What was the dumbest misue of an object/tool/thing/etc which has an actual purpose that you witnessed? Let me go first...
Posted by HikingOtter@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 339 comments
I started a job as a manager in a restaurant (F30). On my first day a younger manager (M25) was showing me around and introducing to the procedures. There was a spreadsheet with a count of used linens allocated to each day, at the end of the month it was send over to laundry company. So he opens Excel, we have a list of napkins and table cloths from the previous day, ready to be entered. He types them in. And sits there staring at the screen. I see the cogs slowly turning in his head. After a minute or so, I ask what is he doing. He said HE IS ADDING THEN UP... IN HIS HEAD... TO TYPE THE RESULT IN THE WEEKLY TOTAL COLUMN. At first I thought he was joking, he was not. I grabbed a mouse and typed in a sum formula in the new column, dragged it through all the rows to sum everything automatically... Turns out about 20 % of the values were miscalculated 😬 He was stunned as if I made a magic trick.
Monty_Mongers@reddit
Worked on a building site in London late 80’s. Irish lad labouring used to volunteer to make the teas/coffees etc. All the coffees tasted like shite - yep he used to put the T bags in the kettle!!
saltwatersunsets@reddit
A statue of Nelson’s column, like a piece of plastic tourist tat. Obviously it has a decorative purpose.
I work as an A&E doctor, where I saw it not being used for its original purpose.
Klossomfawn@reddit
Brother tried to cook burgers in a toaster
prjones4@reddit
Related to this, a student put a whole carrot in a kettle because he was told to boil it to cook
Organic-Network7556@reddit
I tried to boil milk in the kettle when I was about 10. The kettle immediately broke and as I’d been home alone I never owned up to it.
GreenSpaniel@reddit
I also did this! Still never quite understood why it broke the kettle, I still think it should work! But I did get a massive telling off!
Organic-Network7556@reddit
I don’t get why it broke either!
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
Worked with a girl who told me this is how she booked pasta dsiky
SamVimesBootTheory@reddit
I remember at an induction talk at uni (I was a commuting student but it was like an induction to the 'college' on campus that was accomodation for post grads) there was 'the fire alarm will likely go off at least once whilst you're here, it's usually someone trying to make pasta'
lemonstealingwho@reddit
In my halls it happened at least 3 times because one student kept putting dry noodles in the microwave after a night out. I think they charged him for the call-out and it stopped happening. Or maybe he simply discovered water. The security team used it as drill practice and those of us that came out too slowly into the Welsh rain at 2-3am he’d pat your head and say “dead.”
mike9874@reddit
Reminds me of the time in 2003 when the fire brigade went to student halls because the international student left the oven on with the door open and went to class, his flat was too cold
absolutrachel@reddit
Witnessed a guy trying to fry a whole carrot in a frying pan in a hostel once
RustyBasement@reddit
My grandad used to boil his breakfast egg this way.
Prisoners in the UK get inventive and cook in the kettle provided in their cells. I once had a recipe for banoffee pie cooked in a kettle.
Ricky_Martins_Vagina@reddit
One of my mates wrote a prison cook book based around kettle cooking, other makeshift methods, and obtainable ingredients just to pass time while he was in.
It was actually really good - I told him to get an illustrator and present all the recipes as 'prison letters', and get it published even if only as a novelty rather than a sincere cook book. Never did though 😩
BrieflyVerbose@reddit
My Dad nearly lost his job awhile back after losing his shit with a coworker.
The guy was cooking his sausages in the kettle (holding the button down). My Dad makes a cup of tea and immediately loses his temper after the first sip. He then threw the kettle at the other guy and told him to buy a new one for everyone else.
DreadPirateBill@reddit
My sister used to cook pasta in the kettle when she came back from a night on the lash. Just tip it up to drain it, open the top and dump it on a plate. Gross for the rest of us, but I had to admire the ingenuity.
LowManufacturer435@reddit
A guy I used to work with had the genius idea of warming up sausage rolls by putting them in a clear plastic food bag in the kettle and and boiling it a couple of times. It only came out what he had been doing when the bag burst and he didn't tell anyone...if you've never had tea made with greasy, sausage flavoured water, it is quite an experience...
beatski@reddit
Pairs nicely with a limp biscuit so I'm told
pajamakitten@reddit
Do that with my kettle and you can kiss my chocolate starfish.
virella789@reddit
Only is the sausages are hot dogs though
polly-esther@reddit
My friend tried to make mash, he peeled and then boiled a whole giant jacket potato that would have taken two hours at least in the oven. I went out and for four hours and it was still solid.
DemonicFrog@reddit
My ex did that, except he tried to boil it in milk becuse there's milk in mash. The pan was not salvageable.
punkfunkymonkey@reddit
Back when I was in uni, another neighbouring student household used to go to the local pub each Sunday, come home drunk and cook a roast chicken dinner as a group. One Sunday all but one of them decided to stay in the pub for a real drinking session. The one that decided he'd had enough and headed back to the house.
Determined to have his sunday chicken, he took the chicken out of the fridge, cut what he though was his share of it off, decided for some reason that the best way to cook it was on the base of an upturned clothing iron!
abloco89@reddit
A couple of students put teabags in the kettle to make tea
seven-cents@reddit
I had a mate who visited, and put the electric kettle onto the gas hob to boil the water. Obviously it melted the plastic base, set off the fire alarm, and made the whole house stink of burning plastic that took weeks to fade
3Cogs@reddit
My grandad put the electric deep fryer on the gas hob when he was looking after us for a weekend. Dad couldn't help seeing the funny side when he saw the charred remains.
dglcomputers@reddit
A cleaner did that in a caravan at work, was heating the water in it for descaling. None of us could believe it when the report came over the radio.
seven-cents@reddit
Lol, people can be oblivious at times! To be fair to my buddy, he did have a stovetop kettle at home so it was probably just an automatic routine for him, and my kettle did have a metal exterior.. but he took it off the plastic base with the cord plugged into the socket! We still take the piss out of him 20 years later 😂
dglcomputers@reddit
At least in our newest hire fleet it wouldn't be possible to repeat the error as they have induction hobs, it would just error out.
MoodyBernoulli@reddit
When I was about 12 I tried to do cheese on toast in the toaster.
I’d prepared so thoroughly, that I even turned the toaster onto its side.
Everything was going swimmingly and the cheese was bubbling away. In my dumb childhood brain, I didn’t consider that when finished the toaster would eject the cheese on toast, upside down, onto the floor.
noodledoodledoo@reddit
Could have been worse, when I was at university some people tried this exact thing in my accommodation and it set the toaster on fire.
Ricky_Martins_Vagina@reddit
I had an au-pair set our toaster on fire. I heard her shouting for help, by the time I got to the kitchen she already had it under the tap.... still plugged in at the wall...
lemonstealingwho@reddit
Yeah, we’re gonna need another au-pair…
Ricky_Martins_Vagina@reddit
It was honestly like she'd just been air dropped in from another planet. I still wind my mum up to this day, saying that she committed gross negligence leaving us in the hands of that maniac - we'd have been safer looking after ourselves 😂
arthur_sleep@reddit
I did this exact thing. Toaster definitely went on fire.
TimeInitial0@reddit
No problem, there is the 5 second rule
Questjon@reddit
I watched my older brother, who is over 40, try and chop and onion with a very blunt serated bread knife.
_ROSSO_D_@reddit
CJ is that you ? 😆 I use a bread knife for cutting most veg… it’s far from blunt tho.
LowManufacturer435@reddit
I use a bread knife for cutting lettuce and cabbage etc. Way better than a normal knife.
coder111@reddit
Just how dull are your normal knifes? Get a sharpening stone from a hardware stone, they cost like 5 quid...
user7785079@reddit
Garbage advice for someone who doesn't know how to use one and likely isn't going to spend hours learning how to do so.
Just buy a new cheap knife when the old one is blunt.
InfiniteRadness@reddit
Or get a good knife, and just learn to sharpen it when it’s dull (a task that even children can learn with minimal tutelage). Even better, a good knife won’t dull as quickly as a shit knife, so you won’t be an incredibly wasteful cunt with no practical skills and a dull knife.
user7785079@reddit
Yes bro I know all about knife maintenance, I was a chef for many years.
