It occurs to me that maybe you misunderstood the joke. When you tell the new guy that he has to do some stupid job and to report his results to the boss afterwards, the punchline is the job was made-up. The boss did not tell anyone to count kufis or shopping carts.
We sent a new guy in the kitchen up to the bar for a bacon stretcher. The bartender told him we didn’t have one, but to go ask the restaurant across the street. Poor kid came back and said “They said to ask if you want the small or the large one?” At this point nobody could keep it together anymore and we let him in on the joke.
Exactly, so again, where the joke behind “Kufi count”? In every other examples, the newbie will realize he’s been “had”. In this case, it’s just another of a series of micky-mouse meaningless tasks that you have to do.
I see some think that the idea is that the senior workers lied to the employee to get him to do a micky-mouse meaningless task, but then the results will either be:
The boss gets mad at them for wasting his staff’s time.
OR
The newbie just won’t do anything he’s told ‘the boss said’ and will need to verify it in person, which makes for a crappy chain of command.
The newbie thinking he’s been had is not an option.
First off, I agree. The newbie doesn’t know what the tasks are. Telling him one of the regular tasks is something that isn’t really a task to waste his time is just mean.
But then, I don’t understand any of this crap. Why is there such a need for people to make themselves into giant flaming dicks? I mean, it’s one thing if the newbie is a knowitall, and so you can take him down a peg by getting him to do something silly that he should be able to see through. It’s quite another to pick on the new guy just because he’s new. He’s new, of course he doesn’t know the ropes, the rules, the tools, etc.
Like that “left handed trauma scissors” incident above, all you’re doing is conditioning the new guy to not follow your instructions, to not believe what you tell him. And then when you really need something, he blows you off. Remember the story of crying wolf?
Done properly (ie, lightheartedly), this sort of hazing can be an important part of esprit de corps and group bonding.
Valid social group membership has to be earned. Yeah, you can force everyone to play nice, but you don’t get real cohesion that way. Part of earning your way into a group is making the progress from being the butt of a joke to laughing about how wet-behind-the-ears the newbies are. It doesn’t really make sense in the grand scheme of things, but humans aren’t rational animals.
Obviously, you have to choose the right time and place. A doc in the OR needs to be all business, because it’s a time-sensitive situation. And clearly experienced seamen should not tell the noob to throw something important overboard, because he might do it.
In the USAF, one of our group sent an Airman, who was quite naive out for his ‘mobility pap smear.’ The ER folks apparently enjoyed the joke a lot. Typically, for mobility, you would receive a long list of tasks to accomplish.
The first time I was sent to the tool crib for tool# ID-10-T, I thought I’d outsmart the NCO’s and came back a few minutes later, declaring that the ID-10-T had already been checked out. Feeling all proud of myself, the Superintendent (a Master Sergeant) overheard and with stone-cold seriousness, picked up the phone and called the tool crib in my presence, stating, “This Airman [me] here states you checked out the last ID-10-T. He must be mistaken, right, Sergeant?”
All humor left my body and I was about to shit it a brick. The room was dead silent. The Super hung up, started at me for a minute, then grinned, saying, “Gotcha scurred, didn’t I?” The whole room erupted in laughter. Right then, I couldn’t find my sense of humor with both hands and a flashlight. He got me good. 
While recuperating from a sprained ankle, I was assigned to a tool room on board the carrier USS Enterprise.
One day an E-2 walked in and said “I need a fallopian tube”, somehow I kept a straight face and said “Sorry, you’ll have to go to medical supply for that”.
He got really angry and said “Dammit, I’ve been to three tool rooms and no one has a fallopian tube! Medical better have one!” So I upped the ante and told him to make sure he asked for a specific lieutenant in Medical, who happened to be the only female doctor aboard.
To this day I wonder what she told him?
The guy realizes he’s been had when he calls the warden (his boss’s boss’s boss) and tells him that he’s completed the kufi count and that 12 offenders are wearing kufis in the chow hall today, and the warden says “there is no such thing as a kufi count. You’ve been had.”
