Your Most Interesting thing from Work.

[Owenski]

Something similar has just been started on the drz forum but with all of 9 active members the thread ran dry pretty fast. However this is the org, you lot are a right bunch of freak magnets so come on, whats the most interesting;
Event, Encounter, Experience etc you've had in your working life.

I don't want "my mate Dave once worked with a guy who..." I only want first hand accounts.

Mine was simple, I work in Civil Engineering so the most interesting thing to happen in my working day was the day I first encountered these freaky little buggers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQmFWYWqTZA
(skip to 50seconds to see the sort of thing I saw).
*Disclaimer, not our actual footage but easy enough to find if you search "sewer living blob"

but what about you?!
You public service folk should have some belters!

[Nobbylad]

I once flew a VC-10 over Oxford

[Nobbylad]

Oh...and landed it perfectly

[Spank86]

September used to be interesting when it came time to fit phone lines in student houses, knocking on the doors of houses full of girls at 8am:shock::D

[Dave20046]

I don't want "my mate Dave once worked with a guy who..." I only want first hand accounts.


Thou shalt not use the name Dave in a context which implies it's common as muck

Bet you think I eat pot noodles and work on building sites too.

You make me sick

[Dipper]

Used to work in defense electronics, lots of interesting stuff, for me though most memorable was a trip out to a US Nimitz class carrier, the landing and take off were pretty interesting.

[Wideboy]

I work for mi6, I'm afraid I can't tell you anything

[Spank86]

Thou shalt not use the name Dave in a context which implies it's common as muck

Bet you think I eat pot noodles and work on building sites too.

You make me sick

Of course it's common as muck, even on this forum we have to number them, mr20046. that's a lot of daves even if you're the last.

[Owenski]

lol ^

[Specialone]

I worked in Texas for 2x 1 month periods in 1997, fired guns a lot, went to drag meets, drank virtually every night, was in a nightclub in Houston when it got raided by DEA, got offered a freebie in a strip club within 30 seconds of entering the place ( must've loved my brummie accent).

I could go on...

[johnnyrod]

I was on a sales trip in Serbia a few years ago, went out for evening meal with the agent. Got back to the hotel about 11, and walked in on the final of Miss Serbia 2009 being filmed in the immense lobby of the hotel (Park Hotel in Novi Sad). We'd seen them setting up earlier in the day when we arrived, but nothing was doing when we had left for dinner.

[granty92]

i got hit on the bum with a staple gun 3 times, hurt pretty bad

[timwilky]

Perhaps when
http://retroformula1.com/Williams/images/Williams.FW07.1.jpg
turned up outside the office door

But interesting work would have been playing with explosive bolts:-

We had a problem of cracks developing in spring hanger brackets. Nobody knew how a catastrophic failure would handle at speed. So fabricate a two piece hanger, bolt it together with a bit of explosive in the bolt and set off down the road. At the appropriate place/speed with all the cameras rolling blow it.

[dizzyblonde]

Been knee deep in chocolate quite a few times!

hmmmmm, Well, my job at Willy Wonkas was never that interesting. The thing we wished for the most was for a tin to get stuck on one of the roller conveyors on their way down to be packed up on pallets.

One night we were so busy maintaining the 2700 tins an hour maximum we forgot to watch out for suspicious looking packages threatening to fall off the conveyor above...........

We heard a very large bang.....

Took six hours to fix the conveyor, unjam hundreds of tins on it that were crammed in so tight were impossible to move, and a massive pile as big as a house on their entry point :smt041

The machines have no cut off if such a thing happens, and they keep on churning them out until some dozy sod wakes up and see theres a jam :-s

Not interesting in the slightest to you lot, but hilariously funny to the four of us working at the time.....not so funny for management either :smt030

[The Idle Biker]

I used to work for BT at the time at which it was being privatised. One element of privatisation meant that the new competition had to have access to the BT exchanges to install all their equipment.

These exchanges often had Canteens, games rooms and Bars (yes real Bars with booze from 12-2 and lock-ins:smt030). Our turf (der):rolleyes:

All staff had a briefing on how to greet the competition, work with them, how it was important under Offcom regulations to provide access and equal facilities.

Day 1, twenty or so, Mercury engineers turn up in the canteen. Row ensues between the BT and Mercury guys. Massive all hands on punch up. Cowboy bar room brawl. Lasts for 20 minutes with BT taking the honours and Mercury guys fleeing the building.