But suggesting buying and learning to use a whetstone to someone who currently uses a bread knife is a bit daft imo.
LowManufacturer435@reddit
Ot you culd use whatever knife you want which would avoid the need to go on Reddit and act like a complete cunt. Have you ever thought of trying that?
coder111@reddit
It takes maybe 10 minutes to learn it. It's not rocket surgery.
bobajob2000@reddit
I got that reference...
LowManufacturer435@reddit
Way better than a normal knife...for cutting lettuce and cabbage due to the serration. I didnt say it is way better than any knife I have because my other knives are shit and blunt. Context is everything.
Current-Decision-851@reddit
I’ve been taught to use the bottom of a cereal bowl or coffee cup to sharpen knives. Find one with the roughest unglazed bit on the bottom, scrape at 25 degree angle, does a great job on my cheap knives.
coder111@reddit
Bottom of ceramic bowl will work if you have nothing else. A brick will work too.
But given how cheap real sharpening stones are, I don't see a reason to use substitutes unless you need to sharpen something right now and absolutely nothing is available.
Seriously:
https://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-General-Purpose-Sharpening-Stone-For-Tools/p/500704
https://www.diy.com/departments/magnusson-sharpening-stone/1797794_BQ.prd
https://shop.lloyd-jones.com/shop/sharpening-stone/
https://www.screwfix.com/p/magnusson-oil-sharpening-stone-150mm/4851v
https://shop.lloyd-jones.com/shop/sharpening-stone/
DamesUK@reddit
Ouch. Was he able to staunch the blood relatively easily?
Trebus@reddit
This actually works quite well with a slab of sweet potato if you have no other food heating to hand.
connorkenway198@reddit
In fairness, you could, if the burgers were thin enough. The question is, would you be able to Bo it before the fats burned the building down. I'm assuming no
Technical_Ball_8095@reddit
I've done it hundreds of times
Clean that trap at the bottom whenever you suspect you need to
I use the air fryer nowadays tho
prof_hobart@reddit
I've just found a video of someone doing that. Seemed to work OK
temujin_borjigin@reddit
I watched all of that waiting for the fire to start… and damn, was I.
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
Works great for potato waffles.
And even fish fingers at a push.
mike15953@reddit
When a student, I saw someone fry an egg using vaseline.
Snapimposter@reddit
Asked my brother to get me a lettuce and he brought back a white cabbage.
Asked him to throw old bread out to the birds, he brought back the crusts. When asked why he replied “I don’t like the crusts”
ChoppingOnionsForYou@reddit
I can see how this might seem not entirely illogical...
jonewer@reddit
I once boiled a chicken in my kettle
andyrocks@reddit
The first burgers were made in a toaster
Immediate_Major_9329@reddit
20 odd year ago I had to go and collect 2 60 inch plasma screens in flight cases from the Excel centre in London. The people attending the conference had finished on Friday night and either gone home or partied.
The company hired me to get it on Tuesday. I remember because I had never seen the excel totally empty, I even drove into the hall. Suffice to say someone helped themselves to two new massive tellies.
(We searched everywhere.)
New_Line4049@reddit
Didn't see it myself, but a rather famous one in the right circles. In the UK there's an aircraft called the Vulcan. It was originally built to be capable of air to air refuelling but it was quickly decided not to use this due to size of the aircraft and required proximity to tanker making it dicey. They largely stripped this system out of the fleet. Many years later a mission came up that needed a few Vulcans to conduct air to air refuelling, so they set about reinstating the system on several aircraft. They found they were missing a particular flange, they couldn't find any of them on the shelves. After an extensive search, several of these things turned up in various crew rooms being used as Ash trays, with the user of said crew room having no idea what the parts actually were.
theraininspainfallsm@reddit
this was when Argentina invaded the falkland islands. they had taken port stanley as well as the local airport, where the runway was long enough to land fast jets. operation black buck took place with a vulcan flying i think about 12,000 miles from the assention islands and back to bomb the run way. which they sucessfully did. at the time it was the longest bombing run in history. today it is the longest bombing run where all planes take off and land at the same airstrip.
im pretty sure the crew knew what they were.
Immediate_Major_9329@reddit
Air crew probably had no idea. My dad was an air frame engineer (rigger) for the Vulcan at the time.
jflb96@reddit
Ascension Islands, I think
New_Line4049@reddit
Correct, although the total distance was more like 7-8 thousand miles, still bloody good going.
The vulcan crews mat well have known what they were, but I don't think they were exclusively in Vulcan crew rooms.
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
Not the same at all but I’m a chef and there’s a piece of equipment called a pacojet, it costs £5000 and has a specific sized tin that fits in it to make ice cream mostly. The tins cost about £40 per tin. I‘be worked in a few places where they no longer had the machine and the tins are used as spoon holders. One restaurant also had vacuum chambers to make aerated chocolate and when I started working there they had been using the chambers to store breakfast food in under hot lights and melted them because they had no idea they were actually useful pieces of equipment
Hamsternoir@reddit
It's detailed in XM607 by Rowland White.
Also mentioned in 809 Squadron is that the Sidewinder seeker heads were suffering in the South Atlantic so they would be dried out in the bread ovens on the carriers.
New_Line4049@reddit
I didn't know about the sidewinders!! But hey, if it works it works!
JauntyYin@reddit
Fascinating to note that an A350 can do the 8,000+ miles in about fifteen hours.
New_Line4049@reddit
Tbf, that's similar to the Vulcans, think it took them about 16hrs, although I guess the A350 doesn't need nearly a dozen tankers to support.
ddraig-au@reddit
And tankers to refuel the tankers, and tankers to refuel the tankers refuelling the tankers...
JauntyYin@reddit
Blackbuck left from the Ascension islands. According to Google that is only 3,800 miles to the Falklands. The A350 left from Germany.
New_Line4049@reddit
Yes, although remember blavkbuck went there and back, so double it.
Still that is impressive for the A350, is that a regular flight?
JauntyYin@reddit
Good point! Is it regular? Not really, it's a charter for staff going to Antarctica.
New_Line4049@reddit
Oh, gotcha! Cheers!
cheandbis@reddit
Similar to OP. I worked at a bank on a graduate scheme and had to do a rotation around various departments. On one of them, in a mortgage underwriting department, I sat with one of the admin people while they did their reconciliations. They had to check two tables for some reason. She printed them off and went down line by line on each and if the same account appeared in both, she ticked it off and went on the next one. She spent about a day a month doing this.
In 2 minutes I showed her how to do a simple VLOOKUP or INDEX MATCH in Excel and she was blown away by it. I can't believe no one had ever picked up that it was a crazy way to work in the 21st century, especially when it was such a resource heavy process.
KingDaveRa@reddit
I once watched a user hand sort an excel spreadsheet.
I get the feeling there's definite training issues with excel. It's not just magical graph paper.
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
I taught myself excel and at first despised it until I learned how to make it work for me. I’m sure there’s still some things that could be done better but I generally know how to use it better than my colleagues so that’s something
phatboi23@reddit
There's so much good training on YouTube for excel.
It's pretty easy to learn in a few hours but no company will spend the time letting someone learn to use the software.
JTallented@reddit
A lot of jobs use Excel, but don't bother sending the staff on any proper training sessions.
I remember barely glossing over Excel when I was in Secondary School. Everything that I know past that point is self-taught. I use it every single day in my job for data processing, and I have to figure out new stuff to make it more efficient pretty much every other month.
Fudge_is_1337@reddit
Soemthing that ChatGPT and similar services are actually very useful for is learning new Excel methods. As long as you can describe what you are trying to output (ideally with column references), it will be able to provide something.
Requires a bit of iteration and it won't always provide the most efficient solution, just one that works, but it's been helpful for me
BeardedBaldMan@reddit
I was trying to explain this to my wife, that due to the ubiquity of Excel and the lack of training there's a really weird gap in skill levels.
I was trying to get her to put 'advanced' on her Excel skills as she can confidently use lookup functions, conditional formatting, filters and use appropriate chart types. She wanted to put intermediate because of actual advanced users.
