Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
(OP)
He fellas, what is the most rare and strange/awkward situation you have encountered at work (and personal if you would like to share it)?
For example, talking with your co-engineer about a design issue/problem while sitting at the toilet (ya'know). Or coming by surprise to your bosses' office and hearing or seeing something you rather not see.
Jaja, how you deal with this situations??
Any input is well welcomed..
regards
For example, talking with your co-engineer about a design issue/problem while sitting at the toilet (ya'know). Or coming by surprise to your bosses' office and hearing or seeing something you rather not see.
Jaja, how you deal with this situations??
Any input is well welcomed..
regards





RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
I can instantly see the cringes on the faces of others that know me, since they brace for my responses. They are never responses that Marketing or Sales types like to hear. I'll keep on giving those honest, reality-check type responses until I can find a vendor that actually carries unobtainium.
"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
Steven K. Roberts, Technomad
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RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Jaja, how you deal with this situations??
I once walked into a refrigeration unit to find my boss engaged in "physical activities" with a coworker of the opposite sex. They paused, he looked over his shoulder and yelled at me to get out, and I did. Later on he pulled me aside for a serious discussion - and strongly advised me not to tell his wife. I didn't tell her, and never mentioned the subject again. I didn't spend a long time in that job.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Good luck,
Latexman
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Anyways, after some time he was laid off during a slow period. We were in the process of hiring a high level Civil Engineer who was being escorted around the office to show her the place. Our president, VP, and the CE engineer were coming around the corner to my area just moments after I'd been shocked at seeing our long departed drafstman come walking by in heels, wig, and red dress, grinning ear to ear and just cruising around saying HI to all the guys.
Someone whispered in the president's ear what was going on and I never saw him run so fast across the room to intercept and kick out the wayward ex-employee. The CE candidate looked around suspiciously and asked, "What's going on?" The VP stammered a bit but then came out and told her the situation. She did accept the position despite the awkward situation.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Most folks think that a "Tranny" is the thing next to their car's engine. Looks like you used to work with the more modern kind!
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
An engineer in our firm who was somewhat elderly - started his career in 1947 - went to the men's room one day. After a short period of time, we all heard a loud crash from withing the restroom. After rushing in to see what had happened, we found him getting up off the floor - water everywhere.
It seems the wall-mounted toilet on which he was sitting lost its connection to the wall and came crashing to the floor, breaking the porcelain stool and spilling ...debris...all over. He was a mess, and quite upset.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
A "tranny" and a cross dresser are not the same thing.
Charlie
www.facsco.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
One of our cantilever toilets has now been propped from beneath with a bolt from the floor topped with a steel plate.
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
'Tranny', also not to be confused with Drag Queen (male homosexual that dresses in women’s clothing) or Dairy Queen (male homosexual and in-progress-transsexual that has breast implants)
"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
At my last place they hired a contractor for a few months to work on a specific job. This contractor was in the process of a sex change, going from anatomically male to female. Dressed as a woman, as I recall took female hormones and while with us had surgery on their vocal chords but hadn’t had the ‘main’ operation done yet.
So the first incident that my colleagues at the time found hilarious was:
The contractor liked to work out after work and would change before leaving. Outfit of choice was a very tight Pink Leotard.
The first time they decided to change at work I happened to be working a little late and was intently concentrating on my monitor. I noticed someone walk behind me but didn’t immediately realize who.
They started talking to me, I talked for a while without turning round when I did turn around I was confronted with the shocking (as in bright) pink leotard.
What made it bad was the fact that they were rather tall (6'4" ish) so being sat down my eyes were at approximately waist level if you catch my drift.
I immediately looked up to look them in the face but on the way passed the chest region.
I found it difficult to maintain the conversation after that, especially due to the fact that they always seemed to be flirting. Now my guess is they weren’t as I’m sure male or female they had better taste than to be interested in me so it was probably my own ingrained prejudice but it was certainly awkward.
