Adventures at Work.

[Culsu]

When your Moroccan-born colleague sits across your desk, almost audibly grinding his teeth because of the lies and bullcrap the other Moroccan in the room keeps telling us - and the translator asking whether I have popcorn stored away somewhere because this is better than all the stories of One Thousand and One Nights combined. Moroccan No. 2 is finished and leaves, and the second the door closes behind him, Moroccan No.1 and translator launch into tirades about how all Moroccans coming here are criminals, and how "Arabs have no work ethic" and "everybody from the Maghreb is a bum".

Again, both are Arabs. One is from the Maghreb. Both have been in Germany for the past 20 years or more.

Just another ordinary day at the office.

Was in a two hour meeting / presentation about a product for our system. Turned out it was incompatible with our system.

Sounds like something that happens regularly here. Make extensive planning sessions only to come to the conclusion (which many already hinted at before you even started) that it's not going to work.

 

[Zachowon]

Drill Sergeants making my platoon get up early tomorrow for something. Most likely PT. Since we didn't have it today

 

[SergeantBrother]

This didn't happen today, it happened during the spring semester, but it was such an interesting work experience that I thought I would share it. I was teaching a calculus class and one student and I started discussing various geeky topics. It seems like we both share a love of fantasy and science fiction. So he started coming to the class room early and drawing various fantasy maps or pictures on the board. I took pictures of most of them:

Hogwart's (my name was in the headmaster's quarters, I had to edit that out though)

Entrance to Mount Doom

Bilbo's door

Barad-dûr (unfortunately, there were only blue and purple markers there that day)

Middle Earth

Westeros and Essos from A Song of Ice and Fire

The Star Wars Galaxy

Finally, the student made a map of his own home brew fantasy setting

He was a great student all around, so a wonderful work experience. I was always curious what would be on the board when I came in.

 

[Zachowon]

DIDNT PASS MY FUCKING ASUs AGAIN! 5 WEEKS I HAVE TURNED THE DAMN THINGS IN...
As you can see I am pissed...
I have to wait ANOTHER week before I can turn them in...
The baby class (they started the latest of my platoon) keeps fucking up. A guy brought a vape (something banned by out BDE commander) into the SCIF (a federal building) and since vapes have USB ports (something not allowed in the SCIF) so yeah. He is getting in trouble.
Others just are always always always late

 

[Sailor.X]

DIDNT PASS MY FUCKING ASUs AGAIN! 5 WEEKS I HAVE TURNED THE DAMN THINGS IN...
As you can see I am pissed...
I have to wait ANOTHER week before I can turn them in...
The baby class (they started the latest of my platoon) keeps fucking up. A guy brought a vape (something banned by out BDE commander) into the SCIF (a federal building) and since vapes have USB ports (something not allowed in the SCIF) so yeah. He is getting in trouble.
Others just are always always always late

For those of us who don't speak Army. What are ASUs?

 

[Zachowon]

For those of us who don't speak Army. What are ASUs?

Dress uniform. Currently our army blues. Will be becoming our army Greens and pinks this year

 

[bullethead]

I had a real fun day today, doing voluntary overtime a week before we get mandatory OT to bail our department head out before he gets reamed for his BS productivity projections. First, I had to help some dudes from Engineering cut 5 big ass PVC pipes on the automatic saw... while the auto feed didn't work due to low pressure to the rear jaws.

Then I had to help out this guy whose job is to snag contracts from companies like ours to supply tooling go over our mix of endmills and other shit... A guy I had zero idea was coming until like an hour (tops) before he showed up. I don't know what the fuck the plan was if I didn't show up.

Thank God I was there to give him some context, my spreadsheet of tool orders, and the tip to come back on Wednesdays/Thursdays, since there'd be no guarantee that me and one of the programmers would be at work on Fridays (I plan on taking 2 off, he's planning to take 3 off).

 

[Sailor.X]

Well before I got to work today I was driving down I-26. In front of me a Semi hit a deer. The dead deer carcass travels underneath the truck and the trailer and gets ejected into the air........ Right at my car. Fortunately I was 60 feet behind the truck so I was able to stomp and steer to avoid the now deer missile that was heading for me. Yeah that experience took off a decade or two of lifespan.

 

[PsihoKekec]

This reminds me of my driver test. Some idiot decided to to overtake truck coming the opposite way and had to steer through the bus stop to prevent the head on collision. Of course I failed the test, because cars are not allowed to drive through bus stop.

 

[Laskar]

Sigh...

This is a CASE International Harvester Steiger 4WD tractor with the Quadtrac option and some other bits and bobs. It's very similar to a Steiger used at my farm. My boss traded a heavy John Deere tractor for it this spring, and he was so happy that he'd gotten all the green off his farm. Farmers are like that. They pick a color, and they stick with it. They like the color green, or red, or yellow, and they try to get all their equipment to match. Some might say that this is a preference for CASE IH over John Deere, but I think it's just the colors.

