Monumental work cockups
Discussion
Tonsko said:
Explain to a stupid person please?
It's no more than it appears to be: he actually believed carting around a one tonne piece of limestone with a few condescending promises carved in it would make everyone think he was some sort of heroI'm actually disappointed it didn't get dropped on anyone. I wouldn't have wanted anyone seriously hurt but if that had been dropped on someone's car, for example, I bet we'd have been treated to some first-class comedy/headlines (and comedy headlines, I guess) for weeks on end
amancalledrob said:
It's no more than it appears to be: he actually believed carting around a one tonne piece of limestone with a few condescending promises carved in it would make everyone think he was some sort of hero
I'm actually disappointed it didn't get dropped on anyone. I wouldn't have wanted anyone seriously hurt but if that had been dropped on someone's car, for example, I bet we'd have been treated to some first-class comedy/headlines (and comedy headlines, I guess) for weeks on end
Heh. Because the picture is so small, I thought it looked like one of those crappy pull out vinyl display banners. I did wonder whether the gag was in the 'monumental'.I'm actually disappointed it didn't get dropped on anyone. I wouldn't have wanted anyone seriously hurt but if that had been dropped on someone's car, for example, I bet we'd have been treated to some first-class comedy/headlines (and comedy headlines, I guess) for weeks on end
Tonsko said:
Heh. Because the picture is so small, I thought it looked like one of those crappy pull out vinyl display banners. I did wonder whether the gag was in the 'monumental'.
It does look a bit like that in the pictureI kinda like him but only because he's the most unintentionally hilarious man I've ever seen. He looks and sounds like one of Nick Park's (of Wallace/Gromit fame) creations has come to life and got a job in government
2 in one morning.
Cockup 1....
Stupid dumb ass ignorant driver left keys in ignition of his lorry whilst unloading in a cars parked both sides
residential street ,blocking the street ,he had no choice.
Disgruntled driver can't get past and after an altercation drives off with the keys to lorry.
Cockup 2.......
He calls office, they send someone out with the spare key ,from the drawer of spares.
Key doesn't work because in the spare key drawer is also keys for the previous lorry with the same reg,
all the lorries have company name related plates.
In other words ,bloke picks up key to "S3" but it's the old "S3" that was replaced years ago.
Well done to the manager who held onto them for no reason whatsoever.....
Cockup 1....
Stupid dumb ass ignorant driver left keys in ignition of his lorry whilst unloading in a cars parked both sides
residential street ,blocking the street ,he had no choice.
Disgruntled driver can't get past and after an altercation drives off with the keys to lorry.
Cockup 2.......
He calls office, they send someone out with the spare key ,from the drawer of spares.
Key doesn't work because in the spare key drawer is also keys for the previous lorry with the same reg,
all the lorries have company name related plates.
In other words ,bloke picks up key to "S3" but it's the old "S3" that was replaced years ago.
Well done to the manager who held onto them for no reason whatsoever.....
The Moose said:
Ray Luxury-Yacht said:
Before my current vocation, I was apprenticed in the printing industry, where I spent 25 happy years.
Not long after finishing my four-year apprenticeship, I was taken on by a huge, international magazine printing company. The printing presses at the site I was employed on were capable of printing around 50,000 copies of a 32 page section of a magazine per hour. So.....pretty damn quick, with a monstrous throughput of expensive paper, let alone press time and press operator wages - which are big £££'s.
Very early on in my employment, I let something go to print with an error which I should have spotted, and worse still, we were supposed to get things double checked, but I neglected to do so.
It was for a section of Maxim magazine - readers of a certain age will remember this - and at the time, we printed a quarter of a million copies of it, such was it's popularity. And yes, the presses ran off 250 thousand copies of the section with my cock-up in it.
