Bubble for a spirit level

One of the lads in the office asked around if we needed anything from stores as he was going down to place an order.
I asked for a new bubble for the spirit level, which unfortunatly was easily spotted.

What are your best stories of sending people on ‘errands’?

Got a pack of 10, PP Gift £30 posted…

Ask him if he can pick me up a longer dipstick for my Citroen. Mine doesn’t reach the oil.

A long weight
Tartain Paint
Left Handed Screwdriver
Glass Hammer

We had a few of these when I used to work in a bowling alley in my student days. Sending people to the lane mechanics for 10 yards of fallopian tubing, that sort of thing. Or mopping the floor of the walk-in freezer. I didn’t really prescribe to it very much, I thought it was a bit cruel.

One popular one was to have someone help “align the cameras” at the ends of the lanes (that’s how the system knows what pins have dropped. They’d have someone stood there with a floor mop in each hand, arms outstretched. Then put out a PA announcement, “could someone please remove the scarecrow from lane 12.”

The only one I did personally was servicing (well, cleaning) the coffee machine. It was a little desktop unit that vended coffee or hot water in cupfuls every time you hit the button. I’d removed the coffee hoppers, and had one of the juniors empty the water canister by repeatedly vending 1/3 of a pint and tipping it into a bucket. “Wow, it holds a lot,” she said. “Yeah, it compresses it, it’s quite clever.” Of course, it was plumbed in to the mains water supply.

I worked at b&q when i was a student and we would regularly get people in asking for spirit level bubbles, sky hooks, long weights, tartan paint etc.
One day a lad came in asking for a bubble for a spirit level and at the time we had these cheap and nasty spirit levels where the vial containing the bubble would fall out if pressed. I gave him one of the vials to take back. I would love to of seen their faces when he actually turned up with it.

I’d also add I once signed up to a MTB forum and sold the same pair of forks to 7 different people on PP Gift, awesome the mugs just kept complaining, I even got one guy to post me the cash!!

This used to happen a lot when I worked at McDonalds such as:
– Fetch tomatoes from where they are grown on the roof
– Count the wall tiles so we know how much tile cleaner to buy

However when I was asked to scrape all the chewing gum from the pavement outside that was a real job apparently.

I had an apprentice helping me to fit a roll cage. I sent him to the stores as we were missing a fallopian tube.

While working in stores one of the young lads was sent for some 8mm orange grinding sparks.

My dad had some (naive) English mates up for a fishing trip to remote Scottish village.

He managed to convince one of them that he’d need some bear repellent. 🙂

The canny bloke in the tackle shop immediately clocked on, played along with it, sent the victim to another shop on the other side of the village, then called ahead to warn them.

This pattern continued for most of the morning. 😀

When I worked at a wood yard when I was younger I was regularly sent to store for glass hammer etc

I used to view it as getting paid for sitting in a chair for hours on end as the store guy used to walk past every 30 mins or so and say its nearly ready

I let them know when I was leaving that I appreciated all the free money I had received from them instead of stacking the wood I was employed to do

In a former job we had a work experience student and the boys in the metalwork area sent him to a local hardware store for a 12″ hampton with a bell-end

Skirting board ladder

andysredmini – Member

I worked at b&q when i was a student and we would regularly get people in asking for spirit level bubbles, sky hooks, long weights, tartan paint etc.

I have some skyhooks, although you wouldn’t buy them in b&q

12″ hampton with a bell-end

I 😆 ‘ed

When I was 16 I worked in a factory before going to Uni. One of the more experienced guys gave one of the young lads £10 when they lad was going to the sandwich shop at lunchtime. The older guy asked for a sandwich and said “get something for yourself” obviously meaning a sandwich or pastie.
The lad came back with a jumper 🙂
I kid you not. £10 was quite a lot of money 35 years ago.

We sent a young lad up to the surveyors for a temporary bench mark. It backfired, he came back with a big metal pin that they set in concrete for use as a temporary bench mark.

Sending the YTS kids off to security to have the battery in their RFID badges recharged was always entertaining, along with the usual long weights and bright sparks from the metal shop.

Some elbow grease was often asked for.

Also had a job where we had to ‘ hang a monkey ‘ the graduate engineer complained that the piss was getting taken out of him.

I remember being sent for a long weight – I knew exactly what was going on and had a good skive for an hour!

I did work experience from school as a mechanic at a Vauxhall dealership, our teachers had pre-warned us about long weights, long stands, elbow grease etc, good job as they’d have got me every time.

