This has probably been done before, but I could not find it when I did a subject search on this forum, so I’ll try it again anyway.
Does anyone have any amusing tricks/pranks you like to play on the new guy? For example, telling him to get a board stretcher or a left-handed hammer or something like that?
On my first job, which was at a steak house when I was 16, a couple of tricks they liked to play was to get the new person to “refill the water fountain” and “add some coal to the broiler”. Of course, the fountain was attached to the building water supply, but that didn’t stop the occaisional newbie from pouring bucket after bucket of water down the drain. Nor did we fail from time to time to get one to go looking for the coal to put into the gas-fired broiler.
Just a little off the wall humor from a repressed carpenter!
–Dan
Replies
Dan,
I worked in the printing industry for almost 20 years. The 1st day on the job, no matter what, the new guy was sent around the shop looking for the "paper stretcher". Every person in the shop was in on it. We would literally run the guy around for hours looking for it.
That's a great one about re-filling the water fountain.
Lee
Too many years in the print industry:"Go get me a box of half-tone dots""Ever felt warm red ink?""That machine [jogger] is a paper massager. You use it to get the paper to relax before you use it.""Light the lamp, not the rat! Light the lamp, not the rat!!"
Rizzo the Rat, A Muppet Christmas Carol
Paretsky,
Ahhhh... the elusive box of half-tone dots! I worked on the presses, so I never had that one pulled on me personally, but I have felt just how warm the warm red can be.... only once! HA HA HA!
Cheers,
Lee
I work at a woodworking outlet store and we set out displays of "What you can do's" We have a dinner sized plate made of OSB core plywood. Many people believe me when I tell them that it is a tropical exotic lumber, but then I smile and tell them the truth.Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
During the Viet Nam war I was a brand new enzyme on a minesweeper standing my second bridge watch as OOD. About 0100 hours I got a call over the intercom from the radio man who said "Sir, we've lost power to the MX-993/U. What should I do?" Everyone on the bridge was looking at me and I had no idea what the thing was, much less what to do about it's losing power. Just as I was about to call and wake up the Captain to report a failed piece of communications equipment, the quartermaster stopped me and said, "Sir, that's his flashlight. Tell him to put new batteries in it" and everyone had a good laugh at my expense.BruceT
When I was in the Navy, we used to give the new Seaman Apprentice a long pole with a hook on the end and station him on the bow of the ship,while underway, at parade rest as the Mail Bouy. His job: use the pole to pick up mail out of the ocean!
Ask the new guy to go get a hammerfour...
(I'll let you figure out the rest)
>> Ask the new guy to go get a hammerfour...Have him get me a henway while he's at it."Light the lamp, not the rat! Light the lamp, not the rat!!"
Rizzo the Rat, A Muppet Christmas Carol
Am I the only one who thinks these pranks are childish and a waste of time?I got one once (but should have known better) when I was 16, at my first job. At that point, I swore if it ever happened again, I'd head off, find a place to rest and hide for a couple of hours and let the jokers just keep working while I relaxed.
"Am I the only one who thinks these pranks are childish and a waste of time?"
Of course they are -- that's why we love 'em!Woody
When I was working is steel fab a lifetime ago when a new guy decided he wanted to try welding he always got a welding hood with paper or some other item in between the lenses. Always fun to watch someone try to weld blind that didn't know any better. Always fun to through a small milk carton filled with gas under someone who was using a cutting torch.
mousejockeyOver the Hill? What Hill? I didn't see any Hill!
Yes....yes you are. lol
Of course it's childish and a waste of time. That's the definition of a prank, I think.
I'm okay with pranks that neither harm or seriously humiliate another person. Obviously, some pranks do step over the line. When they do, the prankster clearly has a problem and I have no difficulty in telling him so.
Every so often, though, I think we all need to distract ourselves from our work--tell a joke, play a prank, take a break that is way too long, and so on. Some mild humor (notice I said mild) helps to keep me sane.
