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 just pass it on!
This is a form of hazing that newbies have to go thru to be accepted into the group.
Can easily get out of hand, but when relatively mild I don’t think it’s terribly harmful.
Once handed a new guy a styrofoam cup and asked him to get me half a cup of a particular solvent. Well, of course the solvent went right thru the bottom of the cup like it wasn’t there. Funny at the time.
Sending someone for a bucket of striped paint was a good one. Also, a wire stretcher.
No they’re not. They’re part of bringing somebody into the crew. Hazing is a vital part of team building. Back in my fastfood days we’d send people for the left handed ice scoop and the vat cover. Then there’d be laughter, and eventually they’d send somebody on a fool’s errand.
“Such jokes are a betrayal of trust.”
And, I believe, the subsequent comment was usually “Screw’em if they can’t take a joke.”
I went through my rites a couple of times and put others through them as well.
We all got along just fine.
150 blue emery sparks, 1 qt. of MIL-L-K9P, etc.
I was in the Marine Corps and worked on radios in the Air Wing. Our favorite ploy was to send the new guy to requisition some "frequency grease". We actually had a dummy requisition form for that that had to get signed by various officers.
The officers in our squadron were all aware of the ruse so they'd feed into it by approving it at their level and sending the poor guy to the next ranking officer. Once in a while, he'd get all the way to the CO to "requisition some frequency grease" but most of them smartened up enough well before then.
We'd also send newbies "down to the basement" to get something. Of course, our squadron building didn't have a basement and it was always fun to see them checking all the doors in the building looking for the basement stairs.
But the best one of all was the one we would pull at the 29 Palms combat center. For those who don't know the place, it's an isolated (but very large) base smack in the middle of the Mojave desert where combat operations are simulated.
The newbies would always be put on guard duty rotation where they would have to patrol the buildings at night. There was one particular building surrounded by barbed wire fences and was where we kept our cryptology radio gear and other high security stuff. At night, the fences were locked and only the one Marine on guard duty was left there to walk the perimeter.
Well we would tell some of the more gullible ones them that there was a top secret submarine base there and that there was a underground tunnel full of seawater that ran all the way out to the Pacific - about 150 miles away. We also told them that this was top secret and that if they ever repeated this to the wrong person, they would be made to "disappear" or die in some "accident", like some other Marines before them. Some would immediately call BS but others would get that wide-eyed look and you knew you had them! At least for a little while.
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!