Idiots at work

[deathrey]

Chest Rockwell quite rightly pointed out that I, on this day, have been a workplace idiot:

 

So I bought some Rainbow Mentos today. I don't know why. I don't buy sweets or chocolate, so it was a bit of an odd impulse buy. Anyhow, they were alright. I like the idea of having a couple of each flavour lined up with the colours going down the side of the packet. It's real neat. The Watermelon ones are foul though. Just like the Jolly Rancher ones were. Americans like watermelon too much.

 

Anyway, I was eating an orange one and I took a sip of diet coke. The flavour was quite pleasant. Orangey aftertaste blended with Coke. It's like when I mix Coke and Fanta at the Nando's self-service drinks machine. Everyone should do that by the way.

 

I digressed again and I've already said "anyway". Damn.

 

OK, so I liked orange Mento combined with diet Coke. So I thought, "what if I drop an orange one INTO the diet coke and let it infuse my cola with flavour? There is literally no downside to this idea."

 

I had of course forgotten, despite myriad pop culture references and Youtube videos, that dropping a Mento into a bottle of Diet Coke is a BAD IDEA.

 

The resulting eruption absolutely covered my desk at work, poured onto the floor and took out over two thirds of an almost full 500ml bottle. The sheer volume of exploded coke, the violence of the reaction and the emptiness of the bottle left me worried that nobody would buy my claim that it just exploded when I went to open it as cans/bottles sometimes do. Luckily for me, however, they did, and I swiftly downed the rest and consumed the potentially incriminating remains of the Mento at the bottom. They're a whole lot less chewy after reacting with coke.

 

I would conclude with "don't put Mentos in diet coke" but there surely isn't a person in the Western World who doesn't already know that. I feel quite, quite stupid. Those last dregs of orangey coke were marvelous though.

 

So it appears i am one of the aforementioned idiots that did not know that Mentos + Coke = Bad idea, but now that you have told me about it, i am incredibly tempted to try this out, i have a packet of half eaten fruit Mentos in the glove compartment of my car that are now crying out to be chucked in to some Coke..... I may have try out a science experiment in school tomorrow, i wonder if i can talk one of the students in to trying it out for me.....

[Frankie Crisp]

If you do, set a webcam up first.

[JLM]

So it appears i am one of the aforementioned idiots that did not know that Mentos + Coke = Bad idea, but now that you have told me about it, i am incredibly tempted to try this out, i have a packet of half eaten fruit Mentos in the glove compartment of my car that are now crying out to be chucked in to some Coke..... I may have try out a science experiment in school tomorrow, i wonder if i can talk one of the students in to trying it out for me.....

 

Do it. Make sure it's Diet Coke though; it's more acidic and the reaction is a touch more violent. If you can set it up in an environment where the mess is contained then it's a pretty cool thing to watch. I'm sure it's applicable to bottle rockets and other whacky schemes as well. Youtube has a plethora of Coke + Mentos videos for your perusal. I have seen plenty of them, which is why I felt especially dense when my desk was struck by a cola volcano.

[Dr.PeterVenkman]

I know most of these have been funny but mine is just depressing, 2 lads who drink in the pub I used to work at once stood at the bar reciting the Star Wars conversation from Clerks and trying to pass it off as though they were actually having the conversation, I looked over and laughed because I thought they were just quoting Clerks but one of them went "what are you laughing at?" and went back to the conversation, worst thing was because no one other than me heard them they tried to do it again a few hours later, with equal success. Don't know exactly what they were going for unless theres a load of fit as fuck birds round here that are into Empire/Jedi discussions, anyway, pair of knobheads

[steven1977uk2002]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQHfoz9Be7U

[Monkee]

I had to share my friend's latest blog entry with you all. A colleague just asked if I was ok because I was laughing so much...

 

 

 

 

I should be working right now, but I have extended my dinner hour to do some much needed venting about my Demon Assistant, who is rude, stupid, ear-bleedingly loud and generally annoying. I know that whinging about a colleague online might seem foolhardy, but I suspect that Demon Assistant doesn't know how to read properly, so I think I'm pretty safe.

 

Demon Assistant started working here a couple of months ago. Our office is quiet, so when speaking to each other, we usually speak at "library volume." Demon Assistant prefers "foghorn volume," and so rubs me up the wrong way as soon as she opens her mouth, and that's before she unleashes one of her rude comments (the best being, "I wondered where the bloody hell you'd been!" when I returned from a long meeting during her first week here). *Hnnng*

 

She forever hands me work that she just hasn't thought about. We make a children's magazine, so the activities on the pages need to be clear and easy to follow. Demon Assistant does things like asking an observation question about a picture that's on a completely different page, or something that has no possible right answer, the best one of those being a "noise and sound" activity where you had to number some pictures of objects from 1 to 5 in order of how loud they were. Is a dog louder than a phone? Is a rubber duck quieter than a spanner? Who knows? IT MAKES NO SENSE!