--Dan
Reading all these replies reminds me of the time my Shop Teacher sent ME down to the custodians office for a 100 watt lightbulb. The custodian did not have any and I did not dare return without the requested bulb. So... I promptly returned with a 60 and a 40 watt bulb in hand. My comment to the teacher was that the custodian didn't have the 100 watter he wanted, but I figured these two added up to 100, so they should be perfect for thhe job. Funny, he never sent me on strange errands again.
SawdustSteve
On the first day of my tool & die apprenticeship I was expecting the usual pranks like the blue sky hook or the tubing stretcher (very similar to the board stretching model). After lunch my journeyman sent me to the crib for a banjo.
Since I am smarter than most I didn't fall for it. After 15 minutes walking around shop I returned and told him they were out of them. The guy acted all huffy and told me to get my butt to the crib to get a banjo.
Again I return without it. Then "Big John" (Very Big) grabbed me by the shoulder and marched me to the crib. He pointed to a jig hanging on the wall and said "That is a Band-Joe" and then let a smart a$$ kid have it up one side and down the other.
A Band-Joe is a tool that is used to tighten a double wire loop on rubber hose so it clamps down on a nipple. Big John had me make hoses for every job in the department. I wasn't as smart as I was but I can still run a Band-Joe with my eye's closed.
Cliff, First time responding.
A tube of relative bearing grease.
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It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump. ~David Ormsby Gore
David,
Can I use that on an overbearing uncle?
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
I had a 2nd Lt in the Corp that thought his only duty was to insult the enlisted men. During an inspection a Colonel asked me to fire up a gama-goat. The Lt said something to the effect of if he knows how. Being the smart Alec lance corporal I climbed in and feigned starting the truck. Acted terrified and told the Lt that I needed the keys to the hydro-static lock, it won't start with out them. The Lt ran to his crutch (The Gunny ) who said ours was back ordered but we could borrow one from the next Battalion over. Off the Lt went. The Colonel nearly rolled on the floor laughing. That was the day the Lt learned to give respect to get it.
In Michigan a winter trip to the Upper Peninsula for a long weekend of snow mobiling is standard fare. The new guy will always find his insulated snow suit "rock solid" in the morning. The old timers somehow manage to soak it in water and leave it outside overnight. It's a tough lesson.Frosty
When i was working in a shop in Paris there was a guy who came in in the morning and performed a sort of ritual in taking off his coat, hang it in the closet, taking off his hat and putting it on a shelf, he did it exactly the same way and he was very fussy about it.
For about a month I put a strip of paper in the inside band of his hat, the other guys, in on the joke, were making subtle comments about the size of his head changing.
Boy did he get pissed when he found out ! Didn't talk to anybody for a month !
Of course we didn't laugh at all !
C.
In our electrical shop, we'll have the new guy go find a selenium rectifier. Same deal - he'll run around for hours looking for one before one of our vendors will accidentally blow it.
We've also done some more obvious ones, like have him go get some turn signal fluid for the plant truck or get some connectors made of unobtainium. Usually, only the really green ones fall for those.
I would have asked for something that doesn't exist, not something the shop didn't have. Selenium rectifiers aren't as common as they were but I own a couple of guitar amps that have them.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I knew a guy with the marine version of a speed shop, where they also did fiberglas hull repairs. If they had an FNG who wasn't particularly bright, they would hand him a styrofoam cup and tell him to get some acetone. Usually took about three times before they realized it was never gonna hold it for more than about a second.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I remember Selenium Rectifiers. They did exist at one time. Put off noxious fumes when they would blow out. In my first school in the Army there was one guy that would purposely blow them out so he could leave class and go take a nap.
I worked with aircraft electronics. Our favorites were frequency grease, prop wash, and filght line.
Good one!
