Goose Hunts

[ExGeeEye]

Have you ever been in one of those jobs where the old hands amuse themselves during slow time by sending the newbies out on wild goose chases or meaningless tasks?

Examples: in an Army motor pool, sending a newbie out with a ball peen hammer to check for soft spots in a tank's armor...or to find a box of ground guides...

...in a photo lab: "these are blurry, go get me some focussing fluid..."

...in the Air Force: "a roll of flight line..."

Add your own!

[Xenalyte]

When Bacon and I worked at a neighborhood grocery store in high school, our assistant managers used to call the chain store down the street and ask if they carried sliced bleu cheese.

[camle]

you mean like left-handed monkey wrenches? sky hooks? or (my fave) chickenfat ripple ice cream?

[So Cal Rocket]

No, but in High School, I did convince a girl to go watch the evening submarine races with me.

[papineau]

Here in the QA dept. of a software development company we send the newbies to IT to borrow the "data compressor".

[Khurkris]

In the printing business with paper roll-fed printing machine..."Hey assistant, go get me a paper-stretcher"

[sean327]

Here are my two favorites,

When I was at 29 Palms we used to send the newbies down to one of the firing batteries to get 100 yards of gun line.
The next one goes like this; Before we would roll out in convoy out to a field-op you send the newbie to the Gunny to get the radio for the trail vehicle. You tell him he needs to ask the Gunny for the PRIC-E7. Both were always good for laughs. Semper Fi

[Arrowhead1952]

Years ago as a mechanic for GM, one of the first thing a newbie was sent to buy at the parts house was a muffler bearing. The first parts house was always sold out, and we knew to call the other part houses and let them in on the joke.

Years later after joining the guard, our favorite for the newbies was sending them all over post trying to sign out the keys to the parade field.

[EuroFrog]

chemlite batteries, riser grease, 4 bolt gasket stretcher, box of grid squares

[irishtenor]

I work for the airplane industry... We send them out for buckets of jet wash, metric hammers, digital screwdrivers, left hand screwdrivers, etc.

[JimSEA]

I worked for Magma Copper Co. for many years. A majority of the underground miners were Mexican American. During the summer, the company hired a lot of college students to fill in on vacations, etc. One of these summer hires was assigned to a guy whose English was not so good. The miner, without looking up from his work, asked the kid to go, "get me the, you know thee . . . . uh, chingadora(f'ing thing in Spanish), you know." Still trying to remember the word in English, he looked up to see that the kid had run off asking everyone he saw where he could find a "chingadora". Much fun was had by all.

[arthurus]

Get me a muffler bearing for a 71 Edsel two tone.

[gcruse]

...in a photo lab: "these are blurry, go get me some focussing fluid..."

I don't think anyone is that stupid.  But the first couple of weeks I worked at Meisel Photochrome, one of the largest pro labs in the country at the time, the enlarger operator I was learning from asked me to go get a negative stretcher.  I had been out of the Navy for about a year and told him I wasn't naive.

So he went and go it himself.  Argh.  Imagine a 4x5 negative carrier with little teeth along opposite sides of the hole cutout.  There was a knob on the handle your turned to make the little teeth move out, grab the edges of the negative, then pull the negative taut in the carrier.  This would keep a negative from popping out of focus due to heating up during printing.  This was better than using glass carriers because of the extra dust collecting surface on glass carriers and their tendency to have newton rings. Yes, Virginia, there are negative stretchers.  LOL

[TMSuchman]

I always needed a BA1100N from the flight line sweepers, at MCAS Yuma.

[TMSuchman]

Don't forget a can of muzzle blast, for the arty guys!

[Sauce]

Someone go get me a beater (hammer), and a pipe stretcher (oxy-acetylene torch).

[ExGeeEye]

We did the "PRC-E7" in the Army too...

Also, for map reading, a box of grid squares...or a grid coordinator.