Let’s see… during my time in the Coast Guard we had all the Naval ones already mentioned and a few more. Did someone mention waterline paint yet? There were green and red bulbs for the running lights, relative bearing grease, shoreline, and others. Every summer, they send midshipmen from the Academy between their 3rd and 4th years out to the fleet for their midshipmen cruises. The crews are advised that though these midshipmen WILL be commissioned officers next year if they graduate, their status during the cruise is somewhere between Seaman Recruit (E-1) and Seaman/Fireman Apprentice (E-2) and they should be treated accordingly. So…
A middie working with an ET (Electronics Technician) or EM (Electrician’s Mate) is told to go to the Bosun’s Hole (sort of a storeroom overseen by a senior Bosun’s Mate) for some batteries for the sound powered phone. The Bosun’s Mate tells him they’re locked in the Sea Chest (imaginary) and he doesn’t have the key. Check with the Quartermaster of the Watch. Now, the QMOW’s duty station is on the bridge. So the middie finds his way to the bridge.
Now, nobody expected the Captain to be on the bridge when our wayward middie appeared on his quest for the key to the sea chest. On the other hand, The Captain never expected a middie appearing on the bridge asking the QMOW for a non-existant key for an imaginary sea chest. The Captain questioned the middie and I guess was satisfied that batteries for a sound powered phone was a worthy cause and told the QMOW, with a straight face, “Give him the Goddamn key!”
Is this the right thread to tell the story about the Sea Bat, the asshole LtJg, and the Captain’s Mast?
OK, this one is bugging me. I get the joke that an adjustable wrench adjusts to all sizes in a range, English or metric or otherwise.
But the thing is, metric Crescent wrenches, or at least metric adjustable wrenches, appear to be real. Haven’t found good proof of a “Crescent” brand adjustable wrench that’s metric, but there are plenty of wrenches of the same form, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find Crescent brand.
All these wrenches have a size, like 4" or 6" or 8" (meaning the length). Outside the US these tend to be nice round sizes in millimeters.
Some such wrenches have have a jaw distance scale on the frame (a nice touch to give you the option of getting the wrench set to size before you reach into a tight spot). On these wrenches the scales are English or metric (though for some dumb reason never both).
Some such wrenches claim to have detents for standard fastener sizes, so they really don’t adjust to just any size within a range. This one I’m dubious about, because at least some of the wrenches of this kind appear to be jokes.
However, to summarize, metric adjustable wrenches do appear to be real.
Perhaps the best course of action for the eager youngster is to keep a metric adjustable wrench hidden nearby, and when asked to go fetch one, come back with it – and also explain gently to the person who sent him, that the English wrench would also have worked just fine.
They can and do. A soldier pissed off the first sergeant once, so the 1SG ordered him to jump over the building. He repeatedly lept into the wall for over an hour. 'Twasn’t a joke.
In the Army, I’ve seen some of the stuff mentioned before like the chem light batteries, box of grid squares, and PRC-E7, but a lot of us knew the jokes by the time we got to our first duty station, so we weren’t hit with these so much. There were stories of one soldier who was sent all over the place for some land line time and again and she fell for it every time. She would run all over the place, the commo shop, S3, S1, the motor pool, and never get it apparently.
I also have a friend from high school up who almost went to the motor pool to feed the gamma goat. He had another private with him who knew what that was though.
The joke is much, much older than the availability of an adjustable wrench that is somehow deemed metric here in the U.S. Perhaps the joke is obsolete nowadays, but it had a good long run of being a fool’s errand.
Friends who worked on an aircraft carrier tell of sending the noobs off to retrieve something from the bowling alley or to meet the chief at the Starbucks in 10 minutes. (the aircraft carriers had no such thing)
I just saw this one, I forget where. The new guy was sent to the parts counter for a “long weight” Of course the counter guy was in on it and disappeared, wherein the noob had a long wait.
Former physics teacher here who had colleagues who would send certain students to other physics teachers asking them for “a long weight,” for demonstration purposes or to help set up a lab or something.
“Mr. McIntosh told me to ask you for a long weight.”
“Oh you want a long wait? Ok. Just stand right there.”
Absolutely!
Sea chests are real, but generally not locked or used for storage.
Okay. I’ll try to shorten the tale up. I’ll preface the whole sordid story with “This is a no shitter!”