My view is that the pool of Excel users can be likened to sports
Real advanced excel users - premier league footballers
'Advanced' office excel users - Capable sunday league footballers in the park
The remainder of excel users - Primary school children huffing nitrous and kicking a ball around a car park
thecockmeister@reddit
Had a 'practical' at uni on excel. They were teaching statistics to us archaeology students, as tbh it does come in handy, with a retired maths lecturer who'd decided to do a masters in archaeology as a hobby. The practical was an hour long block dedicated to inputing data from a sheet of paper into a table, and formatting that table to have borders, and then putting a sum at the bottom to spit out totals. Might have even had to produce a graph.
Took us all of 5 minutes and she was shook. Looking back, I don't think any of the actual lecturers knew what was being taught here, and that she was pretty out of touch, but tbh we were probably in the goldilocks zone of having actually been taught how to do the 'basics' as it seems the new crop of school kids aren't taught good IT skills anymore.
BeardedBaldMan@reddit
I thought you'd be using SPSS. I remember having to help a lot of my friends though that at uni.
The goldilocks zone does seem to be people aged 30-50.
notliam@reddit
My wife is a lecturer in a scientific field, spss is what technophobes think excel is lol
Tender_Hookz@reddit
Any way you could wrangle in some sort of efficiency in advanced display settings too? The bane of my early career was teaching seniors that they could extend their display (and align multiple screens!) without it looking like they were cosplaying the Architect from The Matrix.
pajamakitten@reddit
Who are convinced they can still be called up for England any day now.
GlitteringTurd@reddit
I volunteered to do the training and become an unpaid lifeguard at a primary school 20 years ago. The teachers would use my rescue rope every single week as a lane divider and get shitty when I told them again and again it was against protocol and dangerous.
'You're just a volunteer you don't make the rules' I was told. Well actually, Cynthia, yes I fucking do because I gave up my time for free to be the one in charge of this shit show
BerryOk966@reddit
What kind of primary school has their own swimming pool?
I think you and I are not from the same kind of area
Nervous-Economy8119@reddit
One that doesn’t pay it’s lifeguards apparently.
tabultm@reddit
*its
GlitteringTurd@reddit
I got a 'nominal payment' in the end, worked out to about £2 an hour but it was such a bonus, as it was unexpected, and had built up over the summer. I think someone convinced the head that it was wrong not to pay the only person keeping the pool open
Ayanhart@reddit
It's not as uncommon as you might think, surprisingly. It can save a school a lot of money on trips to a nearby pool, they can rent it out to after-school clubs to make money and can be a potential draw for new families.
It also can depend on the age of the school - a lot of modern ones were built with them and some older ones have just always had a pool.
wedgewedgewedge@reddit
I am not stupid. I know that not every school has a beagling pack
GlitteringTurd@reddit
It was in East Devon in a small town by the sea, a sweet little shit hole with good school fund raisers
Cougie_UK@reddit
You had the sea AND a swimming pool ? That's hardly fair !
Astrohurricane1@reddit
I lived in Devon in the early 80’s and my primary school had a pool. 🤷♂️
marrangutang@reddit
My tiny village primary had a pool too SE Kent also early 80’s
RaedwaldRex@reddit
I'm in Suffolk. Same, my primary school had a pool late 80s early 90s
AdhesivenessNo6288@reddit
We had an above ground one at my tiny suffolk school that only had about 60 pupils.
over_landr@reddit
Exmouth?
TehPorkPie@reddit
Maybe this is a Devon thing? Mine also had one, but I heard it's been patioed over now.
MJLDat@reddit
Not mine but one in my borough has a pool.
Fudge_is_1337@reddit
Very small town (sub 3000 population) in Somerset here and we had one. It was above ground, basically a box of cold water that they threw children into to teach them not to drown
Auntie_Cagul@reddit
Lots of them. The pools are usually quite small, about a metre deep and only open in the summer.
GoGoRoloPolo@reddit
Mine did. It was just a regular primary school in the suburbs of North London.
CatalunyaNoEsEspanya@reddit
Eh I lived in one of the most deprived areas in England and a local primary had a pool. Loads of the other local primaries used it for swimming lessons too.
jflb96@reddit
Ours did, though it was just a 300x1000x60ml bit of wall with enough plastic lining to keep the water on the inside. Gone now, AFAIK, thanks to the health risks of having a massive drowning hazard for anyone who could hop a couple of gates, but it was there for that big freeze back around 2010. Couple of us from the village went and 'skated' about on it in our wellies.
waves-upon-waves@reddit
We had a really little outdoor one in a village in the Forest of Dean! I doubt it’s still there now and was usually green when we used it but now I look back it was pretty cool to have tbh. Still remember that pool smell.
pajamakitten@reddit
A few near me do. Other schools will often use them too, as a means to get more kids learning to swim.
BeardedBaldMan@reddit
This one did - not in a particularly well off area and now closed
Advanced-Fig6699@reddit
My primary school did (this was 30 years ago so unsure if it’s still there) and the school was in a low income area!
Astrokiwi@reddit
We had one for our primary school in Mosgiel NZ. But it was really a community pool and local volunteers took turns maintaining it. There's a very big emphasis on teaching swimming in NZ though.
Blyd@reddit
This is pretty common in Wales at least, My town has 3 schools with swimming pools, 1 primary and 2 infants/junior/comp/6 form schools.
Newbridge in the valleys has an entire leisure center attached.
TheHalfwayBeast@reddit
Mine had a swimming pool, but it was tiny and outside. A nearby tree used to drop leaves and flower buds into it. From the looks of things it's gone now, presumably because someone got cholera.
My high school did the sensible thing and used the nearby fancy school's swimming pool.
Dimac99@reddit
When I was at primary school in the 80's we were bussed to another primary school rather than the local baths for swimming lessons. Baths so close we could have all walked. It wasn't big or deep, don't be picturing an Olympic pool lol. The area was fairly mixed, socioeconomically, and the town it was in didn't have its own baths.
DapperLax@reddit
My friend had a baseball cap on backwards and was squinting because of the sun..
He then asked to borrow my sunglasses.
Turbulent-Record9579@reddit
Needs a deerstalker
BerryOk966@reddit
Worked beside 2 people that spent their week manually typing data into a spreadsheet that they were getting from a ....different printed off spreadsheet.
Then every Friday morning one would call out account numbers & amounts from their screen and the other would check they had the same on their printed out spreadsheet.
Their entire jobs could have been done by any of the rest of us in less than 5 minutes a week. And with a tiny bit of effort could have been fully automated.
This was 10 years ago and they were both earning around £35k
CaterpillarCrumpets@reddit
About 14 years ago I had a temp job for about a month where the job I was given was to copy data from one database onto a paper form, then copy it from that paper form into another database. I found it easier to use copy paste from one to the other, then I'd write it down after.
I asked if I could print it out instead of hand writing it. No. I had previously observed [department] shove all the hard copies with zero organisation into a cardboard box on the floor and appear to ignore it so I asked why we needed a paper copy if it was in the database "oh [department] prefers a hard copy".
I asked [department] why they had a paper one on top of the database. They said they weren't really sure, they just got sent up but it was easier to use the database so they just put the hard copies in a box and once the box was full sent them off to archive.
The archive was a third party archive the company paid to store all their paperwork. This wasn't a one time data migration, they paid for access to database one but needed the info in database two and it was a constant process to manually move it across. Someone's full time job was doing what I was doing, but they were on leave for a month hence the temp.
I spent a lot of time thinking I wish I knew how to program because this definitely sounded like a job you could write a script to do for you (at least the transferring from one database to the other part, the hand written part was just madness).
I bought up these issues with the head of the department who just said it wasn't my job to question the process and to just do as I'm told (I was just a temp after all).
BerryOk966@reddit
XD
And fuck that boss. I was once told "you're not paid to think. You're paid to do". He was an idiot too.
ddraig-au@reddit
I once had one of my managers tell me "stop coming to me with problems, I'm sick of you coming to me with problems" so I said "okay, I will never every tell you about a problem ever again" and he said "good", and I wandered off.
The actual conversation I foolishly assumed I was going to have?
