Shop Antics

[mxtras]

Everyone has a story…or two.

A recent post by JavaDog reminded me of the time I filled a co-worker’s small toolbox with two part urethane foam. I sprayed release on the lid so he could open it easily, mixed A and B then poured it in and locked the lid. I probably would have gotten away with it if I wasn’t the only guy in the shop that had access to the materials. I got busted and had to clean it all up, but seeing his face when he opened up the box was almost worth it.

Some time later, some other prankster’s drilled and threaded a grease fitting into the side of a coworker’s box and filled it completely with GP grease. Destructive, wasteful and costly - but funny. I thought it was an original idea..

Filling a coworker’s gloves with copper anti-seize was probably the most creative thing I ever came up with. This was after he broke me in to the tool grinding area by smearing Prussian blue on the bridge of my safety glasses. He was one cool guy to work with – never a dull moment. The pranks were harmless and frequent. Both of us were afraid to leave our work area for fear of retaliation….those were the days.

What’s your story?

Scott

[DieGuy]

We worked in a die shop that had a small staking press in the corner. This guy would come to work all hopped up on something so the would make piece rate plus. So we went into the welding shop and fired up a Oxy Acetlene torch and crushed the thing out right away leaving the gas flowing at the right mix. We then took a twist tie sandwich bag and filled it with gas and added a piece of paper and a twist tie. Then we sneaked up and place the bag under this guy's metal stool and fired up the paper. BOOM! the guy nearly had a heart attack and he pissed himself. It was great! He had the shakes for the rest of the day. It was the last time he came to work all hopped up as well.

[mxtras]

You have to watch out for the guys in the weld shop - they get creative!

Welders have gotten me more times than I can count. The most memorable was when one of them placed a piece of black paper in the shield. I lowered my shield, fire up the weld and - nothing! I hear it, but it's absolutely black. What in the heck is going on? They usually give themselves away, though - they'll stand in a group behind a curtain giggling like little old ladies - at your expense! Once I caught on that they liked to pick on everybody, I could spot when they were up to something - the whole shop of maybe 10-12 guys would be mulling around waiting for their next victim. They did some pretty creative stuff, I thought.

Good group of people 'dem welders are...

Scott

[miljnor]

no kidding. I cant tell you the number of times Back when i was a shop manager/set up guy that they would come over and want me to "inspect their work". Dang I hate it when I forget they are wearing gloves! After several years of that I have the quickest drop reflex I know, my hand is uncontrolable to this day! If I even unconsciously feel something hot when handed to me, I drop it!

All in a days fun!

But I think i have a disability now, cant tell you how many cold things ive broken because they felt hot when handed to me! (my wife still hasn't forgiven me for the flowers her coworkers gave her for her b-day, she still thinks I dropped them on purpose!, I swear I didn't). thats my story and I'm sticking to it!

[Hasher]

Hi Guys

My favorite would be smearing the rim of a foam cup with grease and sticking to someones Hardhat . It's always a chuckle with a guy wandering around with 2 or 3 cups on his head.

Recently in the workshop here we have had a competion on Spider Solitare . Scores are based on who can use the least amount of moves to get the card game out. High score at the moment is 1204 . One guy is obsessive about it and spends 2 hours a day trying to beat high scores. What he doesnt know is that everytime he gets high score we go into the computer registry and bump up our high score up one or two. I dont think we will ever tell him as he would kill us if he found out.


Other great tricks is a thick Zip Tie (cable Tie) around the prop shaft of the car. The tail of the cable tie makes a noise thats very hard to track down

Put the 4wd transfer box into neutral. Then watch them rev the car , play with gears and generally look confused.

Our cars here are fitted with External battery isolation switchs . Turning them off only works once but it's great watching the new guy wondering what the hell is going on.

Paul

[DAB_Design]

At the shop I just quite a few weeks ago, one of the favorites was to smear wax ('mushable' stuff) or dykem blue layout on the underside of handles on toolboxes.

But probably the best I've seen, almost all of the machines were open, so reposition one of the back side coolant lines (loc-line type) aimed at where the operator would be standing at the control. Then turn the coolant all the way up.

[miljnor]

I loved messing with the welders tig controls.

I had this one welder working for me that always used the table to push the tungstin in to the right position. So, I reset all of the controls on his tig and off he goes. he would always sharpen his tungsten when he first arrived the get all comfortable touched the tip and WAM fries his tip. he gets up says HA HA you got me and repeats his worm up (of course turning the switch back to tig insted of arc weld) gets all set up to weld strikes an arc and the tip shrivles to a ball! Starts cussing and repeats. (you would think after twice he would check all the controls! ) This goes on 3 more times I have never been laughing so hard in all my life. Good thing he was the shop jokester our he probably wouldve gone postal And i wouldn't be here today.

Ah good times!

[xyzcnc]

3M adhisive similar to the stuff they use to hold windshields on cars. We stick a couple strips on their phone between the handset and base unit.... Then give'm a call and watch when they try to pick up the phone. It'd take 9 or 10 rings before they could rip the two apart.

[Splint]

One particular occasion a guy grabbed anther guys workboots after he had gone home, the leather on the steel caps had warn through so they welded the boots to the underside of a steel bench.
On another occasion someone used a trolley jack to jack the rear wheels of a car just clear of the ground, the driver came back to drive away and couldn't work out why the car wouldn't move.

Splint

[sbrpollock]

I often wonder how many oxygen bottles there are at the bottom of the southern tip of lake michigan, right along the lake front where the steel mills are.

I'm fairly confident there are quite a few.

[mxtras]

Please elaborate......!

Scott

[tigpro]

I worked for this one guy that bought himself a new chevy pickup.He bragged on the truck every day. that got old fast! so I took a piece of stainless filler rod and tied to his front brake caliper and left just enough to hit the wheel. for the next two weeks we heard about how his new truck was making a noise and that he could not find it. when he did I was fired. I am a tig welder