I'll never forget my boss showing me all the wasted copies......it seemed like it was a sea of waste as far as my eye could see. I forget the cost, but it was many, many thousands of pounds. Amazingly, I didn't get the sack, and I actually ended up running the place in the end! I guess it was a salutary lesson
And what was the cock-up?!Not long after finishing my four-year apprenticeship, I was taken on by a huge, international magazine printing company. The printing presses at the site I was employed on were capable of printing around 50,000 copies of a 32 page section of a magazine per hour. So.....pretty damn quick, with a monstrous throughput of expensive paper, let alone press time and press operator wages - which are big £££'s.
Very early on in my employment, I let something go to print with an error which I should have spotted, and worse still, we were supposed to get things double checked, but I neglected to do so.
It was for a section of Maxim magazine - readers of a certain age will remember this - and at the time, we printed a quarter of a million copies of it, such was it's popularity. And yes, the presses ran off 250 thousand copies of the section with my cock-up in it.
I'll never forget my boss showing me all the wasted copies......it seemed like it was a sea of waste as far as my eye could see. I forget the cost, but it was many, many thousands of pounds. Amazingly, I didn't get the sack, and I actually ended up running the place in the end! I guess it was a salutary lesson
I've not really had any monumental cock ups, I once painted something and it look beautiful told the customer it would be set in a few hours and by all accounts it would have been set in a few hours, if I put the hardener in...that was fun to remove.
My mate has had a few that spring to mind, bought a 3 phase welder plugged it in and decided to see what it could do, his workshop was last on the run of the power supply in a load of workshops...his C/U spat it's dummy out which in turn blew every other consumer unit and the main 3 phase supply into the building, naturally denied all knowledge and just said he was welding away happily for the last hour and something went bang, bulls
tted the guy who owned the big company who owned the building that his end blew first, and must have killed "my" workshop. Cost the owner a bit of wedge to fix, power company out to fix it and loads of downtime on a huge contract.
Same place where someone knocked an oxygen bottle on the floor off a big drop, landed and took the head clean off it which propelled it through the yard, through the fence, across the road, through another fence, through a building wall before embedding itself in a concrete wall at the back of the other building, how that didn't hit anyone I do not know.
Truck driver who hooked up his trailer with a full load, put air lines on, put the jack up, drove off and hadn't actually hooked the trailer up at all, ripped all the lines out of the truck and dropped the trailer on the floor, took 4 forklifts and many people stood on forklifts to lift it back.
My favourite though, this was actually my mate. Had to build a trailer, extremely oversized trailer so he built it over 2 weeks or so, I popped up as he was close to finishing it and take it off to be galvanised, they were on a very tight schedule to get this done and it had to go in the morning for galv, so I helped him finish it up and then sat on the trailer and did the rough calculation in my head, looked at it again by eye and raised a pertinent question
"mush"
"Yes"
"How wide is this trailer?"
"4.8 metres"
"that's pretty wide, I'd say that is probably about half a metre too wide to fit out the door"
"nah it should fi.....oh fk yeah"
Door was 4.1 metres wide
"how are we going to get his out of here?"
"um......"
"could we put it on it's side, put the roller shutter up and take it out that way?"
"Yeah, we may have to, I can't cut a metre out of this and weld it back on"
"how high is the door?"
Door height 4.4 metres
had to pull the door off it's runners and remove a bit of it to get it out
My mate has had a few that spring to mind, bought a 3 phase welder plugged it in and decided to see what it could do, his workshop was last on the run of the power supply in a load of workshops...his C/U spat it's dummy out which in turn blew every other consumer unit and the main 3 phase supply into the building, naturally denied all knowledge and just said he was welding away happily for the last hour and something went bang, bulls
tted the guy who owned the big company who owned the building that his end blew first, and must have killed "my" workshop. Cost the owner a bit of wedge to fix, power company out to fix it and loads of downtime on a huge contract.Same place where someone knocked an oxygen bottle on the floor off a big drop, landed and took the head clean off it which propelled it through the yard, through the fence, across the road, through another fence, through a building wall before embedding itself in a concrete wall at the back of the other building, how that didn't hit anyone I do not know.
