My all time favorite is when i was a pipefitter apprentice. I was asked to go and find five gallons of dehydrated water.
I brought back an empty five gallon bucket, and told them it was Perrier…
Would it be unacceptable to just chuckle and say “Sir, I already know that joke”?
I don’t know, but it would too boring for my taste.
Did you mean an adjustable metric crescent wrench?
One friend of mine, a navy guy, was sent to get a bucket of steam. Six hours later, he came back with a bucket with a lump of dry ice and some water.
Another friend, an Air Force guy, told me the AF fool’s errand was to send a rookie to get an ASH receiver. That’s the federal stock name for an ashtray with a sliding cover and spring-loaded mount to the plane’s wall.
A kufi is a brimless cap worn by Muslim men.
Hm. “5 yards of flight line” sounds just right – said like that it sounds just like an actual thing, but “flight line” is well enough known the newbie may kick himself later. But surely you can’t rely on nurses having done NO biology in high school? 
I’m also mildly shocked that this was surgeon-on-nurse – the gulf of authority there seems enough that it’s as likely to be abuse as funny, although I guess I’m not well attuned to workplace humor in the first place
ROFL! On no, I knew this wasn’t going to end well!
When I was in the Army Reserve we had private fresh out of training. We were testing some new radios we had recently received when the E-4 we were working with told the private to go back to the commo cage and get a can of squelch. About 10 minutes later he comes running out with a can marked “squelch.” We had done this in the past and our sergeant was prepared for us–he wrapped a piece of paper around a can of air and wrote “squelch” on it. Not wanting to lose face we took the can, sprayed some air on the connector on the back of the radio and moved on.
Fast forward 2 months. We’re out on our summer training and a captain pulls up with a bad radio. The same E-2 looks it over and says, “Oh, that just needs a can of squelch,” and runs off. Good times did not follow.
In fairness to the private, he was trained as a teletype operator, not on voice communications.
Yup. Depends on the ship, though.
This was pulled on me as an E-1. It worked as I had no clue what prop wash was at the time.
Really, it all depends upon the person giving the spurious order. My first platoon sergeant (E7) out of basic was a miserable SOB, and got extremely irate that some of us noobs were hip to the jokes, but fortunately I had an old-school tank commander (E6, went by “Butch”) who told him where to stuff it.
Butch sent me on one though, to get a box of reticles for the tank’s gun sight, so I took off for a 15-minute break, got a soda at the PX, and brought him back a box Fiddle-Faddle (I think he may have actually lived off of the stuff; seriously, he had about three teeth in his head, and it’s all I ever saw him eat) so it was all good.
Basically, a clever response is usually appreciated, or token bribes in lieu of cleverness, but there’s a fine, often obscure line between “clever” and “smart ass.”
I’m still not getting the joke.
My grandfather said that when he was a junior in a warehouse the standards were “a gallon of tartan paint” and a “bosun’s chair with a long weight”.
This would be around WWI… which makes me think that somewhere back in history:
“Quintus!”
“Ave Centurion!”
“I need you to run to the Quartermaster and get me a scabbard for a left-handed gladius”.
“Sic vir!”
Hmm? Did they not make VW bugs in 68? Do VW bugs not use a water pump? Do most parts store people not know the official name of a VW bug (whatever that might be)?
My husband tells the story of how as a newbie on an aircraft carrier he was sent for a bucket of relative bearing grease.
Ok…Yes they did make VW bugs in 1968. The car is also known as the Beetle. The car has a small, air-cooled engine. It does not have a water pump or radiator. So, the onus is, you have an inexperienced person searching for a non-existant part…
I did not know that! Interesting… so the Corvair mentioned above, same thing, no radiator?
Absolutely correct…both cars were rear-engined and air cooled…
The joke is there’s no reason to count how many prisoners were wearing kufis. It’s like telling a new guy to stand by the front door and count how many men walk by wearing neckties.
I heard they used to ask people to get 1 Farad capacitors. That was before there really were 1 F caps.