Warehouse manager sends new hire on an impossible errand, new hire quietly slips out and takes a 3-hour break

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  • An experienced employee mistaken for a new hire walking through a storage facility with tall shelving.
  • Sent on a quest for the impossible plint ladder

    This happened decades ago, before everyone carried a cell phone. From working as a temp in several warehouses, I know some of the ways the old guard would mess around with the beginners by asking them to locate something that doesn't exist.
  • In kitchens, someone would ask for a 'holeless colander' and in warehouses they would send you on a quest for the 'plint ladder', which is a ladder to climb a baseboard / skirting board.
  • So I came prepared. The warehouse manager send me on the plint ladder quest and I asked him if it could be outside too.
  • He humoured me and told me he didn't know where it was stored, so I just had to look for it everywhere.
  • "Ask around!" he added, because that would make it even more hilarious. So I pretended to look around until I was out of view, then walked out the warehouse and went to a coffee shop to some wed and read a book.
  • I didn't return for a couple of hours, but they didn't know where I had gone.
  • So after several hours had gone by, I returned to the warehouse and reported to the manager that the quest hadn't been easy, but I found him a plint ladder.
  • And then I handed him a small Playmobil toy ladder. I could see the fury in his eyes for me taking the whole afternoon off to come back with an actual 'plint ladder' instead of making a fool of myself, but since I had merely followed his orders, he couldn't dock my pay.
  • He never sent me out to get anything after that.
  • An experienced employee takes a break after a manager mistakes them for a rookie new hire.
  • HelloMoto070 Started working in a restaurant on Aruba and was sent to another restaurant to fetch a box of bottles of red wine called Chateau Briand. The restaurant sent me to the next and so on, it was sort of a hazing ritual they were all in on. They didn't figure I was not born yesterday and knew exactly what chateau briand is (hint: it's not a wine) so I went along from the start, went to the bar of each restaurant first and ordered a beer and took my time. I came back half hammered around k
  • AmsterdamAssassin Original Poster's Reply You can just walk out the door on your 'quest' and just return hours later with 'sorry, I looked everywhere'. These days, of course, they can call you on your cell/smart phone, but you can answer with, "I'm following a new lead, I will report back when I know more," and terminate the call.
  • Celloer You didn't come back with bottles of meat?
  • AmsterdamAssassin Original Poster's Reply Ren & Stimpy FTW
  • Chemical_Inventory A jar of elbow grease....
  • AmsterdamAssassin Original Poster's Reply Just bring them a jar of Milking Grease. If it's good enough for cow udders it will serve well as elbow grease
  • PoisonPlushi Genuinely loving all the responses and enjoying giggling to myself about which ones I would fall for and which I wouldn't. I'm pretty sure I'd fall for "long weight", but if someone asked me for a "holeless colander" I'd just assume they forgot the word "bowl" and just blurted out the closest description they could think of and hand them a bowl.
  • AmsterdamAssassin Original Poster's Reply Well, that would be the correct response.
  • ordinarydiva I worked I a pharmacy. Years ago one of the kids up front called the pharmacy dept posing as a customer and asked the pharmacy cashier who answered if the store carried fallopian tubes. So the cashier (who was otherwise a bright kid) asked the pharmacist if we carried said fallopian tubes. I think the pharmacist laughed for a whole week about that.
  • AmsterdamAssassin Original Poster's Reply Only the female pharmacists carry those fallopian tubes
  • commentsrnice2 That show really was something else
  • AmsterdamAssassin Original Poster's Reply I have it all on DVD, to watch while under the influence
  • Numbar43 I remember once seeing an anecdote where someone came to an auto parts store saying he was sent for a flux capacitor. When they laughed and tried to explain he got angry and violent.
  • AmsterdamAssassin Original Poster's Reply Why? Did they run out of flux capacitors?
  • SuttonSystems I think plint ladder is cheating, it sounds like a real thing, has to be a long weight / long stand etc for the joke to work
  • AmsterdamAssassin Original Poster's Reply Well, plint ladders are real. I cannot post a picture on this sub, but you can google Playmobil ladder and see for yourself.
  • NDDAG In high school, I worked for a small print shop. One slow day the owner told me to drive to another print shop to borrow their 'paper stretcher'. I ended up driving to half a dozen shops, as each one would tell me that they'd lent it to another shop and send me there. Then, as soon as I left, they'd call my boss and tell him they couldn't believe he'd send me on a wild goose chase like that. "So you told him the truth?" "H I no! We sent him to \[Next shop in the chain\]!"
  • kalendral_42 Send someone to stores for 'a long wait/weight' or to B&Q for Tartan paint

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