I digress. I'm talking about this brand new, slightly-pre-owned Steiger that showed up on the farm at the beginning of summer. It was immediately put to work, and sometime last month, one of the farmhands noticed that there was a few gallons of diesel floating on top of the motor oil.

This Is Not Good. That will fuck up an engine beyond the hope of rebuilding. So the boss got in contact with the dealership, got the Steiger sent to a shop sixty-some miles away, and rented a John Deere tractor to do the Steiger's job.

That was last week. On Monday, the shop called and said that they were waiting on a new head. This morning, they called and said that they were done with the Steiger, which was good, because a hydraulic tensioner on the John Deere just failed.

To those of you who don't know, a hydraulic tensioner keeps the tracks tensioned. If the belt is not tensioned, the big drive wheel will spin in place until the $14,000 rubber track is smoked. Upon examining the tensioner, we found a hairline crack in a weld. We could weld it, or we could put some SteelStik on it, but that would accomplish absolutely nothing because the tensioner is a hydraulic piston rated to 3,500 PSI. Welding it would make the problem worse!

So we get the Steiger back, and it goes back into the field as we get the John Deere ready to... oh, fuck, the Steiger just shit the bed again. I don't know all the details, but apparently there's a massive fucking oil leak that the guys at the shop should have seen. They did see it. But they assumed that it was from the previous oil leak and the cooling fan just blew it all around.

So yeah. We're down a tractor and our loaner is a dud. It would be a funny anecdote if the whole harvest season wasn't like this.

 

[Zachowon]

So I thought I had finally phased up....
Then turns out both me and my roommate forgot to lock out bathroom door so our Drill sergeants were like nope to bad. Gotta wait till next room inspection to get it. So i cant so anything but stay in my room or on base. Wear PTs. And suffer. I swear i am on the verge of bashing my head or face against a wall.
I also have to go and do PT tomorrow morning on a non duty day.
This is the worst day I have had since I joined the army. I have lost my mind. And am on the verge if doing something very stupid

 

[Sailor.X]

So I thought I had finally phased up....
Then turns out both me and my roommate forgot to lock out bathroom door so our Drill sergeants were like nope to bad. Gotta wait till next room inspection to get it. So i cant so anything but stay in my room or on base. Wear PTs. And suffer. I swear i am on the verge of bashing my head or face against a wall.
I also have to go and do PT tomorrow morning on a non duty day.
This is the worst day I have had since I joined the army. I have lost my mind. And am on the verge if doing something very stupid

Back in my day Senior Enlisted were not this Anal Retentive. Sound like a bunch of pricks to me. Drunk on their own power. Back in the day all they cared about is can you do your job right not this BS.

 

[Zachowon]

Back in my day Senior Enlisted were not this Anal Retentive. Sound like a bunch of pricks to me. Drunk on their own power. Back in the day all they cared about is can you do your job right not this BS.

Attention to detail. They cant really do much else besides smoke us for a shirt time and prevent us from phasing up.

 

[Sailor.X]

Attention to detail. They cant really do much else besides smoke us for a shirt time and prevent us from phasing up.

There is attention to detail then there is being a prick. Trust me I knew enough DIs in there off time to hear about how they are. Some are kool and some are actually pricks that enjoy doing this sort of stuff.

 

[Zachowon]

There is attention to detail then there is being a prick. Trust me I knew enough DIs in there off time to hear about how they are. Some are kool and some are actually pricks that enjoy doing this sort of stuff.

I got two new ones. They are better then my old ones. My old ones were the kind that if they didnt want you to phase up you wint even if you have everything perfect. These are trying to phase us up.

 

[Sailor.X]

I got two new ones. They are better then my old ones. My old ones were the kind that if they didnt want you to phase up you wint even if you have everything perfect. These are trying to phase us up.

Well we will see next week. Good luck to ya.

 

[Zachowon]

Well we will see next week. Good luck to ya.

Monday....Monday...momday... I should phase up..hopefully

 

[Sailor.X]

Monday....Monday...momday... I should phase up..hopefully

I hope when you get to your first unit it will be like my first unit. All Enlisted run. With no Officers to monkey up the works. Oh the good old days of the Boat Units.

 

[Zachowon]

I hope when you get to your first unit it will be like my first unit. All Enlisted run. With no Officers to monkey up the works. Oh the good old days of the Boat Units.

I will most likely either be around a mixture of branches and civies of various ranks (NSA building) or I will be in an army unit somewhere

 

[FriedCFour]

I will most likely either be around a mixture of branches and civies of various ranks (NSA building) or I will be in an army unit somewhere

Just know that this is temporary, but do something dumb and it can follow you the rest of your life.