How to tell if you are really an engineer

Wow. I was just sitting there looking at all the threads in the BBQ Pit, (didn’t click on anything) and my browser magically took me here.

You’re really an engineer if you try to answer rhetorical questions.

Friend: I wonder how long it would take to run around this entire building.

Me: (about 2 minutes later; conversation has shifted) I think about 1 minute 30 seconds.

Friends: Uhhh…
Oh, and # 70 forgot the fifth food group: Alcohol.

My late father’s line (marine engineer) “How can you talk without a paper and pencil?”

bubba jr, while I will agree that some engineers design to ridiculous tolerances, and some come up with bonehead ideas (like the guy I worked with who designed a 70# plumb bob :eek: ), all EOs aren’t the result of an oops situation.

My husband is in the auto industry. A few weeks before full-scale production was to begin, a major redesign of a door latch mechanism had to be done because a VP who got to drive a prototype decided that the handle should be moved back 1/2 inch. The internal mechanism had to be redesigned and the tooling for the plastic panel that housed the handle also had to be redone.

Oh yeah, and the redesign was not to delay production. It took tens of thousands of dollars and who knows how many EOs/ napkin sketches/ frantic phone calls. So it’s not always the fault of the designer. yeah, I’ve done bad designs myself and got some toolmakers pissed off at me. I was young. I learned. I’m sorry.

If you come up behind a truck at a stoplight which has a string dangling from the bumper - and think:

"ooh, it’ll be so neat to watch its behavior when the truck takes off " -

You’re definitely an IT engineer when you debug Foxtrot. (See today’s strip. Dude, you forgot the trailing "
", you user!)

While I agree with you that engineers will sometimes design parts that aren’t easily manufactured and many of them could use some practical shop experience, I can also tell you about the times when I’d get parts returned from the shop that were the mirror image of what was designed and drafted. Or the guys that insisted the units were inches, when the drawing clearly stated millimeters (which should also be apparent from the stated tolerances). Or even the geniuses who insist that mil and millimeter are equivalent units. Or the times where concentricity had been mistaken for diameter.

Everyone does foolish things occasionally.