I work as a service engineer for laser cutting machines. (I previously submitted this story.) We got a call from one of our clients who owned a very old machine, saying that one of the hydraulic motors of the machine had stopped working and they needed our help.

When I arrived, I learned that the full story was that the motor started leaking, and the team operating the machine tried disassembling it to find the cause, couldn’t, and then reassembled it incorrectly. It took me a while to figure out how to assemble it correctly (as no schematics were available for years) and to find the leaking gasket that needed replacement. This gasket was something they could manufacture and install on their own once they got a sheet of the proper rubber — which they didn’t have at that moment so it could not be done on the spot — since it didn’t actually require the full disassembly they unsuccessfully tried earlier.

I then went to the production manager to inform him of my findings. As I was on my way out of his office, I overheard him calling the manufacturing team about an incoming work order for the laser cutter. I turned back in.

Me: “I’m sorry, but are you planning to continue using the machine before that gasket is replaced?”

Manager: “Of course.”

Me: “You can’t.”

Manager: “What?! Why?! I thought you said you repaired the motor, other than the leak!”

Me: “I did, but it’s still leaking. You can’t work like that.”

Manager: “What do you mean? We worked with that leak for weeks before we tried to sort it out, just topping off the hydraulic fluid once in a while! And nothing happened; as you can see, the motor runs fine!”

Me: “You… worked like that for weeks?”

Manager: “Sure. Without issue.”

Me: “Without issue with the motor maybe, but have you noticed the puddle underneath the machine?”

Manager: “So what? The guys just mop it up now and then. It’s not like it could damage anything.”

Me: “The machine cuts by means of a laser beam that heats metal enough to vaporize it, with white-hot metal droplets ejected downward, right?”

Manager: “So?”

Me: “And for several weeks you figured it’s a good idea to let it do it next to a large puddle of flammable hydraulic fluid?”

It took him a moment to realize that only by sheer luck did they not set the whole machine on fire.

From that call onward, I made certain to always make it perfectly clear to the clients, in cases where their machines can PHYSICALLY work despite certain issues, that doing so may result in catastrophic damage — even when the risk should be very obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of the machinery.

Related:
A Forklift Load Of Attitude

Many years ago, I worked for a multinational engineering company in the aerospace industry. At this point in my career, I was on secondment to the Health, Safety, and Environment department, writing procedures at the site and corporate levels. And as such, I would periodically meet up with a group of HS&E managers from other sites.

Before one particular meeting, the HS&E manager of one site was having a bit of a venting session about what had happened at his site. In addition to HS&E manager, he was also the facilities manager for that site. His site was getting ready to move to a brand new facility. One of the things that wasn’t going to be there was a heat treatment plant. The old site had one, but it wasn’t being moved.

Heat treatment is required for things like hardening steels. Being an aerospace company, there are extremely strict processes that have to be followed, and only facilities that have proper aerospace industry accreditation can be used. You can’t take a component that’s going onto an aircraft and have it heat-treated at just any old place; even if that place did it properly, if the place wasn’t certified, you’d be breaking the law to put the component on a plane.

Even with certification, a change of heat treatment plant would require full inspection of the first batch of each component that goes through it. It’s not a quick process. 

Hence the venting session. You see, this move had been known about for a couple of years. And everyone knew that the heat treatment plant at the old site would be switched off for decommissioning on a certain date — no ifs, no buts, no extensions. 

How did everyone know? Aside from the usual site-wide communications, there were regular start-of-the-week production meetings attended by managers at all levels. And this facility manager attended these meetings to remind everyone that on this particular date the heat treatment plant would be switched off. So, that was at least one reminder a week for over a year.

Our meeting happened a few days after The Big Switch-Off. 

He was venting about all the managers who rang him up on Big Switch-Off Day to complain that they couldn’t get their parts heat treated and to demand to know why they hadn’t been told.

I recently left a job that experienced serious job drift in the three years I was there; I went from working in manufacturing to being their entire marketing department. I could go on about it for ages, but the topic today is their Facebook page and what happened when I quit. This page was the one social media presence I DIDN’T create for them, because they already had it. They barely used it, but they had it.

When I first started doing marketing for them, the head sales guy who had ownership of the page put me on it as an admin and all was well. Until I quit. Upon quitting, I went in to take myself off the Facebook page but could not find a way to do it. I’m not sure if it was some sort of glitch or I didn’t have the right permissions or what, but there was zero evidence on the backend that I could find that I actually even HAD access to this page, and yet I did.

I texted my old supervisor to let him know.

Me: “Hey, I still have access to the Facebook page, and I’m still getting notifications for it. I can’t seem to take myself off of it, either. Can you get that fixed?”