Truck driver who hooked up his trailer with a full load, put air lines on, put the jack up, drove off and hadn't actually hooked the trailer up at all, ripped all the lines out of the truck and dropped the trailer on the floor, took 4 forklifts and many people stood on forklifts to lift it back.
My favourite though, this was actually my mate. Had to build a trailer, extremely oversized trailer so he built it over 2 weeks or so, I popped up as he was close to finishing it and take it off to be galvanised, they were on a very tight schedule to get this done and it had to go in the morning for galv, so I helped him finish it up and then sat on the trailer and did the rough calculation in my head, looked at it again by eye and raised a pertinent question
"mush"
"Yes"
"How wide is this trailer?"
"4.8 metres"
"that's pretty wide, I'd say that is probably about half a metre too wide to fit out the door"
"nah it should fi.....oh f
k yeah"Door was 4.1 metres wide
"how are we going to get his out of here?"
"um......"
"could we put it on it's side, put the roller shutter up and take it out that way?"
"Yeah, we may have to, I can't cut a metre out of this and weld it back on"
"how high is the door?"
Door height 4.4 metres
had to pull the door off it's runners and remove a bit of it to get it out
Papermill
large paper machine producing paper - loads of syconised motors and a paper run through many rollers. complicated process but enough to know that the rollers should never meet...
Stage left photographer taking picture of people with machine in background. no one asked the photographer if his flash was off. picture taken and flash goes off.
All hell breaks loose.
Paper break detection equipment sees flash as a paper break, machine separates rollers at full chat. we have a ticker tape reception as loads and loads of bits of paper flutter to the ground.
Major data centre
UPS units are used to provide uninterruptable power to the critical data equipment. Any power disturbance may result in computer equipment malfunctioning and impacting what the data centre is undertaking. UPS company are in doing maintenance and update the system software. trouble is the software wasn't compatible. next weekend an on load generator run was carried out, the power was failed generators started and the system got confused. it just sat there. So manual step back sequence was initiated. that didn't go well, control system attempted to connect generator to mains without synchronisation. couple of bangs as various protection circuit breakers tripped and the prince of darkness got out. Data centre critical side was up, just. Some of the other non critical items failed.... quite an experience to try and keep it all together. lots of running about and a fair bit of panic but we got it recovered. if it had dropped then it would have been a worldwide impacting event. (no exaggeration)
not so much cockups but just routine moments that you come across when working in maintenance - not everything always goes to plan.
trying to start a generator after maintenance - 69 litres 16 cylinders and quad turbos..... fuel system pressure had to be above a set pressure for it to start. Contractor decided to hook up a hand pump to try and get the pressure to the limit so that the electronics would accept and permit an engine start. a few attempts and then this was achieved, trouble was the union was suspect and ended up with fuel rail pressure where it shouldn't have been. hose blew off and diesel was ejected from pipe end at high pressure. We were soaking up diesel and decontaminating for quite4 some time indeed.
large paper machine producing paper - loads of syconised motors and a paper run through many rollers. complicated process but enough to know that the rollers should never meet...
Stage left photographer taking picture of people with machine in background. no one asked the photographer if his flash was off. picture taken and flash goes off.
All hell breaks loose.
Paper break detection equipment sees flash as a paper break, machine separates rollers at full chat. we have a ticker tape reception as loads and loads of bits of paper flutter to the ground.
Major data centre
UPS units are used to provide uninterruptable power to the critical data equipment. Any power disturbance may result in computer equipment malfunctioning and impacting what the data centre is undertaking. UPS company are in doing maintenance and update the system software. trouble is the software wasn't compatible. next weekend an on load generator run was carried out, the power was failed generators started and the system got confused. it just sat there. So manual step back sequence was initiated. that didn't go well, control system attempted to connect generator to mains without synchronisation. couple of bangs as various protection circuit breakers tripped and the prince of darkness got out. Data centre critical side was up, just. Some of the other non critical items failed.... quite an experience to try and keep it all together. lots of running about and a fair bit of panic but we got it recovered. if it had dropped then it would have been a worldwide impacting event. (no exaggeration)
not so much cockups but just routine moments that you come across when working in maintenance - not everything always goes to plan.
