his 17 year old daughter had a crush on me and wouldn't stop asking questions about me on the car ride home. He then gave me the "stay the hell away from my daugthers" look and walked away.

 

[ivymike]

I once had a "this is my daughter - you touch her you're fired" meeting with a boss. It was funny given that I'd never met her before the meeting, and never saw her again after it. Not sure what the point of the latter part was (introductions are pleasant enough).

 

[jmw]

I recall during my first week at a new company the big event was the launch of a new range of equipment for the water utility companies.
They spared no expense and in the grounds was a huge marquee with strawberries, and cream, buffet meal and case after case of champagne.
Attending this were directors of my company and its parent company as well as directors of the target companies, exhalted company indeed.
Some of us proletarian members were also allowed to attend, briefly, for the refreshment phase.
Also new was the company finance director.
My weakness was for the strawberries and cream, his for the champagne. Guess who did not acquit themselves well that day. As a matter of fact, I don't ever recall seeing that finance director again.



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com