What are some of the silly things you have had to do at work?

[Little Darwin]

I just thought about something I hadn't consciously thought about in a long time, and I wonder if other people have strange things they have been asked to do at work...

Many years ago I was part of a team developing an internet application. As the development effort was drawing to a close the manager realized that there was something they had seen on most of the sites that they visited, so we needed that element on our site. What was missing was the FAQ page. So, one of the first questions was, what are some of the questions that people have been asking? There were no real users yet, but maybe testers came up with some... There were no questions, so the developers were told to make some up.

The first question that popped into my mind was, if there are areas of the site that would lead to unanswered questions, why didn't we build the app to make the answers obvious? But, no, this was not one of the FAQs we published...

The site was launched, complete with the page of imagined FAQs, and I moved on to other projects. I sometimes wonder if they ever updated it with questions from real users...

 

[Mooncatt]

I drive a semi truck, starting out running general freight to/from random manufacturers and warehouses Nothing too special, but not without some surprises. The most memorable was I was supposed to drop a loaded trailer at a place and pick up an empty. The only "empty" they had available had a bunch of lumber in it, some like partially built frames for something. The customer showed no record of it being in their docks, so it wasn't their lumber. Dispatch wanted me to take it to our local terminal, buy they didn't have a big enough dumpster.

The only other option was the local dump. No biggie, right? Well I ended up driving my rig and the trailer to the top of the trash heap to manually throw the wood out. In Florida. In August. Wasn't too bad at first until I got to the nose of the trailer and whoever did this has built wood shelving into the nose. The frame was so well built that even using a sledge hammer wouldn't bust it up to get it out. I had to use a screwdriver to disassemble it piece by piece to throw it out.

Needless to say I felt and probably smelled like I slept on the trash pile, so took the rest of the day off to rest and freshen up. Thankfully, dispatch paid me well for the work. $150 for about 3 hours work and a heck of a story, but not something I'd want to do again. Not in those temps at least.

Never did find out who put all that stuff in there or why.

 

[geekymcfly]

When I was stationed at ft hood, tx. One of our dumb NCOs had a great idea for us junior enlisted to sweep the dirt of an old heli pad so that our Bradley's could drive over it. I think that was the worst and dumbest thing I have ever done working. Ever. I quit doing stupid **** for people since then.
But then again someone kept stealing my stapler and I was sent to work in the basement without ever receiving my pay.

Nexus 7 * Tmo Galaxy s3

 

[llamabreath]

I hate having to obey my boss when i know he's wrong.

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