trying to start a generator after maintenance - 69 litres 16 cylinders and quad turbos..... fuel system pressure had to be above a set pressure for it to start. Contractor decided to hook up a hand pump to try and get the pressure to the limit so that the electronics would accept and permit an engine start. a few attempts and then this was achieved, trouble was the union was suspect and ended up with fuel rail pressure where it shouldn't have been. hose blew off and diesel was ejected from pipe end at high pressure. We were soaking up diesel and decontaminating for quite4 some time indeed.
Iva Barchetta said:
2 in one morning.
Cockup 1....
Stupid dumb ass ignorant driver left keys in ignition of his lorry whilst unloading in a cars parked both sides
residential street ,blocking the street ,he had no choice.
Disgruntled driver can't get past and after an altercation drives off with the keys to lorry.
Cockup 1....
Stupid dumb ass ignorant driver left keys in ignition of his lorry whilst unloading in a cars parked both sides
residential street ,blocking the street ,he had no choice.
Disgruntled driver can't get past and after an altercation drives off with the keys to lorry.
Is that not TWOC?
As well as being bloody amusing.
omgus said:
Iva Barchetta said:
2 in one morning.
Cockup 1....
Stupid dumb ass ignorant driver left keys in ignition of his lorry whilst unloading in a cars parked both sides
residential street ,blocking the street ,he had no choice.
Disgruntled driver can't get past and after an altercation drives off with the keys to lorry.
Cockup 1....
Stupid dumb ass ignorant driver left keys in ignition of his lorry whilst unloading in a cars parked both sides
residential street ,blocking the street ,he had no choice.
Disgruntled driver can't get past and after an altercation drives off with the keys to lorry.
Is that not TWOC?
As well as being bloody amusing.
It wasn't amusing to me as I was the second person who had to take,hopefully the correct keys out to him.....
pits said:
I've not really had any monumental cock ups, I once painted something and it look beautiful told the customer it would be set in a few hours and by all accounts it would have been set in a few hours, if I put the hardener in...that was fun to remove.
My mate has had a few that spring to mind, bought a 3 phase welder plugged it in and decided to see what it could do, his workshop was last on the run of the power supply in a load of workshops...his C/U spat it's dummy out which in turn blew every other consumer unit and the main 3 phase supply into the building, naturally denied all knowledge and just said he was welding away happily for the last hour and something went bang, bullstted the guy who owned the big company who owned the building that his end blew first, and must have killed "my" workshop. Cost the owner a bit of wedge to fix, power company out to fix it and loads of downtime on a huge contract.
Same place where someone knocked an oxygen bottle on the floor off a big drop, landed and took the head clean off it which propelled it through the yard, through the fence, across the road, through another fence, through a building wall before embedding itself in a concrete wall at the back of the other building, how that didn't hit anyone I do not know.
Truck driver who hooked up his trailer with a full load, put air lines on, put the jack up, drove off and hadn't actually hooked the trailer up at all, ripped all the lines out of the truck and dropped the trailer on the floor, took 4 forklifts and many people stood on forklifts to lift it back.
My favourite though, this was actually my mate. Had to build a trailer, extremely oversized trailer so he built it over 2 weeks or so, I popped up as he was close to finishing it and take it off to be galvanised, they were on a very tight schedule to get this done and it had to go in the morning for galv, so I helped him finish it up and then sat on the trailer and did the rough calculation in my head, looked at it again by eye and raised a pertinent question
"mush"
"Yes"
"How wide is this trailer?"
"4.8 metres"
"that's pretty wide, I'd say that is probably about half a metre too wide to fit out the door"
"nah it should fi.....oh fk yeah"
Door was 4.1 metres wide
"how are we going to get his out of here?"
"um......"
"could we put it on it's side, put the roller shutter up and take it out that way?"
