Hah made you look
Actually, I’m trying to collect as many suggestions as possible for the time-honoured tradition of giving the new guy a futile assignment. We’ve all heard the favourite “go to my truck and get me a left-handed screwdriver” or “pick me up a can of striped paint from the hardware store”
Any new/better ones. I’ve got twenty-nine, 17-year old carpentry students/apprentices that occasionally think they know everything and I need some new material.
Thanks
Scruff
Replies
I suppose it is just a variation on the screwdriver, but I like the left-handed monkey wrench.
There are left handed adjustablae wrenches, opposite threads.Let's not confuse the issue with facts!
Send the new guy to the hardware store for a long weight/wait. Anyway if he figures it out don't expect him back for a while.
Hundred foot roll of shore line
Bag of toe nails
Sky hook
Board stretcher
****
You cannot work hard enough to make up for a sloppy estimate.
tell 'em to get you a matter....what's a matter ?
nothin's the matter with me what's the matter with you ?
this I can use. Thanks
Give them a styrofoam cup and tell them to bring you some laquer thinner.I drilled a hole and attached a lamp cord to an old wooden handled screw driver. A knot remover.Chuck Slive, work, build, ...better with wood
Around here we do it by teamwork. The shop will send soemone into the office, and we know what to say:"Joe sent me in to get the board stretcher""Do you need the one for a 2X4 or 2X6?"Guys goes back out to check, then comes back in shortly."I need one for 2X6""The 2X6 stretcher is broke. Will the 2X8 stretcher work?"Another trip out and back"He says it will work - Where is it?""It's in the basement - See if Joe has the keys" (Our building is slab on grade - No basement)Joe doesn't have the keys, so he sends the newbie to ask Fred, who sends 'em to ask Dale, etc.You can keep 'em running around a LONG time if you have things coreographed a bit...
Don't ever iron a 4 leaf clover - You shouldn't press your luck
Boss
I gotta think that if that guy goes back to one of you or the other more then once you should just fire his dumb azz, he's never going to make it!
Doug
I worked in a large machine shop years ago and the new guy would get asked to go find the foreman and see if he had found any BA-11s yet.
(Translation for you dial uppers = BALLS)
"A power shovel"
My first job on a framing crew and being fairly sharp, had the forman send me down to the site a few hundred feet down the lane to ask them for the plywood laminator.
I did expect it was bogus but it sounded so official and he looked so damned serious when he gave me the order. Didn't want to upset the new boss on my first day.
When you're this good, EVERYONE wants a crack at you!
http://www.petedraganic.com/
Years ago, I used to work for The Home Depot. We used to have a lot fun sending the new guys down to the basement for a variety of different things. The funny thing was that there was no basment. Well I am sure you have seen the inside of a Home Depot. They are pretty large buildings. These poor guys would search high and low looking for the door to the basement. What made it funnier is that every associate that the new hire asked would send him in a different direction to find the non-existant door to the basement.
I know, I know. Simple things amuse simple minds.
DoctorDave
Hey, every time I ask where something is in Home Depot, the associates always point me to the far end of the store too! I didn't realize it was company policy!
that deal spilled over into customer care....
they still aren't tired of the joke at any HD...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming<!----><!----><!---->
WOW!!! What a Ride!Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
bucket of steam
box of bolt holes
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
Box of round nails, two handled bucket, square air hose, simple things.
nailer
You have to watch it."Box of round nails,"Hog rings. "two handled bucket,"Some of the mop buckets are loblong and have 2 handles..
.
A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
On a job site where do find the oblong buckets with two handles? Either under the gc, because if he sits on a round bucket, it vanishes, or out back by the big tree, with a sign that says,"DON'T PEE ON THE HANDLES!"
Nailer
I don't know why you people call them "Adjustable" wrenches.
They're called "Tum" wrenches!
Ya opens and closes em wit yer tum.
(Newer hi tech ones have temperature compensating jaws.)If your near the docks you can send the new worker to look for a "Scuttler".
It's the axe you use to scuttle your boat when you need a new one.
Edited 2/24/2007 5:58 pm by QCInspector
Tell him to get a hammer-four...
what's a hammer-four?
“The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds..” – Hume
metric cats paw, pound of air, reversible saw for back cuts.
This boards crooked, get me a can of Warp Out from the truck..
favorite carpentry instructor from trade school ...
always used 2 lines I still throw at my wife and kids ...
when he was up at the front of the class trying to teach ...
"ya-butt" .... when he'd be half way thru an answer to a question and the kid would interrupt ... "yeah, but ...." he'd shoot back ... "ya-butt ... that's a young rabbit"
and ...
"goat-head" ... same situation ... 'cept after the kid would stop and say ... "go ahead" .... which was more like "go 'head" ... he'd stop and yell back ... "hey! Don't U call me no Goat Head!"
no idea why ... but dammit that always made me laugh!
Jeff
Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
"hey! Don't U call me no Goat Head!"
LOL!
Used to work for a crusty old guy who would shout back with an impressively massive scowl, "GOURD Head??!!!!"
Would always shock new people.
Forrest
Bubble water for the levels. And an extra bubble, just in case.