"Hey, (idiot boss), we have a problem, but I've worked out what to do. I've spoken to everyone involved in the problem, they think this solution is a good idea, and we're going to do this from now on, if you're okay with it" - but all I managed to say was "hey, we have a problem.." and then he started ranting over the top of me.
This had about 45 people walking all over a giant warehouse to ask the forklift drivers where they had moved a product, which also stopped the forklift drivers from working.
My solution? Hey, forklift dude, write the new location on a bit of paper and put it in the now-empty original location. Simple
I came back and they asked "did he say yes?" and I replied "he did not say yes" and we reverted to the original, bone-headed system. Yep, not paid to think.
CNash85@reddit
Mistake: asking for permission rather than forgiveness. It's much easier to get backing for a new process if you can already demonstrate that it's working; some bosses will see it as a chance to take credit for the idea to make themselves look good to their bosses, too.
ddraig-au@reddit
I think you wildly overestimate how many fucks I was giving by this point.
I think you also don't understand the power dynamic of warehouses. You never ever act unilaterally. Even if what you are doing is a good idea, you'll still get told off for doing things under your own initiative because it's not your job to make decisions and your manager will wonder if you're after his job.
Thus: hey I have an idea, what do you think. Versus hey we've been doing this and it seems to be working okay, which will result in who said you could be organising other people?
CaterpillarCrumpets@reddit
Almost all my other employers were quite happy for me to think, but most my career has been with small employers who need someone who can do several things and are happy to give you freedom to run with potential improvements to efficiency if you think it can save time or money.
The temping was with a big company who apparently think differently, maybe I was too bold, but my working experience prior to moving to London and working as a temp until I found something permanent had been that, even as a 15 year old employed in an office during the school holidays to help keep on top of easy jobs like filing while half the staff were on holiday, I could go to the MD and say "hey, this repetitive task I'm doing seems half pointless, I think doing this would be better and quicker" and be listened to.
abw@reddit
I've been in very similar situations. I do know how to program and in the past I've written simple scripts in an hour or so that could save companies hundreds of hours of wasted time. Sometimes they're delighted. Sometimes they carry on doing it the old way because "it's the way we've always done it".
It led to the eventual realisation that my job isn't just about writing software that solves problems, but also figuring out how to convince the right people in an organisation that the problems warrant solving.
An example that comes to mind was a meeting I had with about 12 people from a department that were wasting a lot of time and effort doing a manual process that could easily be automated. I presented my solution and watched the realisation cross their faces that their whole department was unnecessary. It could have been replaced by a bit of software that probably would have cost less to develop than what it cost to have 12 of them sit in a room for 2 hours being unproductive. It probably would have saved the company a few hundred thousand pounds a year and they all could have been reassigned to do more meaningful and valuable work.
Unsurprisingly, they never called me back.
HikingOtter@reddit (OP)
😬 that's insane!
Aware-Flounder10@reddit
Working behind the bar at uni I had to stop a new barman open a bottle of Moet with a corkscrew…..whilst facing the crowd of people waiting for drinks!!
We fired him soon after….for a number of reasons.
VT2-Slave-to-Partner@reddit
That sounds a bit Oxbridge. I think I went to a pretty significant university but I never saw a bottle of any kind of champagne being opened in the bar. (Though I did see the Hon. Sec. opening a catering-sized tin of beans one night so that he could take up the challenge to drink a yard of beans!)
LordGeni@reddit
Visited my mate who had just started at a local pub. Within 10 minutes we witnessed him stock the fridge with red wine and spend the rest of the time trying to work out how to get lemonade into a full bottle after someone ordered a Holtson Pils shandy.
He didn't last long.
Cocofin33@reddit
I went on a first date to a bougie cinema in Oxford that for some reason had a bar INSIDE the screening room. I ordered a bottle of prosecco and they apologised to me saying they didn't know how to open it, as nobody had ever ordered it before haha. I gave them a mini (silent) tutorial, but just shows you don't know what you don't know, until you need to do it!
aModernDandy@reddit
To show the other side of the medal here:
I once used a corkscrew to remove a golf ball sized ball of hair and dirt from the head of a hoover. I know that "pulling something that's stuck in a tight space" is not a surprising thing to do with a corkscrew, but still...it somehow felt special.
TheGiddyGoose@reddit
My colleague still does that. In her late 50s
rev-fr-john@reddit
Our kids used to heat sausage rolls in our toaster, I did chese on toast in it once but I had to put it on it's side first otherwise the cheese would fall off, it caught fire because the fat from the cheese fell onto the elements.
DarkNinjaPenguin@reddit
You can get toastie bags which were a wonder at uni, they're basically just made of greaseproof paper and you pop a sandwich in one and into the toaster.
greenhookdown@reddit
I used these to heat up tins of curry and stew when I first moved into my flat and had nothing but a toaster and a sleeping bag. Didn't really work.
rev-fr-john@reddit
Yeah a few of our friends use them, our toaster has these sandwich squashing rack things for toasted sandwiches, there's a visual signal to let you know they're either ready or you put too much cheese, cheese leaks out the bottle.
CherryLeafy101@reddit
When I was at university, on the first day of being in halls some muppet set the fire alarm off by microwaving a dry pot noodle with the lid still on
lemonstealingwho@reddit
Ha I’ve already commented somewhere else that this happened a few times at my uni too. One guy did it about 3 times.
temang@reddit
When I was at uni someone bought some lasagne sheets. He put them in a Pyrex dish in the oven for 30 minutes or so. He was surprised when all he had were burnt pasta sheets, rather than a complete, cooked, lasagne.
Disco_Killer@reddit
haha - someone on my corridor was told by another housemate that "if you just put half a cup of rice and a cup of water together in the microwave and cook it for about 15 mins it makes perfect rice" ... so he filled a cup half way up with rice, topped it up with water and stuck it in the microwave for 15 minutes AND WENT TO HIS ROOM. I was sat in my room wondering why it was getting a bit smoky, and I had my door shut. The microwave ended up stinking of burned rice for the rest of our time there, it had turned into this massive black burnt rice sausage.
CherryLeafy101@reddit
Oh no that's awful 😂
Intelligent_Mind8087@reddit
I saw someone eating their food with a golf club
Tornik@reddit
Poop knife.
Aintdat@reddit
5/7 comment there.
Sxn747Strangers@reddit
Not something I had witnessed… but… err….
This was years and years ago, decades ago… I hollowed out a cucumber and afterwards there was a strong suction effect and for a moment I thought I was done for… I called it a cucumingber.
JBB2002902@reddit
I still get outraged to this day when I witness my friend cut pizza with normal kitchen scissors rather than a pizza cutter!
Mister_Mints@reddit
I found out at Christmas that my parents don't trust password managers, so instead they type all of their passwords, user IDs, and the website those details are for into a spreadsheet.
But, to make it worse, they also add any additional pass codes/verification numbers into it, and additional security questions and answers needed (like mother's maiden name).
And then somehow, to make it even worse than that, they don't even password protect they file. Instead they print it off and leave it on the sideboard in the living room.
I had a quick glance at it and could instantly see all the patterns they use for their password creation - all on a single theme (cats/kittens), all substituting the same letters for numbers (3 = E etc) and I had all the information I needed to steal their identifies without having to actually know them in person. They'd put their own fucking birthdays on this document too!
"Nobody is going to steal that bit of paper" says my mum. "Even if they did, there's no money in those accounts" she continues, completely missing the point about being able to piece together little bits of information to get a full picture and then call all kinds of companies to try and access their accounts or setup loans and credit cards in their names.
She, and other technophobes like her, are the reason I'm constantly having to do phishing, smashing, and other fraud prevention training at work despite not being in a customer facing role.
She ended with "God, not you as well! Your brother keeps banging on about this being a stupid idea as well!"
LordGeni@reddit
Apparently, having passwords written down isn't a bad idea. As long as they are good secure passwords.
Nearly all passwords get stolen/hacked online. The exposure to risk is far greater than a piece of paper in a draw, especially if it stops people using insecure passwords because they don't want to forget them.
Get them to keep the paper copy, but ditch the spreadsheet and make proper passwords and they'll actually have a very robust system.