"Yeah, we may have to, I can't cut a metre out of this and weld it back on"
"how high is the door?"
Door height 4.4 metres
had to pull the door off it's runners and remove a bit of it to get it out
Why not just tilt the trailer on an angle?My mate has had a few that spring to mind, bought a 3 phase welder plugged it in and decided to see what it could do, his workshop was last on the run of the power supply in a load of workshops...his C/U spat it's dummy out which in turn blew every other consumer unit and the main 3 phase supply into the building, naturally denied all knowledge and just said he was welding away happily for the last hour and something went bang, bulls
tted the guy who owned the big company who owned the building that his end blew first, and must have killed "my" workshop. Cost the owner a bit of wedge to fix, power company out to fix it and loads of downtime on a huge contract.Same place where someone knocked an oxygen bottle on the floor off a big drop, landed and took the head clean off it which propelled it through the yard, through the fence, across the road, through another fence, through a building wall before embedding itself in a concrete wall at the back of the other building, how that didn't hit anyone I do not know.
Truck driver who hooked up his trailer with a full load, put air lines on, put the jack up, drove off and hadn't actually hooked the trailer up at all, ripped all the lines out of the truck and dropped the trailer on the floor, took 4 forklifts and many people stood on forklifts to lift it back.
My favourite though, this was actually my mate. Had to build a trailer, extremely oversized trailer so he built it over 2 weeks or so, I popped up as he was close to finishing it and take it off to be galvanised, they were on a very tight schedule to get this done and it had to go in the morning for galv, so I helped him finish it up and then sat on the trailer and did the rough calculation in my head, looked at it again by eye and raised a pertinent question
"mush"
"Yes"
"How wide is this trailer?"
"4.8 metres"
"that's pretty wide, I'd say that is probably about half a metre too wide to fit out the door"
"nah it should fi.....oh f
k yeah"Door was 4.1 metres wide
"how are we going to get his out of here?"
"um......"
"could we put it on it's side, put the roller shutter up and take it out that way?"
"Yeah, we may have to, I can't cut a metre out of this and weld it back on"
"how high is the door?"
Door height 4.4 metres
had to pull the door off it's runners and remove a bit of it to get it out
Not so much a cock up, but a collosal unneccecary spend. An old director in a place I used to work at decided he didnt want such a large commute to his office in the morning, and decided to relocate the whole office. Planning was put into place, lots of people involved. To make matters worse, the new office had several compromises and the location was rubbish for everyone except the director. Meanwhile, it was known that he wasn't actually that good at his job and it was common knowledge that he'd be given the push. A few months into the planning, he did indeed leave the company - the very second it happened the office move was cancelled, but not at the cost of millions to the bottom line in wasted time and effort that had already taken place.
amancalledrob said:
Tonsko said:
Explain to a stupid person please?
It's no more than it appears to be: he actually believed carting around a one tonne piece of limestone with a few condescending promises carved in it would make everyone think he was some sort of heroI'm actually disappointed it didn't get dropped on anyone. I wouldn't have wanted anyone seriously hurt but if that had been dropped on someone's car, for example, I bet we'd have been treated to some first-class comedy/headlines (and comedy headlines, I guess) for weeks on end
omgus said:
Iva Barchetta said:
2 in one morning.
Cockup 1....
Stupid dumb ass ignorant driver left keys in ignition of his lorry whilst unloading in a cars parked both sides
residential street ,blocking the street ,he had no choice.
Disgruntled driver can't get past and after an altercation drives off with the keys to lorry.
Cockup 1....
Stupid dumb ass ignorant driver left keys in ignition of his lorry whilst unloading in a cars parked both sides
residential street ,blocking the street ,he had no choice.
Disgruntled driver can't get past and after an altercation drives off with the keys to lorry.
Is that not TWOC?
As well as being bloody amusing.
Working for print firm when original BS5750 was launched (prior to ISO9000), we were printing press packs ready for the big launch.