Reminds me of one of my father's hi jinx. There was a guy who was driving everyone crazy talking about how economical his car was. Getting a bit tired of hearing this day after day, Dad started putting gas in his tank. Pretty soon the car was 'averaging' 75mpg. The guy was insufferable, as you might imagine. Then, unscrupulous SOB that he was, Dad started siphoning gas out...
The guys in the custom woodshop i worked in sent one guy looking for the woodstretcher, after asking several guys where to look they directed him to go ask the owner of the company who was in the showroom on the other side of the property. When asked, the owner, without flinching, sent him up on the roof!
In the Navy, we'd send the new guys out for a bucket of steam or a can of bulkhead remover. The Electricians would sent their noobies out for light bulb repair kits. I was in the weld shop and they sent me out for a fifty pound box of mohagany welding rods. I was on to them though and spend a few hours chatting with some buddies. The Phone Techs would toss you a charged capaciter (low voltage). Once in a while even the older guys would instinctively catch it. Once.
Where I work now we send them to the office to get the keys to the basement. (The entire building sits on a huge concrete slab.)
ChuckN and I have nothing of value to add to this discussion.
I guess squids are hopeless pranksters, relative bearing grease, bucket of live steam, left handed monkey wrench, sky hooks. Having served in the Gator freighter Navy on an LST, Our favorite was to send a Newbie through the chain of command to get the "Keys to the Bow Doors" or Send them out to find the "Golden Rivet" ( A symbolic rivet that brought the ship & crew good luck if the whole crew knew where it was located).Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
This wasn't to a newbie but..........
I worked in marine construction for a number of years as a dock builder and a diver. We had small crews on the barge and you always worked partners with someone. Our boss was affectionately known as the Tasmanian Devil and if you weren't on deck before 7am your day and week was ruined.
I was transferred to another barge and on Friday decided to have some fun with my partner. Of course I screwed his tool boxes down but I also got to his coveralls which I tied in very tight knots and since he was the welder on the crew did the same thing to his leathers. I also got his welding mask and coated the lens with electrical tape.
Needless to say Monday morning was a riot for everyone but him. I didn't see him for almost three months when all the crews arrived in the yard at the same time one night.
He said hello and all of a sudden was chasing me. Thankfully I was able to outrun this very large fellow.
I've since moved into this trade, but whenever we see each other he always tells me that was the best he ever got "got"
Imagine women doing these types of things to each other for a laugh?
Peter
12 years old it was the end of the school year and was time to spring clean the classroom. Looking at the floor the teacher asked me to go to the next door classroom and get some elbow grease.
Needless to say I returned empty handed~!"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!" -Goethe
Coaches have forever been sending some kid to get the keys for the batters box. I once sent an eigth grader all over for the final scores for electoral college. The math teacher finally told him,"I don't know the score but they played stupid U."
BJGardening, cooking and woodworking in South'n Murlyn'
Speaking of women in the trades/work place, my niece started as a carpenter with a new set of tools and being a trusting soul, soon found some of them missing. Not all at once, but occasionally missing a particularly innovative or new tool. Suspecting some thievery/chicanery, one weekend she painted all her tools a nice pale pink! Never lost a tool after that!
I spent several years on an aircraft carrier. The three errands I remember are "Go get me".... "a hundred feet of shoreline", "a gallon of propwash" and "an overhead swab (mop)".
You know, if a guy who works in a woodworking shop can be convinced to go look for anything on the roof, he deserves everything he got! LOL!
--Dan
In my job as electrician I once had a green first year pulling wire for me with a second year apprentice while I followed behind and did the splicing. As the circuit colours changed a asked the apprentice to go get some blue amps to put into the wire before I spliced them wires. I told him that I had lots of blue amps but could not use them because I would cause a phase to phase short circuit. he spent about an hour looking and finally found an empty box labelled blue amps at the very front of the service truck. Of course every one was in on the joke because he pretty much had to empty the truck to get at the empty box. then when he did finally get to the box on the opposite side was written"you've been had, now get back to work"
My wife was dropping the car off to get the oil changed one day, I asked her to get them to check the flux capacitor...