Pathetic really, but we were young then. We got suspended for 3 weeks without pay. That was an interesting day. :-)

[Spank86]

I hate to tell you this but it's a lot more boring and a lot dryer now.

[maviczap]

How long have you got. :D

[hindle8907]

I once sent an email to a high up customer asking him if he had green snot in his nickers by mistake.
hehhehe !

[Owenski]

How long have you got. :D


well this is the internet so I guess you're only restricted by your bandwidth, crack on.

[metalmonkey]

I watched the film The Great Escape, projected over the actual escape tunnel whete hut 104 was stood.

[Aidan]

I flew an early Airbus A380 simulator on full hydraulics. I know its not that interesting, but I'm a solicitor, so it was better than pushing paper around my desk!:(

[Owenski]

I once sent an email to a high up customer asking him if he had green snot in his nickers by mistake.
hehhehe !

Ha! I feel your pain.
At my previous employ we worked there at the same time they announced you could send a text to a land line and a woman voice reads it to the recipient. So we were messing about sending messages to the direct dials we all had, one lad wondered if it would read or bleep out insulting profanity. Like a mug I opt'd to try it out, after 15mins of no one's phone in the office ringing we began to question if it had been stopped by the exchange.
I then got a call on my phone to go to the bosses office, the big cheese was struggling to keep a straight face while he told me to wait for my gaffer to get off the phone.
Its around this point I notice my mobile number is written on a piece of paper on a desk between the pair. Brain starts working... Big cheese see's me see the number and slaps his thigh in amusement.
My gaffer finishes on the phone, turns to me and asks:
"Did you not think I would be smart enough to work out who sent the message?"
(I said nothing, I could just feel myself sweating... a lot)
"So you think I'm a big fat fu*k*ng ugly smelly w*n*er, do you"

At this point the big cheese is in tears with laughter.
I offered my explanation which went down like a high school geek at freshers week.
After been sent back to my desk to "stop dic*ing about" I shut the door behind me to hear the big cheese say "you are fuc*ing ugly though" then hysterics from the pair.
Needless to say after the inquisition from my peers in the office we too had a good laugh about it all.

[dkid]

I flew an early Airbus A380 simulator on full hydraulics. I know its not that interesting, but I'm a solicitor, so it was better than pushing paper around my desk!:(

I make the hydraulic systems for the A380. Glad you only flew the simulator ;)

[hindle8907]

Ha! I feel your pain.
At my previous employ we worked there at the same time they announced you could send a text to a land line and a woman voice reads it to the recipient. So we were messing about sending messages to the direct dials we all had, one lad wondered if it would read or bleep out insulting profanity. Like a mug I opt'd to try it out, after 15mins of no one's phone in the office ringing we began to question if it had been stopped by the exchange.
I then got a call on my phone to go to the bosses office, the big cheese was struggling to keep a straight face while he told me to wait for my gaffer to get off the phone.
Its around this point I notice my mobile number is written on a piece of paper on a desk between the pair. Brain starts working... Big cheese see's me see the number and slaps his thigh in amusement.
My gaffer finishes on the phone, turns to me and asks:
"Did you not think I would be smart enough to work out who sent the message?"
(I said nothing, I could just feel myself sweating... a lot)
"So you think I'm a big fat fu*k*ng ugly smelly w*n*er, do you"

At this point the big cheese is in tears with laughter.
I offered my explanation which went down like a high school geek at freshers week.
After been sent back to my desk to "stop dic*ing about" I shut the door behind me to hear the big cheese say "you are fuc*ing ugly though" then hysterics from the pair.
Needless to say after the inquisition from my peers in the office we too had a good laugh about it all.


Quality :) hahaha

[Spank86]

For a while they had Tom baker reading out the messages.

Sent a few to guys at work along the lines of : "this is doctor who, I've come from the future to warn you that you must make Adam and paddy cups of tea or bad things will happen"

[Nobbylad]

I used to work for BT at the time at which it was being privatised. One element of privatisation meant that the new competition had to have access to the BT exchanges to install all their equipment.

These exchanges often had Canteens, games rooms and Bars (yes real Bars with booze from 12-2 and lock-ins:smt030). Our turf (der):rolleyes:

All staff had a briefing on how to greet the competition, work with them, how it was important under Offcom regulations to provide access and equal facilities.

