This thread reminded me of something from my past. When I was in high school (in the early 80s), I have vague memories of this pointless process on the first day of school: We received our schedule of classes (printed out on computer paper (fanfold flimsy stuff), and our first task was to hand-print (all caps) three copies of the schedule on thick card stock and give two copies to the teacher. What was the point of this? To familiarize us with our own schedules? To save money, because it was cheaper to have us make copies than to print copies out for the school office? Just to waste my time? Anyone else remember something like this (I don’t think I’m imagining this pointless process.)?
I’d WAG that printing all those schedules, depending on the size of the school, probably took at least a day or two on a dot matrix printer. They may not have wanted to turn a 1-2 day project into a week long project, when the students could make two more copies in a few minutes.
My Mom was a high school teacher for decades. Among the many pointless tasks and forms, one that was required at the beginning of each school year included a spot for the size of her classroom (X by X).
Being curious, she grew and shrank her classroom through the years, from postage stamp to football field. No one ever noticed.
A friend of mine works at a huge music festival each year. Since he works there, he has an ID badge that he wears around his neck and is required to get on/off the festival grounds. At one point, I needed to drop something off for him (I’m a vendor for the festival) but I didn’t have a badge to get in. He told me to use his, and after I mentioned that I don’t look anything like the picture on his badge, he pointed out that he replaced his picture with King Tut. Apparently, every year he put some random picture on it partly because he thought it was funny but also just to show that the guards only checked to make sure you had a badge, not that it was actually yours.
Where I worked pre-COVID, I wore my badge upside down every day for over two decades, and no one ever mentioned it even once.
Maybe they thought you were Australian.
Unrelated, but I learned that if you go to a trade show and wear your badge/lanyard backwards so it looks like it accidentally flipped around, it puts a 100% stop to people running the booths calling you by name to get your attention.
Mine was a portrait of a giraffe for several years. Nobody ever noticed. In my current job the security is actually taken seriously and I don’t think I’d get away with that.
Two, both military related.
I was flying in an Air Force C-130 from Pease AFB in New Hampshire to Arkansas for a military shooting competition 20 years ago. At the last minute before leaving, I was issued a M9 Beretta handgun, and told I’d be competing with that too, in addition to my rifle. I was just handed a pistol, no holster or case, so I stuck it in the inside pocket of my jacket. We were travelling in battle dress, camouflage uniforms. Before getting on the plane, we had to go through a metal detector, because I assume some Air Force regulation said so. I set my rifle down, emptied my pockets into the provided plastic tub, but kept beeping when I walked back and forth through it. Finally, I remembered the pistol in my inside pocket. I took it out, set it in the plastic tub, walked through with no beep, picked it back up and put it back in my pocket. The security guy I was making small talk with took no notice of it at all, as we were all armed. Rules are weird.
Another time my National Guard unit was crossing into Canada on our way to CFB Gagetown for live fire exercises, not having any suitable ranges in Maine. Every single truck in the convoy had to stop at the booth and talk to the Candaian customs guy about the trip. (How long are you staying, how much currency are you carrying, etc.) When he got to the part about asking me if I had any firearms, I hooked my thumb back over my shoulder, to point at the 40 foot long, 15,000 pound, M198 Howitzer I was towing and said, “Just that one” and he waved me through.
Wellll…isn’t it about time to find out?
(The only downside would be if they assumed you were the poster Giraffe, and they kept impeding your progress by prostrating themselves before you.)
I’ve done the Funny ID Card, but then I’ve always pushed the boundaries of jokes and bad taste everywhere I’ve worked, and no one ever noticed or cared. (HR probably has a dozen pointless forms filled out and signed with by Rufus T. Firefly)
(Look, coworkers, I’m trying to brighten up your lackluster worklife, but your work is SO lackluster that you can’t appreciate anything except getting those cover sheets on before lunch hour…)
All you ungulates look alike.
When I was a fairly junior employee at a tech company, I had to fill out a form to get equipment for use at tradeshows, essentially taking sellable stock out of the warehouse and using it for sales & marketing purposes. There was supposed to be some sort of manager’s signature, but this took time so I just started signing off on these myself. Nobody seemed to care, until maybe 3 years later when we were finally formally advised on the proper procedure.
Here’s the horrible boss version of fake ID anecdotes.
Back when I was working, we had a boss who was a complete asshole. He enjoyed tyrannizing people.
It was a maximum security prison and we took security pretty seriously. Everyone had a picture ID they were supposed to show every time they entered or left the prison.
This horrible boss had a fake ID made up. It had his real picture and his real name on it. But all ID’s were signed by the boss in order to be valid and he had signed this one Mickey Mouse instead of with his real name.
So we had a guard at the door. He’s doing his job and checking the ID’s of everyone as they enter and leave the prison. He’s even checking pictures and names despite the fact that these are his coworkers and he knows them. But he didn’t check the authorizing signatures. And he let the horrible boss in with the ID that had the Mickey Mouse signature.
So the horrible boss comes in to my office and wants me to reprimand the guard for not checking ID’s properly. I told him I would do so.
The horrible boss leaves and I call the guard in. I tell him “You should watch out for the boss. He does things like this.”
When I was in college in the 00s “Computer Labs” were a thing where there would be a massive room filled with computer’s with high speed internet access officially for people to use for research, spreadsheet making or uploading purposes. Of course, since this was the 00s everybody just used them for MySpace or Facebook (back before you could just access them with your Smart phone). To combat this the computer lab required you to sign-in using your student ID and then write a one sentence summary of what you were going to do on the computer. However, they literally never checked the logs nor even cared what you did with the computers. Most of the time I forgot my long student ID number so I posted gibberish numbers, put “Looking at porn” as my description, and just used a random PC and in my 4 years there absolutely nothing was changed regarding PC access.
You’re probably right. And the school needed copies of the schedule so they could find a student if a parent called in an emergency - and the card stock handwritten schedules would be more durable and easier to file and find than the flimsy printout (these days, of course, the schedules are all on computers and can be accessed at will - but not then).
Some of our kids’ teachers required a parent’s signature on homework. My wife signed it with names like Fidel Castro, Mickey Mouse, whatever. One teacher asked her why she did it and she said it was foolish to have a parent sign it. What was that supposed to accomplish.
A friend in grad school chose to live in an undergrad dorm. This was back in the day that school’s acted in loco parentis (which I always translated as “a crazy parent”, with a curfew. If you came in after the curfew, you were still allowed in, but subject to some kind of disciplinary action. Grad students were not bound by the curfew of course and he always signed the register with some silly name.
Mr. Garrison, Wendy and I think that is a racist statement!
I used to teach high school science. At the end of every year the homeroom teachers had to fill out and file all of the “permanent record” folder stuff for each kid.
The one thing that really annoyed me was filing the semester report “cards”. They were dot-matrix printed in a stack of five different colored sheets. They were attached at the edges with the perforated strips with holes for the printer. They also reeked of something that smelled akin to rotten grapefruit.
The real problem was the office required the cards to be filed by color. This wouldn’t have been a problem but for the fact they wanted them filed in the most difficult way possible. They’d want two in one place (blue and green), one sent home (white), and the other two (canary and magenta) in another place. Of course the order of the colors in the stack were from top to bottom white, blue, canary, green, magenta!
Anyone remember DeLaney Cards? Maybe not used outside of NYC, but I left HS in '63 and they were in use for many a year prior.
We had to fill one out for each class at the beginning of the semester.
Still used them when I graduated in 1981 - although I’m not sure they were entirely pointless. The contact info was definitely pointless, but I’m not sure they were entirely pointless for keeping track of attendance.