Pete Duffy, Handyman
Not in carpentry vein, but my fav has to be a "can of headlight filament". Come to think of it, you could adapt..." can of work light filament", or the very specialized "wobble light bulb filament".
PJ
Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.
While your at the auto parts store, grab me a new set of muffler bearings too.
You got the wrong bearings.. I wanted "gold plated muffler bearings"
Sorry, the last set I replaced was on a 80 Chevette.
We just went with the stainless ones.
Hubcap gaskets!
Go get me a dicfer....don't ask, you oughta know by now!
early 40's dodge power wagons had muffler bearings...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming<!----><!----><!---->
WOW!!! What a Ride!Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
Whew, do you guys figure all this in your overhead?
Heard a painter ask a helper once to get a bucket of striped paint.
An electrician tell his helper to start wiring while he hooked up the main power. He said that the house should be wired before the electricity got to him.
And finally, many many years ago at the age of fifteen, I was asked to go get a left handed lath stretcher.
Speaking of helpers, I was eating lunch with one the other day and he ordered a BLT. He told the waitress to cut the bacon and the lettuce and while your at it put me some ham on it. Also can you put cheese on that too?
Sad thing is, he wasnt clowning around.
One I really liked that someone in here once mentioned (can't remember who to give proper credit to) -
Have them crown the edges of a stack of plywood.
A metric adjustable wrench.
A Hen-Way.
wait for it................
About 3 pounds.
surely the deck builders would require post holes. Why dig em when you can buy em?
Grizzled old Chief Petty Officer sent me out to get a bucket of steam. Went to the PO Club next door and got a chunk of dry ice, plunked it into a bucket with a bit of water and presto...a bucket full of "steam!" Should of seen the look on his face....
You should have put the dry ice in a plastic soda bottle with a little warm water, close it just before you see the person requesting the steam. Tell him you can only get it in bottles now.
Be sure to get out fast before it explodes... violently.Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
great idea...problem...no plastic soda bottles in 72!
I was once helping a friend install a muffler. He asked me to get the "pipe stretcher". I was determined not to fall for it, but in a muffler shop there is actually such a tool for expanding the end of one pipe to make another fit inside.
"Go to the truck and get a can of E-Z-Dig, and make sure you don't bring the aerosol kind either. It's probably under all the sheets of shoring. When you put it back, do it nice and neat." That would give a kid a break from listening to a crabby operator and get the truck cleaned out too.
A beam pocket, always confused the new guys when I was framing.
Ok now. What do you do with the smart one who catches on before going to look? promote them?
How about diesel sparkplugs? I had a young auto parts guy going crazy looking for a radiator cap for my 62 Beetle a few years back.
Stash
Darn, that one brings back some memories I had a friend in high school who's mother took their Corvair to 4 different service stations to have anti-freeze put in it before winter came. First 3 tried to explain but she wouldn't budge, 4th. one took her money , put the car on the lift , sent her home after about a half hour. Her son about died laughing at her about it.
Just no convincing her she was wrong.
wood grease, the fits a bit tight.
Send him out to the store for a long weight....
Talk to the store, and make sure he gets a long wait.
I still remember the apprentice millwrights coming to the pulpmill stores, saying, "I'm here for a long wait"...
I heard of one young smart #### who was told to go get a long wait, so he went home. The next morning he showed up and asked the boss if he got his long wait or not.
How about a board/shingle stretcher. Worked for me a couple of times.
i bet no body would know what a yankee is either, I found mine the other day and was amazed how hi teck it was and how so very proud of it i used to be. I kept playing with it so it spung out i think i wore it out.
just used mine yesterday to drill some small pilot holes for cabinet hinges.
I was a Machinest Mate First Class in the Navy and we were always sending new "boots" after buckets of steam, pipe stretchers, and pipe stretching oil.
One time, I was rolling a bearing into a pump (standing knee deep in bilge water), and asked a "boot" to get me a tube of Prussian Blue. Thinking that he was wise to me, he told me where I could shove that Prussian Blue. He almost died when I sorta levitated out of the bilge and crawled all over his sorry azz. - lol
It's always important to check your bumper fluid and the water in the tires.
When I was going to school in Phoenix, & bustin tires at the local gas station, we used to balance tires with water.
Works great unless they go to somewhere that it might freeze.“A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.” —James Madison
A box of toe nails
Nuke & highfigh would get this one.
When I was in the Army, we did communications---- ask the privates to go get a tube of squelch.
“A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.” —James Madison
When I was an Army pilot, we'd send newbies out for a gallon of prop wash or maybe a few hundred yards of flight line.
If you were an aircraft mechanic you would do the same occasionally with the addition of some 'Mag Drops".
Hadn't heard of Mag Drops before, but the only piston engined helicopter I flew was the TH-55, otherwise known as Mattell Messerschmidt, because it was kind of flimsy, and one of the plastic airfoils was actually made by Mattell. Yeah, I fixed them, too, which is why I can't hear anymore.
I always have a special place for chopper pilots---- what did ya fly Huey, blackhawks, chinooks, apache's----etc......?“A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.” —James Madison