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.
“Sent another to the lumber store for a sky hook.”
If only Kareem Abdul Jabbar worked at your place!
In the C-130 world a newbie would be shown a puddle under the aircraft and asked if it was from a hydraulic leak. Newbie would say he didn’t know so was told to dip his finger in the puddle and smell it or taste it. Those puddles would invariably be under the urinal drain tubes.
The lower level mechanics did regular maint items like check cables, basic inspections... etc. The story is they had an aircraft in doing regular preventive maint stuff and this kid was in the cockpit checking and changing bulbs. someone asked him if the indicator worked for the engine extinguishers and when he argued there wasn't one, they convinced him you had to pull the charge handle to light it up. Guess what he did? dumped an engine extinguisher into a perfectly good engine.
I know there was some pretty serious ramifications (aside from a complete engine swap) but I don't remember the details.. I'll have to ask him again next time I see him.
My favorite on board ship was sending someone to get bulbs for the smoking lamp.
My favorite on board ship was sending someone to get bulbs for the smoking lamp.
In the Boy Scouts it was a Left-Handed Smoke Shifter.
On my first quarterdeck watch as messenger, I was ordered to go to the main machine shop and ask for a can of red running light oil. Main machine shop sent me to engineering; engineering sent me to repair, repair sent me to the electrical shop, electrical sent me to the print shop; they had me running all over the ship. Ended up back at the quarterdeck for a good laugh. Good way for a new kid to learn his way around.
As Battalion S-4, I used the "bucket of steam" as a judge of character. If the young soldier laughed it off, I knew he'd be a good soldier. If one showed a pi$$ed off attitude, the soldier was likely to be substandard.
On a limited sample size of about 10, it was a pretty accurate test.
Sounds like we need some ba-1100-ns, where’s the noob lets send him right. One of the best jokes was in an F/A-18 squadron... On the tip of the nose of the jet was a #2 Phillips screw so we would tell noobies to go to the back of the airplanes and put a torque tip between the engine exhaust nozzles so we could tighten the radar tip screw.
It never hurts to have a sense of humor, whether one is handing it out or on the receiving end.
New power plant mechanics are told to get a calibrated left-hand metric crescent wrench from the tool room ....
...50 feet of “flight-line.”
One young man with friends in Civil Engineering drove up in a dump truck filled with broken up concrete.
“I got your flight-line for you!”
Such jokes are a betrayal of trust. The person so duped may never believe the joker again. Nor can anyone else trust that person.
You never served! It’s an initiation where you pay your dues!
A “seabat” is a non-existant creature that is put into a large box on deck with a slit in the side so you can see the animal. when the newbie would bend over to look through the slit, someone would whack him on the a*s with a broomstick. (Only one newbie at a time was allowed to look in the box. kept the joke going for a few of them).
There was one we Navy ET’s used to pull. It involves a capacitor and a piece of test equipment called a megger. You charge the capacitor using the megger, then hold it by tit’s body (not touching the leads). When somebody comes in, you throw it to him and say “Catch.”
50 feet of flightline
50 gallons of jetwash
The keys to the airplane (we had a young Lt go all the way up to the Wing King at Whiteman AFB, looking for a set of B-2 keys)
10 gallons of compound K9-P...always ended up at the military working dog section...
At the Lackland AFB bomb dump (in the Medina Training Annex) they sent n00bs to unlock bunker 572...NOTE: 572 used to exist, but went ka-boom in 1963.
We’re there ever any problems with gauges?
You need to get the bottles of Lucas factory smoke for the wiring — the wires tend to leak
When I was in the Navy, we used rolls of carbon paper sandwiched between regular paper. When we got a new sailor, someone ripped the layer of regular paper off the outside of the roll so the outside layer was the carbon paper. He told her that the roll was defective and that to fix it, she would need to unroll all the paper and reroll it with the layer of carbon paper in between the regular paper layers.
The whole time she was unrolling the paper, she kept muttering, “It’s a mail buoy trick. I just know it.”
Finally, the prankster took the roll, ripped off the 20 or so feet she had unrolled, then tore off the outer layers of paper so that the roll was once more layered in the paper-carbon-paper configuration. At that point, the new sailor yelled, “I KNEW it was a mail buoy!”
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