Supervisor: “Sure. I’ll look into it.”

A week passed, and I was still getting notifications. I tried again to find a way to get myself off of it but had no luck. So, I texted my supervisor again.

Me: “Hey, [Supervisor], I’m still on the Facebook page somehow. Have you had a chance to look into that?”

Supervisor: “I don’t know what you’re talking about; you don’t have access.”

He included a photo of his screen showing the only admins on the page, which did not include me, and I sent one back proving that I did indeed still have access. 

Me: “Look, there’s clearly something wonky here that is outside the norm. This is an issue that needs to be escalated by contacting Facebook. As I no longer work for the company, you need to handle it. If I end up being the one to have to handle it, I will have to send an invoice for my time.”

Supervisor: “Don’t you dare threaten me. As far as I’m concerned YOU’RE the one with unauthorized access to our company property. Fix it, and don’t contact me ever again.”

Me: “Dude. I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you that I don’t have time to be chasing up a bug on the Facebook page of a company I no longer work for. It’s your page; it’s on you to figure it out. And I didn’t hack back into the d*** thing to get access or something; I always had access. I don’t want access anymore. I cannot seem to remove my access, so you need to since you are still with the company.”

He didn’t respond. I sent an email to HIS supervisor, who has also not responded.

Weeks have passed. I still have access to the page. The urge to change the icon and banner to childish drawings grows stronger every day.

I work at a place that manufactures composite items. We have a lot of scrap pieces of rigid foam, honeycomb, and other items laying about. Some of them are trimmings and leftovers and over-age material that has essentially no value, so nobody really cares what happens once it’s trimmed off or discarded as over-age.

We also have a practical joker in one of the support shops.

[Joker] had been running in and out of the office all morning. Shortly before lunch, he came in bearing a seasonal cake on a multilayer piece of corrugated cardboard wrapped in foil — your standard discardable potluck/party serving platter.

We didn’t realize the significance of the repeated trips to the office until later; he was waiting for a time when the minimum number of people were present.

I walked in just in time to see [Coworker #1] try to cut the cake… and fail. The knife refused to cut; it was like he was trying to cut the Formica tabletop!

Everybody laughed, and I realized what was going on: [Joker] had taken a piece of rigid foam and covered it with the polyester “spackle” that the production shop used to smooth out defects and joints, smoothed it into place with a wet knife (standard practice), and then made up a wax-paper icing bag to decorate the “cake” with colored spackle.

It actually looked pretty good, aside from having a mild smell of polyester — but most of the building smelled of polyester most of the time, so that wasn’t especially noticeable.

Then, [Coworker #2] walked in.

Coworker #1: “Oh, you’re just in time! Here, you cut it.”

And he handed [Coworker #2] the knife.  

Repeat until almost everyone in the office had tried to cut the thing. ([Coworker #3] didn’t, and I didn’t; we had seen someone else try.)

[Joker] had gotten pretty much everyone he wanted to at that point, so he didn’t care what happened to the fake cake… so we took it across to the group meeting we were going to attend.

We noted the number of a pay phone downstairs — this was before cellphones were common — and I went upstairs and waited until most people had cleared out to the standard pre-meeting restroom break, then called the phone and said, “Now!”

They brought the cake up into the office and asked someone to cut it “so we’d be ready for the meeting”. We got about half the crew to try to cut the thing, including our manager! One of the women said:

Woman: “Oh, don’t use a knife; use dental floss! It cuts much cleaner!”

It does, too — if you’re cutting a real cake and not a polyester fake cake! Of course, the floss didn’t cut at all!

The really funny part was that most of the victims were indignant — until the next victim showed up. Then, they’d say, “Here, you cut it”!

Once we’d gotten everyone in our work group, we didn’t know what to do with the “cake”…

…so our manager packed it off to a manager’s meeting he needed to attend!

When last sighted, a third-level manager was packing it off to another meeting. I suspect that cake circulated through the company all the way to the holiday!

Oh, and I suggested to [Joker] that if he decided to do this again, he should mist the fake cake with lemon oil so it would smell better.

Related:
The Cake Is A Lie, Part 10
The Cake Is A Lie, Part 9
The Cake Is A Lie, Part 8
The Cake Is A Lie, Part 7
The Cake Is A Lie, Part 6

I got a call from a client who said I was recommended to him by another client of mine. He manufactured nail products and was looking for a package design.

Me: “I don’t really work in cosmetic packaging.”

Client: “That’s great. I don’t want something that looks like everything else in the category.”

I submitted three designs, and he went ballistic because they didn’t look like everything else in the category. 

Client: “If you make me pay for this, it will ruin our relationship!”

Me: “Unless you pay up, we don’t have a relationship.”

I’m still waiting.