I work on the ground floor of a 3 storey office block in Surrey. As the upper floors are empty the landlord decided to refurb those floors and the communal areas on the ground floor (the building is only 12 years old so not too tatty).

The specialist refurb company http://www.scottosborn.com/ finished off and left at the end of last month. The refurbished toilets don’t have any loo roll holders or hand driers, which I can sort of understand (they were running late maybe, or possibly the parts hadn’t been ordered, hadn’t arrived or had been ordered from Planet X 😆 ) but they have excelled themselves in the refurbishment of the shower room.

Bear in mind that this is a room with no window or rooflight and originally had one light and one extractor fan. They have replaced the sole light with a second extractor fan!!

What level of stupidity is this?? Are people born that stupid or do they have to go on special courses? I really fail to understand how anybody in their right mind thinks that that is a good idea, or how (assuming it was a mistake) they failed to notice that the room is now pitch black.

How do these people survive in the real world? Are they the half-wits who answer the Nigerian email scams?? Thinking about it, maybe I should have sold them some ‘magic beans’.

Anybody come across anything more stupid??

😆

take a torch in?

Whoops. I’m terribly sorry madam. I thought this was the gents showers.

take a torch in?

Yes, I’ve resorted to showering by torch light, but its hardly the sort of feature that is going to attract new tenants to the building (unless they are alien lizards with night vision)

jekkyl – Member
take a torch in?

Yes. It wasn’t stupid after all! You can do that.

I see stupid in their cars, on the roads. Every single bloody day.

From my work, the wheelchair ramp from the step outside the fire door that is built to the side so it’s obstructed when the door opens thus rendering it useless.

I really fail to understand how anybody in their right mind thinks that that is a good idea, or how (assuming it was a mistake) they failed to notice that the room is now pitch black.

Well of course it was a mistake….no one would think that it was a good idea to have a shower in pitch darkness 🙂

What’s presumably happened is someone has forgotten about the shower room needing a light and the contractor has simply done what they have been told/contracted to do.

That sort of thing happens all the time – it turns out that clever people who work in offices aren’t always that clever. You learn to shut up and do what you’re told when you’re working on the tools. No one thanks you for pointing out their mistakes and they’re usually quick to bollock you if you make one.

I hope the sparky who did it had a good laugh 🙂

A classic

Maybe it’s the same contractors who do the Abercrombie & Fitch shops?

That sort of thing happens all the time – it turns out that clever people who work in offices aren’t always that clever. You learn to shut up and do what you’re told when you’re working on the tools. No one thanks you for pointing out their mistakes and they’re usually quick to bollock you if you make one

Suffice to say many of these individual Ernie is referring to wear ties for work !

The world is full of people who do without thinking.

Follow YouHadOneJob on twitter for loads of examples every day. Most of them will make you feel great about any of your own ****-ups. 🙂

This has always been one of my favourites :

wwaswas’s post. Wow, a parking space for people who have their heads up their arses. There are going to have to be hundreds of those where I work.

I’ve seen the bollards pic loads of times and always wondered where the pics of then getting out are

A classic

pretty sure that was down the road from me and also pretty sure it’s ‘shopped.

From my work, the wheelchair ramp from the step outside the fire door that is built to the side so it’s obstructed when the door opens thus rendering it useless.

I worked at a company building a new data centre which had the two following “safety” features:
1, Fire suppression gas was able to be vented out of the server room after a fire was put out. The idiots had it vent into the office space
2, In case the fire spread, the office fire escape went down to the rear footpath but the stairs went the wrong way down and blocked the route out so anyone escaping the fire would be trapped behind the burning building

In both cases the contractors couldn’t understand what the problem was.

also pretty sure it’s ‘shopped.

they did well to get the wet foot prints working their way around the open door on the back of the van.

Bollards:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/automobiles/bollards.asp

As one of the types who sit and design refurb schemes (I work for a University – and very rarely wear a tie) these kind of omissions are quite common. Strangely enough I’m not perfect and will miss things off drawings or from specifications. I usually work with contractors however who are nice enough to let me know so I can issue an instruction to correct it.

J

A company I used to work for had a revelation one day when our servers went down. no one was able to do any work so the management went into meeting mode and only then realised that the business continuity plan that had put in place….was only saved onto the servers

they did well to get the wet foot prints working their way around the open door on the back of the van.

I’d assumed someone had pasted an extra bollard in which the workmen were leaving until after they had moved the van, but after looking at the snopes link I may double check if they are locking bollards next time I go passed.

What I think the vast majority significant chunk of these incidents is a out upon tradesman saying “wuck foo”

He’s probably tried explaining that there is a significant issue on site – this will normally be over the phone to a manager who has never been to site, is 12 months out of university and will not be told what to do by some “Bally Oik” and resorts to the age old technique of telling said Oik to “just do it and stop making a fuss”

To be fair it does depend on the relationship down the line. Someone like ffej who is prepared to accept that he isn’t perfect and sometimes makes mistakes is much more likely to get helpful feedback. Sadly not everyone is like that and many are a little too willing to shaft the contractor/tradesman at any given opportunity.