- The Sea Bat: Cruises can get boring. If you’re off duty or watch, there’s not much to do. One way to amuse oneself is with a Sea Bat. All you need to start off is an empty cardboard box with some air holes cut into it, a broom (not a push broom), some deck space, and some victims. You set the box on the deck , get on your hands and knees while keeping the broom close at hand, and peer into the holes punched in the box, poking occasionally with a broom straw. Sooner or later, someone will walk by and ask you what you’re doing. You tell them “I caught me a sea bat! It was just hanging from the overhead over there. It’s an ugly son of a bitch. Want to see it? Don’t let it out!” Then you get up, hand your victim the broom straw and wait. When he’s on his hands and knees poking the broom straw into one of the air holes trying to coax the sea bat into view, you take the broom and whack him hard in the ass like you were Jack Nickolas at a “Who can drive a ball farthest championship”. When he gets up to tear you a new one you tell him “It’s your turn with the broom with the next guy!” and all is well.
B. The Asshole LtJg: He was a product of the Coast Guard Academy and made certain you knew that if you were enlisted or a warrant officer, you were beneath him. This attitude endeared him to all the Warrants and Chiefs. Especially the Senior and Master CPOs with more than 25 years of service. The CPOs and WOs made their affection for the LtJg clear to the LtJg’s division officer, the Chief Engineer. The Che’Eng understood the situation, explained that he knew how to take care of this sort of thing, and made it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES would his problem assistant FALL OVERBOARD AND BECOME LOST AT SEA.
So…
Asshole sees a gathering of crewmembers on the deck and asks what’s going on. A lot of muttering and mumbling until, in a clear loud voice, a Senior Chief Gunner’s Mate who I was pretty friendly with and who had been enjoying the entertainment with 3 or 4 other CPOs answered “They’ve caught a sea bat, Sir!”. The LtJg said, “A sea bat? I’ve always wanted to see one of those.” And he assumed the proper viewing position.
For the record, I was NOT the broomwielder for this incident. I may have been standing NEAR the broomwielder (hereafter BW), but for this entire Sea Bat sighting I never touched the broom. And I may have distracted the BW until the LtJg was in position. And I never encouraged him to apply the broom. I simply walked away when the JtJg was in position and BW noticed a fresh victim. Nanoseconds afterwards the entire area was vacated except for a Fireman holding a broom and a somewhat perturbed LtJg.
III. The Captain’s Mast:
a) The charges were Assaulting an Officer and Assault with a Deadly Weapon. Prior to the Proceedings, there were several long closed door conferences between the CPOs who had witnessed the Assault and the Engineering Officer, Executive Officer, and the Chief Master At Arms. Several things were worked out during these meetings, I believe. The LtJg was disappointed when he was told that since there were no Lawyers aboard, a Court Martial was out and that no Attempted Murder or Mutiny charges would be brought against the BW.
b) During the Mast, after the LtJg described to the Captain the assault perpetrated on him, a Commissioned Officer and Graduate of the Coast Guard Academy, the Chief Engineer (and division officer of both the accused and the victim) told the Captain that he was somewhat confused and asked if he could ask the LtJg some questions. The Captain agreed. The Chief Engineer (hereafter CE) asked the LtJg what position he was in when he was so grievously assaulted. The LtJg tried to describe it and the CE said he was still confused and asked the LtJg to demonstrate it. Reluctantly, and with some prodding by the Captain, the LtJg complied with the CE’s request. Then, motioning towards the LtJg’s upright rear end, the CE noted to the Captain that there were absolutely NO signs of rank visible on the LtJg’s uniform. The Captain then looked somewhat confused. Then the CE asked the LtJg what in the world he was doing in that position on the deck and the LtJg stated “They said they had caught a sea bat. I was curious to see what one looked like.” Both the Captain and CE asked “A sea bat?” and the LtJg said, “Yes Sir. I had heard of them but had never seen one before.”
The Captain then called for a recess and asked the CE, XO, and CMAA to join him in his Quarters for a brief conference.
c. The sentence: The BW was found to have “Rendered an Improper Salute” and as punishment was ordered confined to the ship for the next 2 weeks. He was further informed that since this was his first offense, if he managed to avoid repeating this violation of the UCMJ for 3 months, the Captain would remove all records of this proceeding from the BW’s personnel file and destroy them. And I understand several CPOs spent some uncomfortable time standing at attention receiving counseling from the Captain. And a LtJg received some “Character Building” counseling from the Captain and the CE.
This was a no shitter. That is all.
I would give you gold, if this were a different message board and I were not poor. [Koxinga applauds]