 

By far the most annoying habit, however, is when I give feedback. EVERY time I tell Demon Assistant to change something, or that something is wrong, I get a reply along the lines of, "oh, I thought about doing it that way, but then I wasn't sure," or, "I had it like that before but I changed it." It's just lies. She didn't think about doing it that way, or else she'd have done it that way and it wouldn't be wrong. It's like she just cannot accept that I am right and she is wrong. She even does it when I point out spelling mistakes: "I wrote it like that to start with, I don't know why I changed it." Because you didn't. You are lying to save face. *Hnnng*

 

This particular bad habit led to a rather hilarious conversation on Friday. She had done a page showing the children how to make something, and had listed the dimensions in inches. We then had the following conversation.

 

Me: This needs to be metric.

Demon Assistant: What's metric?

Me: Centimetres, rather than inches.

Demon Assistant: But it's easier to do it in inches. I always work in inches.

Me: Kids don't use inches, they use centimetres. It needs to be metric.

Demon Assistant: But if you're doing something that's 8 inches, then it makes more sense to do it in inches, if it was smaller I'd do it in centimetres, but it's easier in inches with something this size. (At this point she got out a ruler, and demonstrated to me that an inch was indeed bigger than a centimetre.)

Me: *stunned silence*

 

This reasoning, of course, is utter gibberish. Inches and centimetres can both be used to measure things of vastly varying sizes, since they both rely on the ingeniously versatile concept of NUMBERS. Numbers can be big. They can also be small. It's astounding, I know.

 

Anyway, the conversation continued.

 

Me: It doesn't matter how big it is, it has to be measured using the metric system. Kids aren't taught inches at school anymore, some of them won't even know what inches are.

Demon Assistant: REALLY?

Me: Yes. Really. Didn't you learn centimetres at school?

Demon Assistant: No, I was taught to use inches.

Me: Well, we went metric in the UK in the 1970s, so I can pretty much guarantee that you didn't learn to use inches at school. (By now, I could hear my colleague sitting opposite spluttering and laughing behind her monitor)

 

She continued to argue with me until I gave up trying to explain and just resorted to repeating the phrase, "it has to be metric," over and over again until she shut up.

 

Unless she is Amish, or grew up in a commune or on some remote island civilisation where she was schooled by pirates, I can be 100% certain that she was taught to use the metric system at school, since everyone our age in the UK was taught the metric system at school. We went metric in 1975, and the imperial system hasn't been taught as the primary method of measurement since then. And I can be almost 100% sure that she concocted this whole ridiculous argument because she just cannot handle being wrong.

 

Personally, I'd rather be wrong than stupid.

[seph]

If you ever see her in a McDonalds ask her to get you a Royale with Cheese.

[Steve Justice]

I had to share my friend's latest blog entry with you all. A colleague just asked if I was ok because I was laughing so much...

 

 

 

 

I should be working right now, but I have extended my dinner hour to do some much needed venting about my Demon Assistant, who is rude, stupid, ear-bleedingly loud and generally annoying. I know that whinging about a colleague online might seem foolhardy, but I suspect that Demon Assistant doesn't know how to read properly, so I think I'm pretty safe.

 

Demon Assistant started working here a couple of months ago. Our office is quiet, so when speaking to each other, we usually speak at "library volume." Demon Assistant prefers "foghorn volume," and so rubs me up the wrong way as soon as she opens her mouth, and that's before she unleashes one of her rude comments (the best being, "I wondered where the bloody hell you'd been!" when I returned from a long meeting during her first week here). *Hnnng*

 

She forever hands me work that she just hasn't thought about. We make a children's magazine, so the activities on the pages need to be clear and easy to follow. Demon Assistant does things like asking an observation question about a picture that's on a completely different page, or something that has no possible right answer, the best one of those being a "noise and sound" activity where you had to number some pictures of objects from 1 to 5 in order of how loud they were. Is a dog louder than a phone? Is a rubber duck quieter than a spanner? Who knows? IT MAKES NO SENSE!