HikingOtter@reddit (OP)
That's actually scary. Makes them so vulnerable. Especially now with the growth of AI. I get a few phone calls weekly from scam AI trained bots that I would be able to have a conversation with. Soon enough the AI will learn to sound like a family member and asking you for money or card details pretending to be in trouble 😵💫
Mister_Mints@reddit
Exactly! The way they were so blasé about it as if I was worrying about something so trivial was infuriating.
Having the usernames and passwords was bad enough, but also the access codes and other supplementary information to login? Ridiculous.
My mum even tried to assure me that it was ok because if someone, somehow, did manage to steal the bit of paper (it was actually 5 sheets of A4, double sided, stapled together, that's how many account details they had printed out) she had a backup on the computer upstairs, and copies stored in some Dropbox type services with different passwords from the ones on the sheet. But she couldn't remember what the passwords were for those cloud storage places 🤦♀️ And the thief will have the paper, so all the electronic backups in the world won't make a difference.
Completely hadn't even crossed her mind that if someone can get access to even a couple of those shop accounts they can probably get access to any saved credit/debit card details, access to the apps/bank accounts to authorise any payments, access to pensions etc.
I'll have to check next time in up whether they've actually bothered to follow any of the suggestions I've given them
CaveJohnson82@reddit
I work for a bank, not in fraud but have had involvement. People bitch and moan about how banks "aren't doing enough" to keep their money safe, oblivious to the fact it's THEM compromising their accounts! Listening to calls where someone's had their account emptied and it turns out they had their card in a wallet but the PIN was written down "backwards and I put it in another slot" thinking that would be ok.
Chlosco@reddit
To get on to eBay, my nan used to open internet explorer, type ‘Google’ in to Bing and then type ‘eBay’ in to Google. She was absolutely gobsmacked when I saved a shortcut to eBay to her desktop.
Constant-Section8375@reddit
Not a tool, a potato
I found a baseball bat near my house and had my cousin go look for a tennis ball, he couldnt find one but came back with a potato
Youd be surprised the damage a potato can do to a 10 year olds collar bone
Ok_Adhesiveness_8637@reddit
And your coxis bone!!
I was around the same age. It was a cold winter in Fleckney, around 95/96, i was walking back from the newly opened co-op with my mates, and there was this potato sitting in the middle of the road... As any 10/11 year old would do, i decided the best course of action would be to pretend it was a football.
What I failed to notice was the black ice.
If you are old enough to know the Peanuts comic book, well, they scene played out exactly as Charlie Brown and Lucy playing football
ZipoBibrok5e8@reddit
Scrabble player here. It's coccyx.
Aseili@reddit
but there's is only 2 C's in Scrabble
No_Simple_87@reddit
use a blank then
wingnutkj@reddit
I'm trying to think why that would be a problem - I'm drawing a blank.
Ok_Adhesiveness_8637@reddit
r/angryupvote
ZipoBibrok5e8@reddit
but there's is only 2 C's in Scrabble
If you look closely I think you'll find there's only one.
skillomite@reddit
Love the explanation why you know that first =)
ShamusB69@reddit
And my axe!
acidtrippinpanda@reddit
Sorry but “not a tool, a potato” has got to be my favourite starting sentence!
CoolExtreme7@reddit
I tried this with a stick and a stone as a stupid 10/11 year old. The odds of my friend hitting said stone seemed so slim but he cracked it straight back at me. After a lot of bleeding I ended up having to get my head glued for the third time of my childhood🤣
indianajoes@reddit
Should've played tennis instead. That way, with a good enough serve, you might have some chips made for after the match
iwanttobeacavediver@reddit
I spent way too long laughing at this post. It's like a Tim Vine reject joke.
Useless_cunts_mc@reddit
What is a potato?
Faddowshax@reddit
… no one else?
Ok, I’ll do it.
Po-ta-toes! Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew!
Diligent-Sherbet2587@reddit
...boil them and smash them all to bits. I know not part of this thread, but I couldn't resist the temptation.
Parma_Violence_@reddit
You're 'opeless...
Reverend_Vader@reddit
Did it leave you with a chip on your shoulder?
caipt@reddit
This works on at least three levels.
Excellent work.
ViridianKumquat@reddit
Had a former housemate who tried to get some more life out of a rechargeable battery by putting it in his mouth and chewing it.
Kyber92@reddit
Errrrrrrrr, what the fuck? Was your housemate a dog?
ViridianKumquat@reddit
I think his line of reasoning was that he wanted to squeeze the charge to the ends of the batteries in the same way that you'd get toothpaste out of a tube. Suffice to say he wasn't the brightest candle on the cake.
MJLDat@reddit
Definitely some correlation here.
hiddengenome@reddit
Yeah because he'd buggered his brain by suckling on battery acid his whole life
ickis1986@reddit
This works though
TomCanTech@reddit
If I remember correctly it's to cause a slight reaction inside the battery. I remember being told it was a last resort in any case cause it's still ridiculous to put it in your mouth
Possiblyreef@reddit
Pro: you get slightly more from your battery
Con: it potentially explodes and takes half of your face off
Not exactly a great risk/reward balance
bluesam3@reddit
Depends on the battery type: some of them will instead poison you instead of blowing your face off.
ViridianKumquat@reddit
I don't know enough about batteries to refute this statement, but what I do know is that I'd offered the use of a charger and he did this instead.
Western-Ad-4330@reddit
Yeah i have seen more than one person do this so its not that weird.
MJLDat@reddit
In my office only about 5% of desks have dual monitors. I need dual monitors. Came in one day and none were available, I sat next to one of them and the user was at online meetings all day.
They had their laptop screen duplicated on both monitors. Three screens with meetings, all the same.
Still annoys me.
karaseen@reddit
I thought I could boil milk in a kettle
phatboi23@reddit
You can.
Once.
karaseen@reddit
It was the first time I used my brand new kettle to boot. :/
phatboi23@reddit
Oof!
Danny_P_UK@reddit
I've seen a video where someone has fixed a circular saw blade to an angle grinder. Possibly the most dangerous device I've seen.
phatboi23@reddit
My mate put an oversized disk on an angle grinder once to cut down a concrete post with rebar it.
That was pucker factor 5000 watching with my phone out ready to call an ambulance.
His words were "Christ you could feel it pulling to straighten itself from the centrifugal force, also don't tell the Mrs also we're never ever doing that again I'm off to change my undies"
Luckily no injury.
Danny_P_UK@reddit
Fuck me. As soon as I felt the thing trying to straighten out I'd be putting it down and finding another method.
phatboi23@reddit
One of those "needs must" as was the last part of a job.
Yeah never doing it again haha
Scotstarr@reddit
That is stupidly lethal 😮
Danny_P_UK@reddit
I know. I don't know why they thought to make a scary dangerous tool even more scary and dangerous.
norty-dc@reddit
I've got the roofers in, they asked if i could unplug and bring in their battery charger when it was finished. Pull the plug out of the outdoors socket with some difficulty because the earth pin IS A SCREW.
Now my outdoor socket is knackered.
Good roofers though!
phatboi23@reddit
Hope to fuck they don't do electric on the side!
selkiefolk@reddit
Hammered colleague tried to make a cheese toastie using a clothes iron in a hotel, when hotel didn’t offer room service. Bread and cheese acquired from garage. Iron RIP.
DarkNinjaPenguin@reddit
The stylist thing about that is that it absolutely works if you put down a piece of greaseproof paper on top of the sandwich first.
phatboi23@reddit
Tbh that's what I thought the trousers press was for...
Big duck off Panini press :P
highrouleur@reddit
In my first year of work we had a walkable forklift, and for whatever reason we had a spare set of forks.
This was 30years ago I can't even remember what it was but we had something very large that needed moving. The dumbass of the workplace decided to weld some hefty steel bars onto the spares, basically tripling their length to try and move this item.
You know the Archimedes thing, give me a lever long enough and I could move the world? Dumbfuckamedes just managed to tilt all the forklift driving wheels off the world
phatboi23@reddit
Brilliant.
JTitch420@reddit
Uk plugs have three pins the top one is an earthing pin and my Makita battery charger plug has had the earthing pin snap so now I use my van key to substitute the pin to get it into the plug. Then I slip the key out and bobs your uncle.