One day me and the bloke I was assigned to work with had a car up on thee ramps when suddenly he asks me to run down to the stores for a long stand. I was on to him so just laughed and stood there. He started getting a bit panicked and suddenly ran off himself. 2 minutes later he came back with a big red pole he then used to prop the car up with as he was concerned it was slightly off balance. “This is a bloody long stand” etc

Many years ago, a rather gullible girl I knew wanted to get her boyfriend a special birthday present so asked us, his friends. Poor girl ended up in Boots on a busy Saturday asking for “Smeg for Men”. She thought it was an aftershave.

And then those bloody fridges arrived, ruining the joke.

Starting work at 16 in a big kitchen I managed to avoid being caught by the usual long weight , lobster gun , skirting board ladder etc but one day the head chef asked me to go to the dry stores and get a jar of capers , I asked him what they were and was told little green buds pickled in vinegar to which I replied Oh yes that’s a right caper isn’t it and refused to go . He had to drag me in to prove they were real .

Dad had a Wartburg two stroke years ago,young lad at garage offered to check his oil for him.

Another garage ,back when they put the petrol in for you,he put measured amount of oil in tank first from a domestos bottle he used to decant the oil from a bigger drum much to the curiosity of the attendant,dad reassured him it kept the engine clean.

I was given details for some work on a Sub at Devonport docks.

Boat ..HMS Stingray (Trafalgar class)
Contact.. Captain T.Tempest

Yup,I fell for it 😳

I heard the sky hook thing quite a while after I’d come across these which just confused me more

As apprentices, we were tasked by one of the thugs in the assembly plant to go into the upstairs offices to find “Don Kidick”. We went up and just had a brew for 10 minutes – then returned saying we couldn’t find Don and could he come up and help locate him.

Years later we were doing some accumulator testing which needed sealing in a rubber sleeve to capture the moment that they started to leak (inflates the rubber so you get a visual indication). Unfortunately the apprentice refused to visit the chemist to purchase the required pack of extra large unlubricated condoms….

My Dad told me about sending apprentices off to a motor suppliers for some 25 thou spark gaps.

That was in the 1950s…

a 12″ hampton with a bell-end

Obviously I get the rest of it, but am I missing something with “hampton” here or is it just a plausible-sounding word?

No word of a lie the brickies labourer came in to the office on Friday for sky hooks 😆

I used to teach in a prison and at the end of lessons there would be quite a long wait between packing away the tools and the inmates being counted out. So there’d be quite a lot of non-class related chat.

Usually it would be people’s getting caught stories which were always funny. (the police often say ‘we only catch the idiots’)

One night the topic for conversation was stories like this – when they’d been in apprenticeship schemes or training for work schemes and been sent off of bubbles or chicken lips.

One quite alarming one involve taking a fire extinguisher into a bank and being told to hand over an envelope to the teller – which contained a note telling the teller it was hold up and to give the guy with the fire extinguisher all the money in the safe. You’d think that could only end badly.

However another guy had been an apprentice truck mechanic and had been sent out on an errand to the motor factors for ‘a tyre for the 5th Wheel’. They were all wise to it so each factor was telling them they were fresh out of stock and sending him on to another branch. He was being sent from pillar to post all afternoon, getting more and more wound up. Gave up – went back to garage and the boss was having a good old laugh with everyone at his expense……..”so I shot him”. ❗

^ Here endeth the thread. 😯

used to blue tack the clapper in the “time” bell at the pub I worked in, new barmen were asked to ring it with “oh so hilarious” consequences.

Occasionally the newbies were special enough to fall for it twice in the same night…How those dull Wednesday evenings flew by…

Cougar
Hampton is yer cock-er-knee slang (NSFW)

A pal of mine was an apprentice mechanic in the mid-80’s and was sent out by a senior spannerman feigning a sore throat to get some strawberry lillets. Chemist ladies were kind enough to only laugh a bit.

Not sure about you but I don’t find that kind of prank funny at all.

I know someone who went to catering college with a very gullible, he told her to go and fillet some whitebait, she spent a good 10 minutes hacking at them

When I worked in Homebase years ago a new housing development was going up nearby. We used to get the apprentices sent in for the usual left handed screwdrivers, glass hammers etc. The most memorable one though was the young lad sent in for 5m of fallopian tubing!

Cougar
Hampton is yer cock-er-knee slang (NSFW)

Ah, I’m Northern so that explains it. Thank you.

Not sure about you but I don’t find that kind of prank funny at all.

Not to be a killjoy but I’m with you on this. The theory is funny, but the practice has a victim and I’m not really comfortable with that.

Had a boss send the new guy for a long weight. New guy comes in the next morning to the boss kicking off where have you been? New guy dead pan as anything was your wait not long enough I’ll go home again if you like?