I don't recommend doing this to your wife.
Haha, thats a good one. I love those movies, got the shirt to prove it.
You're a braver man than I am.
--Dan
A while back, there was a huge thread on this stuff on Breaktime. The building trades are chock full of stuff like that. Screwing a toolbox down to the decking, nipping the heads off screws and hot gluing them to the newly installed counter top, get a sky hook, left handed screwdriver, a bucket of steam, etc etc. Done quite a few to the green.
My Pop was a chef and taught food service in vo-tech, and often sent one of his students off to the supply room to get the seasoning 'snodsgrassen'. When a freshly baked cake would be turned out too soon by a student it would start to break apart and Dad would yell for somebody to run and get the cake glue.
Every trade does it.
I need to get over to Breaktime some more. Only been there a couple of times but it seems to be a pretty decent forum.
--Dan
Aviation mechanics always send the new guy running around the airport looking for a bottle of 'prop wash.' Some kid came by our flying club one day asking for some, I think they sent him off to the nearby big box mall to look for it.
Now, that would probably have gotten me as well, not knowing much about aviation. And it sounds just legitimate enough to be possible. Which of course makes it a perfect prank!
--dan
Hi Dan,
Back in the old days of computers with 80 column puch cards and the card reader punch, it would fill the bucket on a daily basis. As the lead operator was always needing new cards he would ask the newbie to fetch the bit bucket and some boxes of used cards and glue the chips back into the cards so he could recycle them. "And make sure you get the numbers in the right holes!"
Another one was to ask the newbie to recollate the multipart paper, i.e. put the carbon paper back in, between blank sheets of continuous form paper.
Perhaps the best one was when we would ask the new receptionist to place a blank sheet of paper in the copier and printed paper in the feeder so she could blank out the printed sheets. This one worked every time!
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Hey Bob,
Punch cards were just a bit before my time (I'm 38). Did you ever actually get someone to try to put all those punches back into the card? Man, that could take days!
--Dan
Dan,
All are true.
You should have seen the look on one guys face when we told him that the chips were in the wrong place! Another operator asked for a putty knife to remove the cards that became glued to the table he was working on.
The receptionist eventually became a VP at Wang Labs!
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
many years ago when I was working at a boy scout camp, we used to get the 'left handed smoke shifter' gag that would be played an new kids. We had this quartermaster for the camp that took an old fan and a bunch of other pieces of metal, wood, canvas etc. and made this absurd looking contraption. When ever a kid would come looking for the left handed smoke shifter, he would with a straight face check it out to him -- the gag would just go on and on.Dan Carroll
One summer in college I was the new kid working on a construction crew, new to this crew but had done it several summers. One old carpenter that was a real jerk cut a board too short the first day so he handed it to me and told me to take it down to the "board stretcher" and make it longer, and not to come back until I had it done! It was hot and we were up on the 3rd floor. I went down and simply cut another board the right length, got a cold drink, flirted with a girl in the office, listened to the stereo, and finally wandered back maybe 30 minutes later. Handed the board to the carpenter and told him I couldn't find his board stretcher but I had one on my trcuk. Sorry it took so long but I had only a small board stretcher and it took a while. I had also used some vise grips to leave marks on both ends of the board, and then apologized for leaving the marks. Told the whole story with a straight face, really had him and most of the crew wondering.
He spent several hours worrying about if I really had a board stretcher so he pulled it again. I explained what I had done and would be glad to go kill another 30 minutes goofing off but I really figured I was more use staying on the job. Everyone but him had a good laugh. He pulled a lot of silly tricks on other newbies but never messed with me again.
From the teaching world- my wife's first year teaching middle school one of the coaches/science teacher sent a goofy kid to her room to ask if he could borrow some fallopian tubes. With a perfectly straight face she told the kid that she was still using hers but the coaches wife taught a few rooms down, maybe he could get hers. Years later he ended up as a principal and she transferred to his school. They still laugh about that one.
