In highschool I worked a shitty job at a butchery, and one day the boss decided to “test how smart” I was or something by asking me to get him 1000 wooden skewers out of the box.
Being an attention to detail kind of person, I spent a few minutes counting out 1000 cos I wanted to make sure I gave him exactly what he asked for - wouldn’t want a customer to order 1000 and get 995 or something cos I miscounted right?
Apparently not, cos that was the dumb way to do it - boss slapped 10 skewers on the scale then weighed out 100x that and was really proud until I pointed out that the certificate of accuracy only guaranteed the scale to +/- 2 skewers, then apparently I’m a “smart ass”. Can’t win with some people
I’ve definitely counted paper the same way. Basically needed to sort short pieces of paper by the thousands. We weighed something like 20-25 sheets then used that weight as a measurement.
If you need a perfect count, then you’re correct about the accuracy, but generally a few off here and there isn’t that big a deal. Many companies will allow for some error because it isn’t worth the time to track it down to perfection. This applies even to food standards: the FDA allows up to 60 insect parts per 100g of chocolate (coffee, the cutoff is “Average 10% or more by count are insect-infested or insect-damaged”). They also allow mold up to a certain %. 4% for coffee, and I’m seeing some say 10% for certain fruits. You can see lists here: https://www.fda.gov/food/current-good-manufacturing-practices-cgmps-food-and-dietary-supplements/food-defect-levels-handbook
Perfection is expensive, cheat a little. Your boss may have been annoying, but in general he’s more correct than you were.
Personally, if I’d paid $1500 for 1000 of something and got any less than 1000 units I’d be kinda pissed
Sure, but a big business doing large volume would care less. They generally already order with the built in assumption that even if the amount is correct, not every single one would be usable. At certain costs/products this may require accurate counts (like say docking stations) but with other certain things, including some foodstuffs and of course much cheaper supplies (like say disposable straws or chopsticks) they wouldn’t even bother to count to make sure they got 10000 straws this order instead of 9995 straws. The amount of money paying someone to coun that to be sure would be more than the missing straws worth, unless you suspected your supplier was shorting you on purpose.
If you need more specifics, then generally the smart thing to do is find a machine that already counts more accurately than a human, like change/bill counters, or other counting machines. Generally isn’t worth it to have any employee count large numbers regularly.
Having worked many years in a warehouse, including picking, putting away, and inventorying tiny parts, I can assure you of one thing. The relevancy of the scale’s accuracy is inversely proportionate to how long you’ve been working there.
The correct response when someone calls you a smartass is “It’s better than being a dumbass”
I would happily do that.
My first thought is “great, I’m in back of house, don’t have to deal with customers and am basically getting paid to fidget”.
That’s when I would realize it was too good to be true.
sometimes I got tasks like that when I worked in a smoothie shop, it was like “this sucks, we have to write our phone number by hand on a thousand promo cups because they screwed up the printing.”
I was like “DAMN! i guess ill just get to it. I mean, we have to get it done at some point, right?”
everyone thought I was a martyr for neglecting our customers.
I’d carefully write out legible numbers and imagine listening to the tinkle of the pennies that dropped into my pocket during those 15 seconds hahaha.
Haha, I just had a childhood flashback. My parents had ordered a box full of boxes of business cards, and then the government decided to restructure how phone numbers worked, so I changed the area code on roughly a bazillion businesscards over what felt like several years, but was probably a week.
That’s an awesome prank
As an autist i would realize its a prank but not how to respond to it.
I would probably just do the job in a super serious fashion as a way to prank back. Its not the first time where people react to me in a “omg it was just a joke” because i committed to their bit to hard. But that is what i find funny.
Always commit to it, especially if the prank is getting you to find something.
You can either stay and work, or take the day walking around going to all the shops to buy a long weight, tartan paint, left handed screwdriver or spirit level bubbles.
Tartan (plaid) paint was requested by a coworker on one jobsite.
The other commonly requested item for new hires was a bucket of steam.
Don’t forget to get some blinker fluid!
Do you ever try to use language models for stuff like this?
Three of them were OK from Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
Oh yeah, and i really miss sonet.
I am on a 1 month break back to chatgpt and honestly it sucks, claude is way better.
The pattern/struggle predates llm though and I don’t have one to use in the middle of live interaction.
[maliciously pulls out food handling gloves and tweezers]
Okay two things. First of all, whoever cropped this picture is an idiot.
Second of all the master level of this prank happened to my dad before I was born.
He, and several of his brothers, worked in the construction of the Sears Tower in Chicago. They’d routinely use the crane to get to whatever floor they were working on. My dad was the newest guy, and one time they told him to go get the coffee from the truck at the bottom. So down he went, but then some wiseass told him he couldn’t take the coffee up on the crane. So he walked. And walked. And walked. It took a month of Sundays to make it to the work site. It was either the funniest or worst thing ever, depending on which of my family members was retelling the story.
“A month of sundays” - idiom for “a very long time”. Dropping this for others who might not know it (please ignore)
No I won’t ignore, thank you. I was very confused, thinking how hot the coffee had to be, to still be warm after a month
Like all of you have a jobs that matter.
Nice simple job for a day. Just ask for a tweezers for easier and more hygienic handling.
Just put everything between two slices of toast, fry it, and eat a nice cheese sandwich.
Much easier if you use a knife and spread the pile thin, then separate the sides using the knife to quickly identify which ones should be together.
Sounds quite zen. Might be nice