Day 1, twenty or so, Mercury engineers turn up in the canteen. Row ensues between the BT and Mercury guys. Massive all hands on punch up. Cowboy bar room brawl. Lasts for 20 minutes with BT taking the honours and Mercury guys fleeing the building.

Pathetic really, but we were young then. We got suspended for 3 weeks without pay. That was an interesting day. :-)

lol! You used to work for Tommy Telecom? I'm surprised you spent 20 mins brawling without stopping for a brew :smt043

[Aidan]

I make the hydraulic systems for the A380. Glad you only flew the simulator ;)

As I crashed it, I was glad it was just the simulator.

[Supervox]

I DON'T work for MI6 but I still can't tell you anything :-)

[Jayneflakes]

Wow, when did the Org become B3ta? As a regular QOWer, I have a few of these.

Have I ever told you about the creepy bloke I met while working for well known car parts and cycle store? While working behind the Cycle desk, building a kids bike, I was approached for help by a couple in their fifties. As we talked the woman started to get quite cold towards me and then walked out, dragging her husband with her. Thinking nothing of it, I returned to my work.

A couple of days later the chap came back on his own and apologised for his wife's behavior. It turns out that they were experiencing marriage difficulties and he desperately needed to talk to some one. Why he chose to talk to me, I cannot imagine, but maybe telling his wife that he had been experimenting with blokes was not the best idea. Taking photos of himself doing it, probably only made it worse for her, finding out that he had been wearing her clothes at the time was probably too much to take. You then have to ask, why did he share the photos on line?!

My boss, a young guy in his late twenties, nearly wet himself when I explained why my customer had been talking for so long! I was legendary at that store, I got all of the strange ones, it was like they deliberately waited for me. :nomore:

[-Ralph-]

The Polish put photo's on their CV's. Started up a new call centre out there as part of an off shoring exercise and had to do the recruitment (a few years before the polish started coming here in great numbers). The photo's on the CV's were used to their full potential, and we filled a call centre with 200 beautiful young women. Then had some very interesting nights out in Krakow ;-)

[jchu1988]

When I was doing my year-in-industry as an undergrad, I was tasked with testing various fire retardant formulations for a polyurethane company. Some of these formulations worked ok, but other caused the foams to burn far better than the virgin foam. To this day, no one has yet worked out why this is.


Currently, we have used a technique to amplify a 10mW laser to several watts. Just as a reference 10mW is nearly eye safe while several watts can be used to weld steel.

[L3nny]

In 15 years of work not one single thing of interest has ever happened to me. Never get a job on a IT helpdesk.

[dizzyblonde]

Saw about 1000 Walnut Whips shoot up into the air once, when a conveyor snapped.

Seeing a dozen temps jump for cover as the fell like bombs was priceless :lol:

[aaron020873]

Home time! :rolleyes:

[tigersaw]

Many years ago the airport was shut due to snow. So we have a whole night shift to get through and an airport to play with. Gathering a few engine intake covers together, (bit like big fibre glass dustbin lids), we turned all the runway lights onto max and had mile long sled races being towed by the operation guys 4x4's.

But the best night of all was the night of the hurricane - as the wind built up and things became a bit serious we were all sent out to gather debris and protect the parked aircraft all all cost. Now some of the debris was huge aluminium hold containers bouncing down the taxiway at 20 mph - ramming them out of the way and crushing them into corners with a unimog was pretty amazing

[metalmonkey]

Ironing board racing at a compnay house was funny, then the large amounts of helium I have used thy not sure which was funnier!

[MisterTommyH]

Hearing a client of ours asking why one of our drawings had 'f*** knows number thus' rather than 'X number thus' marked on a section was interesting.... and one of those stories that has become legendary in the office.

The draughtsman had asked how many of these are there.... The engineer had replied 'F*** knows' and it went from there.

[DJFridge]

While I was working in construction some years ago, we had a digger removing topsoil ready for a new access road. According to the plans of the site we'd been given, power and communication cables were running a foot out from the boundary wall and three feet down. The JCB driver was quite surprised when 6 feet out and less than a foot down he caught them with his bucket. There was a loud bang and alarms started going off as all the monitors etc in the security building went out. It was 20 years ago but I suspect the Official Secrets Act still forbids me from saying which military establishment this was!