Job had been farmed by multiple agencies and printers before we received it, was back in the day of artwork produced on Compugraphic, cut and pasted with cow gum into a layout and then put under camera to produce a Negative and subsequent plate.
2/3rd way through run it was noticed the f of benefits was partly masked off, so it read "The benetits of BS5750". Frantically checked through the original negs and artwork, thankfully it was on the negs which previous signed off proofs were produced from.
Never time for the job... always time for a re-print.
Job had been farmed by multiple agencies and printers before we received it, was back in the day of artwork produced on Compugraphic, cut and pasted with cow gum into a layout and then put under camera to produce a Negative and subsequent plate.
2/3rd way through run it was noticed the f of benefits was partly masked off, so it read "The benetits of BS5750". Frantically checked through the original negs and artwork, thankfully it was on the negs which previous signed off proofs were produced from.
Never time for the job... always time for a re-print.
ruggedscotty said:
Papermill
large paper machine producing paper - loads of syconised motors and a paper run through many rollers. complicated process but enough to know that the rollers should never meet...
Stage left photographer taking picture of people with machine in background. no one asked the photographer if his flash was off. picture taken and flash goes off.
All hell breaks loose.
An old friend of my Dad's worked as a photographers assistant before the war. One of his duties was to handle the 'flash powder', basically powdered magnesium. If the photographer wanted to work indoors Barry (the assistant) would place a carefully calculated quantity of powder in a pan, the photographer would open the shutter, the powder would be ignited causing a bright flash and a cloud of smoke, then the shutter closed.large paper machine producing paper - loads of syconised motors and a paper run through many rollers. complicated process but enough to know that the rollers should never meet...
Stage left photographer taking picture of people with machine in background. no one asked the photographer if his flash was off. picture taken and flash goes off.
All hell breaks loose.
On one occasion a number of photographers had assembled to photograph some kind of ceremony, they all agreed to share just the one flash and it was Barry's job to set it off. The photographers clustered together in the ideal spot, some standing precariously on chairs, and on an agreed signal they opened the shutters and Barry set off the flash. Barry had been very nervous about having several photographers relying on him, and was very very careful to calculate the correct quantity of powder for the distance involved. But he was so preoccupied by the thought of these dozen photographers that he absent mindedly multiplied the quantity by 12.
No actual fire, but a few minor injuries and several broken cameras.
Dr Jekyll said:
An old friend of my Dad's worked as a photographers assistant before the war. One of his duties was to handle the 'flash powder', basically powdered magnesium. If the photographer wanted to work indoors Barry (the assistant) would place a carefully calculated quantity of powder in a pan, the photographer would open the shutter, the powder would be ignited causing a bright flash and a cloud of smoke, then the shutter closed.
On one occasion a number of photographers had assembled to photograph some kind of ceremony, they all agreed to share just the one flash and it was Barry's job to set it off. The photographers clustered together in the ideal spot, some standing precariously on chairs, and on an agreed signal they opened the shutters and Barry set off the flash. Barry had been very nervous about having several photographers relying on him, and was very very careful to calculate the correct quantity of powder for the distance involved. But he was so preoccupied by the thought of these dozen photographers that he absent mindedly multiplied the quantity by 12.
No actual fire, but a few minor injuries and several broken cameras.
My grandad couldn't make his flash fire so he decided the powder had gone off and threw the tin on the fire...On one occasion a number of photographers had assembled to photograph some kind of ceremony, they all agreed to share just the one flash and it was Barry's job to set it off. The photographers clustered together in the ideal spot, some standing precariously on chairs, and on an agreed signal they opened the shutters and Barry set off the flash. Barry had been very nervous about having several photographers relying on him, and was very very careful to calculate the correct quantity of powder for the distance involved. But he was so preoccupied by the thought of these dozen photographers that he absent mindedly multiplied the quantity by 12.
No actual fire, but a few minor injuries and several broken cameras.
...The grate put quite a dent in the living room wall opposite the fireplace.
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