Nothing has gone wrong so far.
ImpossibleAd3329@reddit
just change the plug top hahaha
JTitch420@reddit
You just change my plug!
RobynnLS@reddit
If the plug has screws or a snap off top you should be able to replace the prongs relatively easily.
JTitch420@reddit
Yeah I know, but I always have my keys in my pocket. So you know “builders houses” and all that
RobynnLS@reddit
I’m glad that most houses are fitted with safety power breakers, but if you electrocute yourself please update me :D
JTitch420@reddit
Scouts honour, you will be the first to know. I should say it’s a sealed plug where the fuse is in a little a housing that pops out, so I’d have to get a whole replacement and I am just not that kinda guy. I’d go the extra mile for a customer but when it comes to me, I’m a “that’ll do, still works” kinda guy
RobynnLS@reddit
That’s fair enough, my dad would cut the plug off and rewire a new one in and duct tape it sealed 😂
amboandy@reddit
During a cardiac arrest I had a colleague disappear with the monitor, this is the big bloody defib thing that we need during cardiac arrests to, if needed, shock the patient and to see if there is any heart electrical activity. The colleague was new so when he came back with the chair (not what I asked for to transport the supine patient down a set of stairs), I asked him what he was doing with the monitor. Apparently this 5ish grand piece of essential equipment was a glorified door stop downstairs.
Kudos for his ingenuity, but I asked him to fetch the correct thing to get the dude down the stairs and my monitor. We had a laugh about it with him afterwards but FML, he never made that mistake again.
connorkenway198@reddit
Did the guy live..?
Flaruwu@reddit
No, he was turned into the next doorstop!
soupalex@reddit
due to cuts to the nhs budget we can no longer afford £5k doorstops and have replaced these with cadavers which are, as it turns out, basically free
Necessary-Wrangler85@reddit
A lady at work lost her son because the paramedics couldn't find their defibrillator for 15 minutes.
energizemusic@reddit
Did he unplug it from the pads to do that? Shocking (don’t mind the pun ;)) if he did!
kashibai_@reddit
My boss didn't know that you could open Powerpoint in the app and had for the last seven years been using the browser version. She complained to me that it was so difficult to use when I first joined last year and then I showed her she could open it in the app that was already installed on her laptop.
We work in Marketing and she's the Head of our Department.
Foddley@reddit
People opening any MS Office app in the browser or in Teams makes me cringe.
jabbo13@reddit
In teams just set it to open in app automatically.
But yeah nothing than watching someone navigate a document via teams
ShirtedRhino2@reddit
It's annoying that it isn't just the default. I've just started a new role, and having to go through all the settings to stop things opening in the browser is a small amount of faff I don't need.
WhispersOfCats@reddit
It seems like every time IT pushes an update, all my settings go away and shit opens in the browser again. Grrrrrrr
Foddley@reddit
There are a lot of people i work with who never got this memo.
younevershouldnt@reddit
Hey, I like using Word in the browser. Easier to flit between the 15 documents I'm working on at any given time
Teams though 😬
docentmark@reddit
There’s a very sound use case for this. My work doesn’t allow work data to be accessed on a private machine, only laptops issued by the company. So MS Online is very handy when I want to work at home in my comfortable chair with my triple monitors and proper keyboard.
Foddley@reddit
Ah yes it definitely has its uses, i've had it come in clutch like that on a few occasions. But i've lost count of the times at work where somebody has asked me where a certain button or function is, and it's either missing or misplaced in the 'app' versions of MS Office.
SubjectiveAssertive@reddit
If they are a Mac user I have a feeling there was a time that PowerPoint wasn't compatible after the switch to 365 so you had to had to use the browser version when on a Mac. So it's possible they just never knew the Mac desktop version existed.
I believe Visio is still that way.
If they are a windows user.... Yeah I'm concerned
TheHalfwayBeast@reddit
App? Isn't that a computer programme? Apps go on phones... Right? 🧓
abw@reddit
Application. Perfectly cromulent word to describe software for both desktop and mobile apps.
I would argue that an application is a special kind of computer programme intended for an end-user to achieve a particular goal (e.g. write a letter, read email, etc). A computer programme is a more general concept that includes system software like the kernel, device drivers, daemons, scripts, etc., that aren't usually visible to an end user.
Astropoppet@reddit
It's all apps these days. I think it marks us out as aged, referring to computer programs ;0)
TheHalfwayBeast@reddit
...I'm 31.
Astrohurricane1@reddit
I heard kids trying to figure out where something was the other day and one of them said “just go ask that old guy”. My immediate response was to look around for this “old guy” they were referring to, only to see that I was the only other person there. 👨🦳
Scotstarr@reddit
You're on the cusp 😂
Astropoppet@reddit
Oh dear. It's all downhill from here
getoffthebandwagon@reddit
It’s my experience that nearly everyone in senior positions in Marketing is both terrible at designing slide decks, and often presenting itself.
YorkshireRiffer@reddit
Here are several slides with several full sentences. I'm going to read all of the text to everyone in the room, even though they're all read ahead of me, and, consequently, won't listen to me at all. But I do so love the sound of my own voice.
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
There's a frightening number of people in our business who use OWA on their laptops because it's never occurred to them to launch Outlook.
justhisguy-youknow@reddit
Collogue insisted on using open office for docs. Despite us having a Google account .
And despite him having an office license since 2017. Until last week he was insisting he wasn't allowed office account. He was off and let me mess about on his computer, I set up the right accounts and passwords. Remove crap. Install the right stuff.
And open office good. Until you get to some stuff when is fully shits the bed.
It's like he actively hated himself,
butterflyrattle@reddit
Ohh, I have similar IT stories!
Was reviewing a spreadsheet with a colleague, asked him to scroll to the bottom of the page. He sat with his finger on return, instead of using the scroll bar or just page down button.
Same on word documents - if I ever suggested he add a new page, he’d keep his finger on the space bar until it went far enough. No amount of training or suggestions would change his habits.
He could never work out how I’d know he’d done this stuff, as he didn’t understand or remember I viewed everything with the show/hide button on.
MerlinAW1@reddit
I remember a clip on Harry Hill years ago about some people starting working in bar. (Think work experience). A girl was asked to serve a shot to a customer. She was shown how to use a jigger, and then proceeded to measure out a shot and then try and serve the customer the jigger to drink out of. The trainer then said it needs to go in a glass. She gets a big wine glass and just places the entire jigger (without tipping) into the wine glass and then presents it to the customer.
It was some fly on the wall show, not a comedy, unless it was the best acting I've ever seen, the face palming from every one involved would be hard to fake.
autobulb@reddit
Oh my. This makes me feel slightly better about what I did the first time behind the bar. Customer asked for a shot of tequila and I measured it before pouring it into the shot glass. Felt so dumb immediately after pouring it.
Ok_Shirt983@reddit
This one is lost on me? Every bar I have worked in the shot glasses didn't have a measure on them and you had to first pour the drink into a jigger and then into the glass to ensure it was the correct 25 or 35 mil serving.
autobulb@reddit
Well, if that's standard procedure then I feel a lot better. But most shot glasses I have seen hold one jigger of booze so there's no real need to measure them out unless you are using really weirdly sized shot glasses. In the majority of bars I have been to when you order a shot at the bar they put the shot glass in front of you and serve it directly from the bottle to the top of the glass skipping the measuring step. When I measured mine out it fit perfectly into the shot glass which is why I felt so dumb.
bioticspacewizard@reddit
My friend's first shift at a bar, and someone ordered a Margarita. To which my friend replied that they don't serve pizza...
Phinbart@reddit
I know exactly what you're on about. That ep is on YT here - the segment begins 16:41.
Thendisnear17@reddit
https://youtu.be/AvwhN79nmZ0?t=1004
You can link to the exact time on youtube videos.