[barwel1992]

I'm make race car and bike dampers for öhlins it's usually pretty interesting, get to work with so very tric bits of kit from basic stuf right up to f1 grade custom made one off stuf, we Do a lot of work with in a vast amount of motorsport eg f1,f2,f3,formula Renault, lmp1 proto types , lmp2 , btcc ,wtcc ,gt3 ,gt1 ,classics ,mx ,road bike,road car just to name a few,

We currently look after the whole f2 field of about 120 dampers and rebellion racing the only prototype team to be beating Audi and there a privateer ! We also do custom fabrication like making a set of TTX46 fit a porsche boxer s for hartech racing , then won on its second race outing ect ect ect

Also have use of a machine shop so make loads of stuf for my self

So yeh my jobs very interesting

[Messie]

I taught Damon Albarn

[dizzyblonde]

I taught Damon Albarn

:-s

I know you're old, but you can't be that old??....:smt073

[Messie]

Yep, 24 years ago, at Colchester Sixth Form College

[Fallout]

Pah. Work is boring. Hardly any interesting stories to tell.

Only vaguely interesting thing I can think of is when a company brought Segways to demonstrate them at work when I worked for IBM. We got to rag those around a gravel car park, wheel spinning them and stuff. One of my work mates asked if they could be crashed if you turned too tightly. He was told no. I chased him down the road on my segway and he tried to get his knees down and ended up in a bush with the Segway on the floor.

It was funny. I'm not sure if the demo people found it as amusing.

[metalangel]

I'm hoping to get to ride in the cab of a Heathrow Express train before I finish my job here.

[carpet monster]

I fired a machine gun out of a helicopter once

[Lozzo]

I met Messie in my shop once... and I sat chatting to Stirling Moss, Phil Collins, and a few other celebs inbetween phone calls while their Jaguars were having work done on the interiors. When I had my own car trimming business I installed leather trim into Tamsin Outhwaite's Honda CR-V and got a nice Thank You card from her afterwards.

Highlight has to be going with my old boss to deliver his old C-Type Jaguar to Nick Cage's house in LA when he sold it to him. I had to drive the hire car to collect the boss and take him to the airport before flying back to Indiana with him.

I used to love working in the classic Jaguar business, but the stress was incredible at times.

[sv_rory]

I met Messie in my shop once... and I sat chatting to Stirling Moss, Phil Collins, and a few other celebs inbetween phone calls while their Jaguars were having work done on the interiors. When I had my own car trimming business I installed leather trim into Tamsin Outhwaite's Honda CR-V and got a nice Thank You card from her afterwards.

Highlight has to be going with my old boss to deliver his old C-Type Jaguar to Nick Cage's house in LA when he sold it to him. I had to drive the hire car to collect the boss and take him to the airport before flying back to Indiana with him.

I used to love working in the classic Jaguar business, but the stress was incredible at times.


do you still do trimming?

[Lozzo]

Nope, packed it all in over ten years ago and went back to the bike trade. I've sold most of the kit I accumulated while I was doing it and only have a few useful handtools left

[sv_rory]

ah that kinda sucks, I was after somebody to retrim my bike seats for me

[dirtydog]

Nothing particularly exciting happened when I ran a chip shop, had a well known MP and her husband stagger through the door one night a bit worse for wear. Damon Hill was also a customer.
Job after that was working for a large cash courier company and going into places like LloydsTSB cash centres was quite interesting seeing millions, possibly even billions of pounds stacked floor to ceiling.
Current job is plumbing so nothing particularly exciting ever happens, funniest was I was a a womans flat to fix a leaking radiator which was in the bedroom. She showed me to the room/radiator and when I turned around I noticed her battery powered boyfriend on the bed (if you see what I mean ;)) at this point the woman has realised she's left it out and dived across the room throwing her duvet over the bed

[Specialone]

Current job is plumbing so nothing particularly exciting ever happens, funniest was I was a a womans flat to fix a leaking radiator which was in the bedroom. She showed me to the room/radiator and when I turned around I noticed her battery powered boyfriend on the bed (if you see what I mean ;)) at this point the woman has realised she's left it out and dived across the room throwing her duvet over the bed

Lol, she wanted you to see that mate :thumbsup:

[sv_rory]

Lol, she wanted you to see that mate :thumbsup:


I would of made a cheeky comment, is it only the radiator that's leaking :P

[joshwalker094]

:winner::smt041I would of made a cheeky comment, is it only the radiator that's leaking :P

[The Idle Biker]

Lol, she wanted you to see that mate :thumbsup:

Exactly what I thought. If she was a looker I would have been in like Flynn. Wehay!:smt041

[Specialone]

Exactly what I thought. If she had a pulse, I would have been in like Flynn. Wehay!:smt041

Corrected for you mate, ive heard you're not fussy lol

[Ratty]

I work in a place that 'trusts' Security to DavePreston !! Enough said.