 

By far the most annoying habit, however, is when I give feedback. EVERY time I tell Demon Assistant to change something, or that something is wrong, I get a reply along the lines of, "oh, I thought about doing it that way, but then I wasn't sure," or, "I had it like that before but I changed it." It's just lies. She didn't think about doing it that way, or else she'd have done it that way and it wouldn't be wrong. It's like she just cannot accept that I am right and she is wrong. She even does it when I point out spelling mistakes: "I wrote it like that to start with, I don't know why I changed it." Because you didn't. You are lying to save face. *Hnnng*

 

This particular bad habit led to a rather hilarious conversation on Friday. She had done a page showing the children how to make something, and had listed the dimensions in inches. We then had the following conversation.

 

Me: This needs to be metric.

Demon Assistant: What's metric?

Me: Centimetres, rather than inches.

Demon Assistant: But it's easier to do it in inches. I always work in inches.

Me: Kids don't use inches, they use centimetres. It needs to be metric.

Demon Assistant: But if you're doing something that's 8 inches, then it makes more sense to do it in inches, if it was smaller I'd do it in centimetres, but it's easier in inches with something this size. (At this point she got out a ruler, and demonstrated to me that an inch was indeed bigger than a centimetre.)

Me: *stunned silence*

 

This reasoning, of course, is utter gibberish. Inches and centimetres can both be used to measure things of vastly varying sizes, since they both rely on the ingeniously versatile concept of NUMBERS. Numbers can be big. They can also be small. It's astounding, I know.

 

Anyway, the conversation continued.

 

Me: It doesn't matter how big it is, it has to be measured using the metric system. Kids aren't taught inches at school anymore, some of them won't even know what inches are.

Demon Assistant: REALLY?

Me: Yes. Really. Didn't you learn centimetres at school?

Demon Assistant: No, I was taught to use inches.

Me: Well, we went metric in the UK in the 1970s, so I can pretty much guarantee that you didn't learn to use inches at school. (By now, I could hear my colleague sitting opposite spluttering and laughing behind her monitor)

 

She continued to argue with me until I gave up trying to explain and just resorted to repeating the phrase, "it has to be metric," over and over again until she shut up.

 

Unless she is Amish, or grew up in a commune or on some remote island civilisation where she was schooled by pirates, I can be 100% certain that she was taught to use the metric system at school, since everyone our age in the UK was taught the metric system at school. We went metric in 1975, and the imperial system hasn't been taught as the primary method of measurement since then. And I can be almost 100% sure that she concocted this whole ridiculous argument because she just cannot handle being wrong.

 

Personally, I'd rather be wrong than stupid.

 

Sounds like a girl I used to work with. In fact whilst I was reading the above I imagined her as the role of stupid girl. I wonder if it's the same eejit.

[Steveo2007]

Not necessarily an idiot at work, but more an idiot at home as my sister surpasses all levels of stupidity she has passed previously with asking the question. "What planet are we on?" I shit you not, if it wasn't bad enough that every time she tries to fill in a job application form she has to ask what country we're in, she goes and does this. I wonder how she will surpass this.

[Frankie Crisp]

Not the idiot, but another one in a different office:

 

"So if nobody won the election, who is Prime Minister? Gordon Brown or James Cameron?"

[Harvey Dent]

Not the idiot, but another one in a different office:

 

"So if nobody won the election, who is Prime Minister? Gordon Brown or James Cameron?"

 

That is brilliant. Not only did he lose out on best director, but now he's also not PM. What a shitty year for him.

[FLips]

My mate who works in Liverpool text me and told me he went to the toilet and some bloke was sat in the cubicle next to him talking to himself and letting out weird high pitched noises. Some mental people about.

[Frankie Crisp]

My mate who works in Liverpool text me and told me he went to the toilet and some bloke was sat in the cubicle next to him talking to himself and letting out weird high pitched noises. Some mental people about.

[Frankie Crisp]

So after a good few months of not having to tolerate her, I decided to accept her Facebook friend request.

 

On Thursday, she piped up on that chat thing after I'd made a comment about the Pope. She was on about how he had a cheek to have a go at the British, because they're as bad in Italy. I couldn't resist going all geographical on her.

 

All faces and names have been changed to protect the terminally thick:

 

 

I've removed her.

[patiirc]

So after a good few months of not having to tolerate her, I decided to accept her Facebook friend request.

 

On Thursday, she piped up on that chat thing after I'd made a comment about the Pope. She was on about how he had a cheek to have a go at the British, because they're as bad in Italy. I couldn't resist going all geographical on her.

 

All faces and names have been changed to protect the terminally thick:

 

 

I've removed her.

 

She fancies you!