MerlinAW1@reddit
That’s the one, I tried looking but my google skills weren’t up to it. It’s mostly how I remembered it at least
Alfurim@reddit
Kiki, you can leave the plate
Think-Committee-4394@reddit
Ok
A bay with 8 linear plastics moulding presses 2000t close pressure
I’m walking down the end of the bay & it sounded like a truck hit the building
Go running Caus I’m one of the first aid crew
Tooling engineer was trying to sort a mould issue & cranked the pressure up WAY UP probably over 3000t
Blew the ram right out the back of the machine, with enough force that bolt heads were embedded in the building wall!
Thankfully no one was behind the machine
Fudge_is_1337@reddit
Christ. I had a mild panic when I moved into my new house because I was looking at the gauges and worrying about the boiler overpressuring and causing damage (and in my stressed state didn't consider that this was something that would absolutely be designed for given that these appliances exist in nearly every house in the country)
Your man here is firing orders of magnitude more pressure into systems without a care in the world
Think-Committee-4394@reddit
Sometimes very clever engineers can be very stupid
Collide74@reddit
In school my ICT teacher would open her Internet browser, the home page was Bing, and then she would search in Bing for Google to open Google to search for something.
Fudge_is_1337@reddit
Perhaps she just wanted to send the people at Bing a message
mhoulden@reddit
I saw someone using a desk calculator to add things up and then enter the figures in Excel.
Cocofin33@reddit
I've just replied to OP saying similar to - if you've never been given the building blocks on how to use Excel you shouldn't be judged. I'm now a pro at Excel but all I knew leaving secondary school was how to touch type (which has come in handy tbf) Ignorance ≠ incompetence.
Fudge_is_1337@reddit
There's a balance I'd say. Excel has been a ubiquitous part of office life for so long now that you would expect people to pick up some competency over time, or at least attempt to.
There are still some people who know that they aren't doing things in an efficient or "correct" way and make no effort to change that - and in the specific example of manually calculating things that could be routinely automated, that increases risk of error
Dolly9019@reddit
I agree. I'm pretty familiar with it, but I wouldn't criticise someone or call them dumb for not knowing how to use it efficiently.
Beena22@reddit
I agree somewhat, but I’ll also add that if you haven’t been shown how to use something like Excel and you rely on it for work then you should take steps to learn it yourself. I didn’t know diddly shit about Excel and needed to use it for work so I went online and taught myself how to use it. YouTube can teach you pretty much anything.
nightmaresgrow@reddit
I often check someone's methodology for complex calculations, where they use excel.
One person doesn't use formulas, so I have to go through and enter the formula so I can check their work without having to manually add everything up.
It also makes it much harder to see where they have gone wrong as I can't see that they have multiplied b7 by c23 or whatever.
TheGiddyGoose@reddit
My colleague still does that. In her late 50s
Dolly9019@reddit
Show her how to do it in excel , she may thank you and appreciate the time you will save her
hungryhippo53@reddit
This happens in the tax office more frequently than I'd care to admit
ConfusedGoatLady@reddit
Aye, my boss does this but with the desktop calculator. He doesn't even need to keep the value, he could just highlight the cells required and see the sum at the bottom right of the page. Also in his 50s. Don't really like him so I haven't bothered to correct him
UnIntelligent-Idea@reddit
I'm an Accountant, can't tell you how many jobs expect me to have a desk calculator. In some companies, I've been the only Accountant without one.
We all work in Excel, I'm better off typing any sums in there, where I can see any typos and add/remove figures as necessary. So much more functionality. But still often the odd one out.
ilovewineandcats@reddit
I watched someone trying to alter a table in Word, so that the columns were equal. They held up a ruler to the monitor to try and manually adjust the lines. I did try and say that I could show them how to do that with a couple of mouse clicks but she wouldn't let me because I was quite a bit younger than her and something about young people being lazy by using computers....that was 20 years ago and I think about it frequently!
SantosFurie89@reddit
The amount of people i used to see write full websites, all back slashes etc.. No sense to just Google keyword lol.. And to also write it, not even copy past use or email for later etc...
bacon_cake@reddit
Something that irks me is when people think that the google autosuggestions ARE the results.
I'll say "Ok, search for Cat vaccines"
And they'll type cats and start hovering over the list "Hm, Cat vaccines near me" or "Cat vaccines are unsafe" or...
Nooo! Just hit enter.
freeeeels@reddit
In fairness you used to have to type out the full URL or it simply wouldn't work. The address bar didn't always function as a search engine either. Perhaps these people have been in a coma since 2002 and nobody updated them.
InertialLepton@reddit
Does misusing the term backslash count for OPs question?
SantosFurie89@reddit
Nope, it's joined by the semi colon and underscore that the type of people who write down entire url's no doubt jot down (hopefully more did,now that tech is more common place)
Valuable-Incident151@reddit
Those are forward slashes buddy
SantosFurie89@reddit
Did i have to specify the sarcasm, was the addition of the semi colon and underscore not a dead give away, pal?
Valuable-Incident151@reddit
Lmao you're trying to save face
ctesibius@reddit
Not “back” slashes. And if you can type, that’s often the fastest way. I hope I don’t have to explain why it’s not a good idea to route everything through Google.
SantosFurie89@reddit
I found one haha
Can't type, so how they going to input their written words!?
ctesibius@reddit
You can’t type? There are plenty of training apps and web sites to help you. I understand your aversion to technology, but it’s going to be unavoidable in your future, young person. Bite the bullet, learn how to use computers, and in a year’s time you will proudly be saying “Ekshually, I use Arch Linux”.
Astropoppet@reddit
You know that OP was talking about the "other people," not themselves, being unable to type? Also, OP is on reddit, obvs they can use a computer.
Do you need a hug?
ctesibius@reddit
Nah, just winding him up since he’s being a bit snotty. Btw, “OP” is the person who started the thread. “GP” is the person you are talking about.
Astropoppet@reddit
... What does the G stand for?
ctesibius@reddit
Grandparent. So two levels up from your post.
Astropoppet@reddit
Cool, ta!
Mumique@reddit
Thats...no...
hiddengenome@reddit
how do you do it i don't think i know lol
ilovewineandcats@reddit
Hover your cursor over the table, so that the little box with the crossed arrows appears next to the top right cell in the table, click on this so that the table is highlighted.
Right click and a menu will appear and half way down that menu there is an option to "distribute columns equally".
Alert-Performance199@reddit
Lazy kids and their computer shortcuts
CaterpillarCrumpets@reddit
OMG I had this too!
Guy we'd employed in admin, he was mid 40's, no work experience as he'd been a carer for his parents until they'd recently died, but said he was really experienced at excel, had done an Open University degree in his 30's that had involved a load of data analysis all done in excel. His alleged expertise in excel is one of the reasons the boss hired him (and because they had some shared hobbies and he felt for him having difficulties getting employed at his age with no work experience).
A few months in I caught him doing this same thing as you describe! I told him he didn't need to and could just use the SUM, he thanked me then a few weeks later I found him doing the same thing and he said he preferred it this way so he knew it was right because computers so often make mistakes. What?
I'm now wondering if this entire data analysis project for his degree was done by hand. He just used excel as a convenient table for numbers and no formula.
Meanwhile I describe myself as moderately good at excel, I use power queries, have an opinion on vlookup vs index match, and have built actually quite complex accounting, estimating and forecasting platforms on excel that businesses too tight to pay for specialist software used for years, but I don't call myself an expert because my VB is so basic to be non existent.
It is at this point I understand the difference between how men oversell their experience on their CV while women underestimate it. By self assessment, he considered himself the more advanced user.
Cocofin33@reddit
To be fair that's more on the hiring manager for not digging deeper. Any time I'm interviewing someone who says they can use Excel I ask them what their favourite formula is. Same with any ERP they claim to be a master at
Auntie_Cagul@reddit
Chances are the hiring manager wasn't much of an Excel user.