[Viney]

All manner of stuff when i used to DJ. I done a deaf disco once, that was very very bizzare. Shedloads of bass, and they all just sort of got off with each other and didnt dance! Met oh too many 'celebs' whilst working erm, thats about it.

As for my day job nothing interesting happens in that although i currently reside in an old Morgue. You do hear funny noises that cant be explained every now and again.

[daveyrach]

All manner of stuff when i used to DJ. I done a deaf disco once, that was very very bizzare. Shedloads of bass, and they all just sort of got off with each other and didnt dance! Met oh too many 'celebs' whilst working erm, thats about it.

As for my day job nothing interesting happens in that although i currently reside in an old Morgue. You do hear funny noises that cant be explained every now and again.

My son is deaf, low frequency sounds is what they hear best if at all, he loves metal music (I.e Slipknot etc). He struggles with High frequency sounds, I find it funny that without his Implant and hearing aid he can hear me but not his mum.

[Iansv II]

I almost tipped my lunch all over Eddie Jordan once.. someone pushed him out of the way though.. dang:(

plenty of other stuff but long stories I can't be arsed to type out

[Neeja]

Silly insurance claim appeals I've dealt with:

Someone's claim was declined after his insurance was declared void as he didn't inform us that he was planning on selling the phone within minutes of buying it (among other reasons).

He wrote an appeal to us that stated that he didn't sell the phone, he was merely exchanging it for money.



Someone's phone came out of a pocket and was flung away while on a rollercoaster and it was unable to be found. Policy didn't cover for the loss of a phone.

Appeal stated that, while the policy didn't cover for loss, it did cover for accidental damage, and it was inconceivable that the phone had been flung that far and didn't break when it hit the floor...and therefore they should be covered as it would have been damaged before it was lost.


Someone's dog ate their phone. They were unable to recover it...afterwards.

Same argument used - dog must have chewed it up, so must be damaged and not lost. Obviously.

[daveyrach]

Silly insurance claim appeals I've dealt with:

Someone's claim was declined after his insurance was declared void as he didn't inform us that he was planning on selling the phone within minutes of buying it (among other reasons).

He wrote an appeal to us that stated that he didn't sell the phone, he was merely exchanging it for money.



Someone's phone came out of a pocket and was flung away while on a rollercoaster and it was unable to be found. Policy didn't cover for the loss of a phone.

Appeal stated that, while the policy didn't cover for loss, it did cover for accidental damage, and it was inconceivable that the phone had been flung that far and didn't break when it hit the floor...and therefore they should be covered as it would have been damaged before it was lost.


Someone's dog ate their phone. They were unable to recover it...afterwards.

Same argument used - dog must have chewed it up, so must be damaged and not lost. Obviously.

The dog one i agree with it wasn't technically lost as they knew where it ws.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S2 using Tapatalk 2

[Neeja]

Should probably have mentioned that they didn't actually see the dog eat it...

But regardless, loss doesn't necessarily mean that you can't know where the item is - you could drop something into a drain accidentally, and it is lost if you can't recover it.

[Lozzo]

I almost tipped my lunch all over Eddie Jordan once.. someone pushed him out of the way though.. dang:(

plenty of other stuff but long stories I can't be arsed to type out

I poured a glass of red wine in Michael Rutter's lap in a Slough pizza restaurant in 2001. He was helping us open the new Gericke shop there and we all went on a bender after the big opening. I still owe him the dry cleaning costs.

[Winder]

Not the most interesting but was quite recent and very funny.
I'm a firefighter and we got called to a house where an elderly lady had fallen down the stairs and was lying against the front door. No windows were open and the door was obviously blocked, so we would have to break entry.
My boss got on the radio to our control with the message "Breaking entry as firefighters are unable to arouse elderly lady", this was broadcast to every radio in the county and through our speaker at the back of the fire engine. The coppers and paramedics were p155ing themselves.