Depending how this story goes down I may post part 2.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
ewh, around here in the SF BAY AREA, the term ‘queen’ is reserved for a gay man, usually a particularly flamboyant one. A straight male who likes to wear women’s clothing is a crossdresser. But don’t believe me, here’s another source. It has a lot of the terms I hear, but I didn’t see a few of others such as nellie and Starina, both derogatory terms; or drag diva for an admired drag icon of any gender or sexual persuasion.
http://geekbabe.com/annie/feature/gloss.html
KENAT, It seems a bit unfair to you by the in-progress trannie to flaunt his stuff without warning. Sounds like he was hoping to provoke a reaction from you. Personally I'd love to know how your story ends.
"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Whilst that contractor was there a story/joke circulated the building.
Conversation between Company Secretary (in charge of HR) and another Director:
Company Secretary. “Some of the female staff have complained about the contractor using the women’s toilet”
Director: “What they don’t like a Transsexual using their bathroom? Isn’t that a little un PC”
Company Secretary. “No, they’re just tired of the seat being left up!”
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
I told him that my call could have waited till he finished his business.....
-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
ONE of my embarrasing work moments:
The boss at my first job was a chronic leave-fly-opener. As an awkward young graduate, I didn't have the confidence to tell him straight away, and the longer I let it go without telling him, the more awkward I felt. He would stand there talking to me for 10 minutes, then someone else walking past would go 'You're flying low Maverick, pull up!'
LewTam Inc.
Petrophysicist, Leading Hand, Natural Horseman, Prickle Farmer, Crack Shot, Venerable Yogi.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
I didn't turn him in because he was one of the best engineers I have ever encountered. He called later to apologise. He must have been monitoring the websites with predictions of a special event.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Looks like some folks that you knew were demon possessed.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
----------------------------------
Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
A friend of mine was using a portaloo on a site in central london, he was working the flush handle too vigerously when his brand new flashy mobile phone fell from his breast pocket of his overalls into the loo!
He was most upset and decided to retrieve it. He placed a large, heavy gauge, plastic rubble sack on his arm and proceeded to go fishing for his swanky phone. After some groping about he found his beloved new phone and proceeded to rinse and clean it. Amazingly it still worked, the only problem being, he had sh*t reception thereafter!!!!
I apologise for being crude, no offence intended.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Our bathrooms were fairly new and we had the fancy toilets that hung from the wall instead of mounting to the floor.
Our customer was sitting on one, doing his business. He weighed over 350 pounds.
The toilet broke from the wall; you can imagine the mess.
We had to scramble to get him in a safe room to hide his embarassment and "dirty" wet clothing. We had to stop the water and get the mess cleaned up without anyone knowing what happened. Someone had to go to his hotel and get him clean clothing.
We felt real sorry for him because no matter how hard we tried, the incident was well known in less than a day by everyone.
Charlie
www.facsco.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
But one incident still makes me laugh after all these years (and I appologise, I can't come close to the toilet stories above):
When I first started work, in the days of typing pools and Grundig dictaphones, we had quite an office full of "girl fridays".
This was an old building with metal and glass partitioning dividing everything up into offices: the acoustics were terrible.
One day one of the girls, who was normally very good humoured, had a ruck with the boss and stormed out of his office closing the door witha little extra vigour.
This drew our attention to a potential "groundhog event" (see language forum for a definition) very effectively.
Then she found she had immediately to go back in with some file or other, which she did.
Swinging the door wide she flounced in and slammed the file down on his desk.
She turned to leave and as she was coming out we all heard him calling out "AND DON'T SLAM ...." but he was unfortunately cut off mid voice by the door slamming extra hard (I think she was distracted by the grinning expectant faces she saw on her way back)The noise reverberated round the building. The glass threatened but didn't actually break.
Several people were reduced to near basket cases not so much by the door slamming as by the consequences:
Caught by surprise, my coffee cup and I parted company and I spent the next several instants trying to retrieve it from its cartoon-like suspension in mid air.