HikingOtter@reddit (OP)
His 'fake it till you make it' never going to reac h the Make It level :P
CaterpillarCrumpets@reddit
I don't think he was intending to fake it. I think it was largely ignorance that basic functions are considered the bare minimum of basic Excel knowledge. I think he just felt a nice table to use was basically all there was too it, functions were a bit of an abstract feature or something like VB is to most - a thing you're vaguely aware exists but know no-one really uses.
jonewer@reddit
Use xlookup instead, much quicker and easier than match/index
CaterpillarCrumpets@reddit
Ah this appears to be a new replacement for index match, I don't currently use excel but thanks, I will try and remember it if I go back to a job that uses excel. My info here is a bit old as I changed career in covid and haven't needed to use excel much since.
t3hp0d@reddit
I watched my very drunk friend put his dick in a mousetrap and set it off. You dont get much dumber than that tbf.
jemmary@reddit
...link?...
t3hp0d@reddit
I've been looking and can't find it. I'm going to ask him next chance I get. I'd swear he did it, but it was at least 15 years ago.
I_waz_Perce@reddit
Adobe. People printing forms off to sign. I did a 5 minute "how to" guide and caused a revolution. It was only after someone told me they were printing it off on a printer in a different office, signing it then queueing at the one scanner they had in their facility, waiting for it to be sent to them from the scanner folder, saving it as the correct name, attaching to an email and sending through 🙄 I was saving them a few days a week each in time.
notliam@reddit
My poor mum needed to fill out a form recently but couldn't get it to work (on her iPhone), so screenshotted every page then sent me the screenshots to print. Obviously I got her to send me the form itself and printed that for her, only to find she filled it in then took photos of each page rather than asking me to scan it for her.
pumaofshadow@reddit
We had a set of info based on the date that the transactions happened in a table in a word document with the date 01.02.25 and the price as text £1.10 etc.
So the person analysing it had to basically retype it whenever they wanted to check things. I quickly made a s/sheet version and put filters at the top and allowed the date and cost to be filled in as the right kind of data.
front-wipers-unite@reddit
I used my mitre saw to cut up a roll of flashband, now my mitre saw is completely jammed up with bitumen.
zDarcky@reddit
I have a resident at the property I manage that makes tea inside the kettle
apeliott@reddit
I didn't have a toaster and tried putting crumpets in the microwave once.
It was like eating warm rubber.
No-Shoe7651@reddit
Not me, but my uncle who is a mechanic. I don't think you'll find many cars with one, if at all anymore, but some years back he had the same customer come in multiple times complaining that the car was running poorly and needed fueling up too much. Eventually he discovered that she had been pulling the choke valve out as a holder for her handbag.
Rum_Doodle@reddit
A glass door. My cousin was fighting to open a bottle of oasis ( citrus punch, yknow the good stuff) and got the smart idea to wedge it in between the door and frame for leverage. Well, she slipped and ended up going through the glass, had lacerations to her face, hands, and stomach. Was not fun to clean the bloody mess. She was fine, the dumbass.
Caddy666@reddit
i once watched someone use iphones as brake pads.
Orarian42@reddit
A burger bun wedged between two live wires (insulation to keep them from touching) going up a building in Cienfuegos Cuba
garages@reddit
My brother used to open a web browser and type the full: "https://www.google.com" into the address bar.
Once Google had loaded, he'd then type "https://www.hotmail.com" into the search bar, hit search and select Hotmail from the search results.
itsalsonothingsrs@reddit
Honestly, so many people just freeze when they open a spreadsheet so I'm not surprised haha
I don't know if its the dumbest misuse but an ex using scissors to cut food as always stuck with me
Cocofin33@reddit
Not a answer to your question, but 14 years ago someone showed me how to add calculations in excel that I had been manually entering. 25 year old me then started googling how to do more, got a job as an analyst and am now a supply chain manager. You only know what you've been shown, ignorance ≠ incompetence!
ClarifyingMe@reddit
Oh no fair. To protect my mental health my brain started purging all these stories from my memory because the rate I was witnessing them was getting too frequent and no longer funny.
Fragrant-Paramedic36@reddit
Highlight the cells and it shows you bottom right what they total without having to do any formulae. Shows average, count etc. also.
apurpleglittergalaxy@reddit
My aunt bleaches her tea cups. By that I mean she puts bleach in her mugs to get rid of tea stains leaves the water bleach to soak for idk a few hours or half a day and then badly washes them up. Boomers are weird mate.
djdaedalus42@reddit
On the subject of software, a tool called Rational Rose was adopted to help specify requirements, instead of writing long winded documents. In theory you could think of requirements, type them in and get them linked to procedures.
Instead the management had the documents written up, fed into the software, and then held long boring meetings figuring out which of the many generated results were what they needed.
adamneigeroc@reddit
Lived with a guy in my first year of uni who took the instructions ‘Cook bacon on the job’ very literally, and slapped some rashers directly on the metal hob plates.
Small fire later, and he bought a pan.
Alert-Performance199@reddit
On the job made me chuckle
Talinia@reddit
"Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I cook on the company time"
I'm not a good enough linguist to come up with a less American version sorry
Adam_the_Penguin@reddit
Boss makes a pound, I make a penny
I cook at work and he's not getting any
colei_canis@reddit
I'm rather displeased with our relative earnings
I said to my boss while my fish pie is burning
When it's time for promotions you give me a pass
He said 'don't cook fish in the office then, arse'
divine-silence@reddit
Boss makes a quid while what I make is shite so I sit and cook bacon on my companies work site.
callisstaa@reddit
I thought he threw it on his lasses back when he was shagging her.
newtonbase@reddit
Was she Danish or Canadian?
Alert-Performance199@reddit
None of that American stuff
Alert-Performance199@reddit
Bareback bacon
Ok-Set-5829@reddit
Maybe he was Spanish?
Consistent_Squash590@reddit
In the late 90s, I asked our new customer why their stores didn’t have computers at the tills. She said they used to, until the boss saw someone pointing a mouse at the monitor like a remote 😹 They only had 10 stores then, and their store staff tended to be older women.
Mediocre-Scarcity-99@reddit
My granny who didn’t care ever cook meals at home used to use her kitchen oven as just a regular cupboard 🥹
StitchingWizard@reddit
Oh my mum did that for years, due to having too many bits and not enough space. Used to store baking dishes and pans in the oven, which wasn't a big deal if you forgot to check before turning on the heat.
Then she was given a plastic Magi-mix. And (you guessed it) stored it in the oven.
Took weeks for the noxious smell to dissapate. We insisted on a clear-out afterwards.
Limit_Ok@reddit
At work we have a super heavy door lock thing that is used to prop said door open.
NoCommunication7@reddit
I'm glad i wasn't there to witness it, but slotins use of a screwdriver to control a nuclear reaction is probably the most stupid i've heard of.
My brother also sticks anything long and pointy in his mouth to clean out his teeth, nails, screws, pins, pens, you name it, even a nice tie rosette i had once.
Successful_Band_859@reddit
I didn't witness first hand, but I so remember the story of the guy who had been using a hand grenade to crack wallnuts.
geth1962@reddit
I used to rebuild and repair aircraft seats. I saw a complete fool hammering off the old part with the new part, straight from the stores. These parts cost thousands and are integral to the structural strength of the seat.
Busy_Protection_4358@reddit
one of the bouncers I was working with convince a drunk to blow down a kenwood two way radio ariel and convince him it was a breathalyser, whole team laughing our heads off, he still got chucked out!
Head_Priority5152@reddit
A potato chipper. Attempted on a coconut.
BritishBlitz87@reddit
I remember once witnessing my colleagues playing a short game of rounders in the yard at Wickes with a sledge hammer for a bat and tiles, bricks and faulty power tools as balls.
Naturally I joined in with a few pitches of my own, my ball of choice was a small light fitting
I_waz_Perce@reddit
Oh, and when I was at uni a few years ago, I was asked to help some of the students with Excel. They asked me how I knew what I was doing, and I told them I was literally doing what everyone had just watched in the lecture!
CameramanNick@reddit
That's not that unusual. I've done that twice in my life.
Once, about 15 years ago, I'd arranged to take my mother out for lunch. I waited for her, and waited, and eventually went to find her.
She was adding up values in an Excel spreadsheet with a calculator.
=sum(...
Low-Pangolin-3486@reddit
I had a colleague who thought you had to open files from within Word or Excel. I once asked him if a Word doc had been deleted because I couldn’t find it, and stood behind him as he tried to find it from within Excel. Didn’t have the heart to try and explain the problem so I just left him to it
Key-Environment-4910@reddit
Ha ha .. he needs some training !
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