Okay two things. First of all, whoever cropped this picture is an idiot.
Second of all the master level of this prank happened to my dad before I was born.
He, and several of his brothers, worked in the construction of the Sears Tower in Chicago. They’d routinely use the crane to get to whatever floor they were working on. My dad was the newest guy, and one time they told him to go get the coffee from the truck at the bottom. So down he went, but then some wiseass told him he couldn’t take the coffee up on the crane. So he walked. And walked. And walked. It took a month of Sundays to make it to the work site. It was either the funniest or worst thing ever, depending on which of my family members was retelling the story.
“A month of sundays” - idiom for “a very long time”. Dropping this for others who might not know it (please ignore)
No I won’t ignore, thank you. I was very confused, thinking how hot the coffee had to be, to still be warm after a month
In highschool I worked a shitty job at a butchery, and one day the boss decided to “test how smart” I was or something by asking me to get him 1000 wooden skewers out of the box.
Being an attention to detail kind of person, I spent a few minutes counting out 1000 cos I wanted to make sure I gave him exactly what he asked for - wouldn’t want a customer to order 1000 and get 995 or something cos I miscounted right?
Apparently not, cos that was the dumb way to do it - boss slapped 10 skewers on the scale then weighed out 100x that and was really proud until I pointed out that the certificate of accuracy only guaranteed the scale to +/- 2 skewers, then apparently I’m a “smart ass”. Can’t win with some people
The correct response when someone calls you a smartass is “It’s better than being a dumbass”
Having worked many years in a warehouse, including picking, putting away, and inventorying tiny parts, I can assure you of one thing. The relevancy of the scale’s accuracy is inversely proportionate to how long you’ve been working there.
I’ve definitely counted paper the same way. Basically needed to sort short pieces of paper by the thousands. We weighed something like 20-25 sheets then used that weight as a measurement.
If you need a perfect count, then you’re correct about the accuracy, but generally a few off here and there isn’t that big a deal. Many companies will allow for some error because it isn’t worth the time to track it down to perfection. This applies even to food standards: the FDA allows up to 60 insect parts per 100g of chocolate (coffee, the cutoff is “Average 10% or more by count are insect-infested or insect-damaged”). They also allow mold up to a certain %. 4% for coffee, and I’m seeing some say 10% for certain fruits. You can see lists here: https://www.fda.gov/food/current-good-manufacturing-practices-cgmps-food-and-dietary-supplements/food-defect-levels-handbook
Perfection is expensive, cheat a little. Your boss may have been annoying, but in general he’s more correct than you were.
I would happily do that.
My first thought is “great, I’m in back of house, don’t have to deal with customers and am basically getting paid to fidget”.
That’s when I would realize it was too good to be true.
sometimes I got tasks like that when I worked in a smoothie shop, it was like “this sucks, we have to write our phone number by hand on a thousand promo cups because they screwed up the printing.”
I was like “DAMN! i guess ill just get to it. I mean, we have to get it done at some point, right?”
everyone thought I was a martyr for neglecting our customers.
I’d carefully write out legible numbers and imagine listening to the tinkle of the pennies that dropped into my pocket during those 15 seconds hahaha.