It was my failure that caused the final break up of so many people who watched it attack the nearest electrical equipment (thank god computers hadn't been invented yet).
All the boss could hear (over the ringing in his ears) was the sound of uncontrolled hysterics from the outer office and I can tell you he was well ticked off for some time thereafter.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
The only way to get back to civilization was to go fishing with a coat hanger....
-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
The day came round and we went down to the plant, only to walk into the workshop to find half a dozen of our plant techs engrossed in sorting out a vast pile of porno magazines.
Luckily the service guy saw the funny side and the techs had the good sense to clear up damn quick.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
We had a manager who was well known as a "button-pusher." He always had to see what would happen. So some of the guys put together a box with several "important looking" gauges, levers, buttons, etc., -- all rigged so no matter what he touched an alarm would go off. The box sides were screwed together with dozens of little screws. Box was put off to the side in a conference room with a "DO NOT TOUCH" sign on it, and a meeting was called for that room (to which the manager was invited.) Later that day, the box alarm went off and everyone ran to the conference room -- only to find the guy frantically trying to unscrew one of the sides to get to the alarm and turn it off.
Let's just say, he was much better about not touching stuff after that.
Patricia Lougheed
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RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
When developing the high speed train (In the UK: this was the train with a tilt mechanisms for cornering) they decided to run a bird strike test on the drivers cab and consulted Rolls Royce who lent them a pneumatic cannon to fire birds at the target.
"What do you use?"
"We just stock up with frozen chickens from the supermarket, they all graded with the same weight."
The first and last test did not go well, with it they pretty well destroyed not just the window, which would have been an affordable mistake, but they wrecked the whole traction unit which was not. They rang Rolls Royce for advise.
The engineer at Rolls Royce thought for a moment and then asked:
"Did you remember to thaw out the chickens first?"
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Patricia - that's a great story too. I love set ups. And this one was so pure. Thanks.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Not me but I knew an old boss of mine that actually switched an HV SF6 breaker to the earthed position while it was still energised. Nothing spectacular happened except that the building plunged into darkness, and they managed to have a co-ordination issue with the 'breaker that resulted in quite a large area being blacked out for a few hours.
The power company wasn't very happy at all....
lets say there was a removal of an authorised HV status from said individual in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
A few years ago at my first intern job (I was around 20) we had a company picnic. I had recently broken up with my girlfriend so I went on my own and spent the better part of the day minding the bbq. It was good times, and I finally got to see all of my bosses in a relaxed environment.
The following monday, one of my bosses came by my desk and told me his 17 year old daughter had a crush on me and wouldn't stop asking questions about me on the car ride home. He then gave me the "stay the hell away from my daugthers" look and walked away.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
They spared no expense and in the grounds was a huge marquee with strawberries, and cream, buffet meal and case after case of champagne.
Attending this were directors of my company and its parent company as well as directors of the target companies, exhalted company indeed.
Some of us proletarian members were also allowed to attend, briefly, for the refreshment phase.
Also new was the company finance director.
My weakness was for the strawberries and cream, his for the champagne. Guess who did not acquit themselves well that day. As a matter of fact, I don't ever recall seeing that finance director again.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
One Friday the company president and his wife come by to bring us all lunch. I was stepping through a window off the roof of one level and into the main building when the inseam on my jeans rips out. This wasn't a small little tear, but almost a knee to knee rip.
Obviously there is no graceful way to go have lunch with your boss's wife with the middle of your pants missing, so I skipped lunch and went back onto the roof.
To this day my wife still laughs about that story.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
I was running late to a Math class and when I arrived there (some 10 minutes late) there were 2 very beautiful girls distributing a questionnaire about carrers and stuff like that. I was puzzled and astonished: first; it was unusual and second; one of the girls was really nice. And then I started trying to make my move with soft talk and the teacher warned a couple of times to finish my questionnaire and to stop stalking with the girl. I was really into it and I didn't notice some smirking and laughs in the rest of my colleagues. After the questionnaire filled up I continued and then they left. After that, I noticed that my teacher was a little bit harsh with me.
