Fool's errands

[Ross]

I am doing some work this week for a Coast Guard Warrent Officer and we were talking today about errands that the new guys are sent on. Most I have heard; A bucket of prop wash, a hundred yards of shoreline. A half gallon of prop pitch, but a new one for me was, a can of magnetic bearing grease.
Let's add the others that I know are out there.

 

[RAD]

Don't forget the infamous Sky Hook

 

[wonkodsane]

Left Handed Cable Stretcher. A.S.H. Receiver.

 

[garylinger]

Metric screwdriver

 

[Tim R.]

Muffler bearings.

 

[Paul Brinkley]

Sandy shoreline... New Sea Scouts in my small home town when I was a kid were sent to a hardware store to get 50 feet of sandy shoreline. When they asked for it at the store (no matter which of the town's 2 hardware stores they were in), the clerk would always say they were out of it, but that they should check with the other store, which was at the opposite end of downtown. The boys were usually much wiser by the time they returned to the boat. -Paul

 

[Cpt. Jon]

In the army I had a few guys looking for a box of grid squares and one guy got an exhaust sample (he asked the motor sergeant how to take that, and he handed him a clear garbage bag).

... good times!

 

[PaulH]

A bucket of radar contacts....

 

[BobM]

A bucket of dehydrated water.

 

[John]

I once worked with a carpenter who told me that he sent an apprentice to a fellow-carpenter to borrow a lumber stretcher. They had him running all around the job, from one carpenter to another, asking for a lumber stretcher. Finally, the apprentice thought he'd figured out what was happening. He went back to the journeyman I knew and got ready to kick his a__. Fortunately, the journeyman was able to convince him that they did use lumber stretchers, but only on dam construction jobs. (Evidently the apprentice was a pretty big guy.) So be careful with those fool's errands, the fool you make may be....

 

[Timo42]

Once asked the new kid in the parts dept. for a distributor cap for a diesel truck, this was back in the days of microfiche parts catalogs, he looked for almost a half hour, the other parts guy was very "helpful", even suggested that he should call another dealer since they did more diesels than we did

 

[Joseph Shirley]

Blue Steam, a Left handed monkey wrench, and when under way, you always post a mail buoy watch

Joe S

 

[Hermit Scott]

Can of radio squelch

 

[jcherubini]

At a bar where I once worked I was sent to the kitchen for a silver sink stretcher. but when I got there I asked them for a strainer for dishes, since that's what I thought the manager wanted (and that he had just 'misspoken himself'). He said when I came back with an actual object in my hand it was the first time anyone had ever got anything from that.

I had a good one played on me once when I made a teak engine-instrument panel for a C-44-- had all the holes cut out for the gauges, etc. and realized I had gone 1/4" under the ruler dimension and not 1/4" over as I should have, so the perfectly-finished thing was too short to cover the opening already cut. I went ballistic at myself and stomped out at the end of the day feeling like a failure. I came in about 9:00 the next day and found it fit perfectly. The wood mill guy told me he had put it into the wood stretcher. Of course it took me most of the day in utter confusion before I was given the true story, that he had remade all my afternoon's work in about 20 minutes that morning and had got a coat of sealer on it and put it in place before I got there.

Just a reminder-- remember to change the air in your trailer tires each fall. You can't go all winter with that summer air in there!

 

[sailaway78]

And of course

For all the air force guys, there is always the flight line stretcher the newbies are sent to fetch.

 

[Mike Holibar]

For siezed nuts a long weight can often assist, and for attractive waterlines a can of striped paint speeds up the job.

 

[Ron20324]

Don't forget to tighten up the henway.

 

[Dave D]

Ron, is that another name for a Dikfore?

 

[Dave D]

when you have to focus to straighten out your own screw up, use the Aztec concentration chant: "ayem sophakeen weetah did!" three times is the charm!

 

[philwsailz]

Left-handed Fetzer valve...


I sent a kid after one once. He was gone a while, but eventually showed back up. With something in a brown bag....

Therre were a fair number of us involved, and everyone was real curious what he turned up with, but I was the ring-leader, so I open the bag, and lift out a round ring-type device from an Adult Toy Store.

Not sure who got who.... Everyone was laughing so hard they were crying.