Posted on 05/31/2015 7:49:46 AM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
. . . and he/she happens to have heard of that joke before, what can he/she do? I imagine it's a bad idea for him/her to call BS and refuse to follow the order, right?
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When my mom worked rotation on OR as a new nurse, she was often sent on errands like "bring back a sterilized fallopian tube." Once she figured out what was going on, she took it as permission to take a coffee break.
Then she got sent out to get a pair of left-handed trauma scissors. So, she went and got coffee. After a few minutes, the circulating nurse came looking for her. Where were the scissors? You mean there's such a thing as left-handed trauma scissors?! Mom would have been in deep trouble, except the circulating nurse glared at the surgeon and told him he was the one who started it, so he'd better suck it up and behave.
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My dad was oiling on a ship when the wiper asked the Third assistant "What is this" pointing to the key to the kilson. (the wrench for removing the nut holding the screw on the propeller shaft.) The third told him it is the Key to the kilson. The wiper asked him where he should put it. The third tole him " ah just take up to the bridge."
The wipper thought what the heck and began to end over end the wrench, they are 5 to 6 feet long. When he got it up to the flying bridge and it hit the deck with a bang the Third Mate turn and asked "what is that." The wiper answered the key to the kilson, where do you want me to put it. The third mates answered just throw the dam thing overboard. The wiper did.
End result. Wiper fired, Third Assistant Engineer and Third Mate had their liciences permanently revoked by the commerce department.
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In the navy, one might be asked to retrieve batteries for the ship’s sound-powered phones.
Also if the ship were passing 0 degrees latitude, first-timers might be invited to report topside if they wished to see the equator.
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One friend of mine, a navy guy, was sent to get a bucket of steam. Six hours later, he came back with a bucket with a lump of dry ice and some water.
Another friend, an Air Force guy, told me the AF fool's errand was to send a rookie to get an ASH receiver. That's the federal stock name for an ashtray with a sliding cover and spring-loaded mount to the plane's wall.
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When I was in the Army Reserve we had private fresh out of training. We were testing some new radios we had recently received when the E-4 we were working with told the private to go back to the commo cage and get a can of squelch. About 10 minutes later he comes running out with a can marked "squelch." We had done this in the past and our sergeant was prepared for us--he wrapped a piece of paper around a can of air and wrote "squelch" on it. Not wanting to lose face we took the can, sprayed some air on the connector on the back of the radio and moved on.
Fast forward 2 months. We're out on our summer training and a captain pulls up with a bad radio. The same E-2 looks it over and says, "Oh, that just needs a can of squelch," and runs off. Good times did not follow.
In fairness to the private, he was trained as a teletype operator, not on voice communications.
What’s a mail buoy?
It’s an, ahem, watch duty assigned to young sailors on their first tour at sea. They are told that mail cannot be delivered directly to the ship, so a helicopter will drop the bag of mail into the water somewhere in the vicinity of the ship. Its location will be marked by a flag affixed to the top of the buoy that keeps the mail bag from sinking. The young sailor’s job is to go up somewhere high on the deck and watch for the mail buoy.
He is usually assigned to this duty for a few hours before someone lets him in on the joke.
I do not know if this prank is still played; I was in the Navy in the early 1980s when I heard about it.
Well, I was the Battalion Commanders gunner on a Brad fr a while, and he did not know that there indeed was a can of dry air for purging the thermal integrated sight unit- PFC Achayan ad I had fun with the LTC for a bit- he had a good sense of humor- later, years later after we both had retired from the Army, I had the pleasure of working with him on a research project- he was a Northrup Grumman guy and I was a university research scientist. He had made full Colonel ( a West Pointer) and I had made Major (from PVT).
FOOLS ERRANDS
A “Fools Errand” is the practical joke of sending a person to fetch some non-existent but plausible sounding item. The joke is usually played at work on a new employee or apprentice and its effectiveness depends on the naivete of the victim. Here are some of the more common Fools Errands. There are hundreds of such errands; many are specific to particular occupations. Many of the objects are non-existent items. Others really do exist, but not in the context of the occupation where they are set as a fool’s errand e.g. fallopian tubing makes sense to a doctor, but not to a plumber. Many errands rely on an apprentice being overwhelmed by technical jargon; as long as the errand or object sounds plausible, he assumes it to be yet more jargon.
Big list of fools errand items at link.
http://messybeast.com/dragonqueen/fools-errands.htm
Don’t forget the the cleaner kept out at the kennels. It’s called K9P.
And then there was the new guy that was so dense that he went to get a pap smear.
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