Growing up, I worked in bike (bicycle) shops. The best one we ever pulled on a newbie, was to take him out on the floor, let some air out of one of the tires, turned in disgust & said that the air was bad. He would then need to check the rest of the bikes on the floor (45+) and change the air if it smelled bad..
He spent the next couple hours letting air out of tires and refilling them. We made this a weekly gig until a couple months later when finally caught on.
.....reminds me of high school when one of the coaches sent me to deliver a 25lb weight to another of the coaches who sent me to another, and so on. It got pretty heavy.
There are more old drunkards than old doctors. Ben Franklin
Worked in a grocery store where there was a cover plate on the cash registers. When removed, the cashier could insert a crank handle to manually operate the register in case the power had failed.
When the newest member of our bagging crew showed up for work, the power just happened to go out. I quickly told him to run to the gas station and ask for a spark plug for the register, showing him the cover plate & telling him that the plug fits behind it. Twenty or so minutes later he showed up w/ an old spark plug and handed it to the lead cashier who promptly showed it to the manager who then promptly had me scrubbing the bathroom floors.
Telling the newbie to cut something "74 inches to the long point of a 90* angle" will bend the brains of most. Boy, some of them get upset!
Regards,
Sean
Many years ago, when working in a shop, they sent me to get a Metric Crescent wrench.
I disappeared for a few hours (got breakfast) and stopped into my shop.
I came back and handed him a perfectly good Metric Crescent wrench, told him it was mine and he could borrow it for the day. But could't find a new one in the store.
Had them scratching their heads for a while.
Next they asked for a Metric Phillips screwdriver a day later.
I did they same thing.
I used to work on European bicycles with a set of European tools all marked in Metric sizes.
And they thought I was pulling their legs till I explained.
I hate to admit it, but.... I've sent guys for the keys for the oar lock, 200 feet of shore line and even some spinal cord. But... my all-time favorite is the metric adjustable wrench.
SawdustSteve
In the shop I work in i always keep a bottle of hand moisturizer next to my tablesaw ( i find a bit of it on my hands keeps them from slipping and causing and accident). one day i noticed the new guy was coming over 5-6 times a day and helping himself to some without asking. a few days later i emptied the bottle and refilled it with white glue. needless to say it was the last time he did that.
-pjw
I have pulled some good ones on the new help in twenty years with Burger KIng. ONe day at a small town store I told a new trainee that we were out of whopper meat and needed a couple hundred pounds. He was half way across the field outback before the manager stopped laughing enough to yell for him to come back in. Then there was the time when I told a new girl that the reason the Burgers were coming out in pieces was because the "Broiler Rats" were eating them, I even got her to set a trap. One time when we had a corporate inspector in town I told him wrong directions to get to the store across town. Recently we hired a new IT guy that has a chip on his shoulder and crashed the system at a property during the lunch rush. I told him that he needed to stop in at the Puxico store on the way home and check out their system. He was dumb enough to fall for it and drove an hour out of his way to a town of about 150 with no Burger King.
lol. Maybe he should have thanked you. You were, after all, just trying to keep you hands from slipping. What better way than to glue them to the wood?
--Dan
I started my career repairing medical equipment in a VA general medical surgical hospital. The government had a social program at that time that resulted in them occasionally hiring a discharged mental patient from the local VA psychiatric center (a practice that was unknown to me).
My first day in the shop, one of these gentleman was attempting to use a drill in reverse and was creating quite a plume of smoke in a metal plate. One of the experienced guys in the shop suggested I go over and tell him the drill was reversed. I did so attempting to be helpful, and quickly had the guy’s face two inches from mine cursing me at the top of his lungs with spittle flying everywhere, he then proceeded to throwing the drill into the wall before storming out of the shop. The experienced guy who new what would happen, thought this was quite funny. Hardee, Har.
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