Later in the class finally I knew that that girl was his daughter ( I skipped the presentation part due to be late)...
Needless to say what happened to my grade in Math that year...
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
This is, of course, a Catch 22 situation... either the daughter is attractive, the guys get out their best chat up lines and the boss gets uptight or the daughter is not attractive, no one chats her up, she is upset and he again gets uptight.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Anyway, I walked into the copy room to get some copies done and saw a woman trying to scan something. She wasn't very successful at all.
I helped her out and decided to joke "don't worry, after 8 years of school, even the VPs with their MBAs still can't figure out these simple things".
Turns out she was the VP of finance & operations...and had an MBA.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
"What's up?" my colleague asked in loud voice all could hear, "Has Mike died on the job?"
At that moment the ambulance crew arrived to cart Mike away.
Fortunately, after heart by-pass surgery, he survived.
PS: It only now occurs to me to wonder what he meant by "on the job", the alternative meaning is well within the range of my colleagues humour.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Got an email the next day telling me that he'd had a heart attack at work and died.
To this day I hope my bugging him wasn't the cause!
(P.S. some time I will post part 2 of my original post but I've been kind of busy)
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Thankfully she had a sense of humour. Plus it was a pretty funny cliche.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
The customer just straightned me out and indicated that he had tried to find the info. My boss told me that people get fired for that sort of thing- he wasn't intending to threaten me though.
As a matter of fact, that customer ended up loving me for all the stuff I did for him and my boss actually gave me a major promotion some time after the fact. It just shows that if you're on top of your game and a valuable employee, little things like that can be put behind you. Perhaps someone on a "bubble" would have been severely repremanded or even fired.
Ed
www.engineerboards.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
If you don't hit the "reply all" someone else will.. or they'll be too lazy to write a new email and will simply copy yours "to whom it may concern" and broadcast it out.
Having had the "the client is an idiot" email situation in the past, I am now very careful to compose my emails, especially to the sales team, as if they are going to be published in the newspaper. I have no problem who they copy "sales are Idiots" emails to.
"management are idiots" emails require some thought and a good CV.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
I have seen the term "CV" a few times recently, but not sure what it means. Can you tell me? This may sound like a naive question, but I really don't know.
Ed
www.engineerboards.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
In the US it's usually a resume.
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
He was constantly trying stuff and failing or taking way to long to get things done in their system. What was funny was he forward emails to me from his boss stating what needed to be done. If you read through all of the emails towards the bottom, you would see that his boss was always giving him a butt chewing and he was pretty much begging for forgiveness to keep his job.
We would always laugh around our office about it, I even started a folder just for his emails. Finally my boss made me talk to him about it after about a year of this. He claimed he did it on purpose to make sure we understood how important it was we do a good job for him.
Zuccus
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
So I asked "who wants to play?"
I mentioned the meeting was high level, all present proven to be equally high level, they laughed and we continued with the meeting.
Putting Human Factor Back in Engineering
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Sweet! One would HAVE to appreciate an ice breaker like that!
Ed
www.engineerboards.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
I heard the term "QWERTHOSIS" for the kind of imprint on the face after a nap in the office.
Putting Human Factor Back in Engineering
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
if it was done on purpose...Yes
It was quite a bit embarasing though.
Putting Human Factor Back in Engineering
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Laughing kind of makes it seem like they accpted it.
Funny stuff. At least you handled it well.
Ed
www.engineerboards.com
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Toward the end of the same transsexual contractors time at the company I went over to their desk to see where they were with the project with a view to doing a handover.
As a piece of background information, I should mention that I had a couple of pair of work trousers (pants for my friends in the US) that for some reason had shallow pockets. Due to this and my work on the shop floor/test rig/ slouching in chairs/cramming into my Ford Fiesta my keys had a tendency to fall out. To prevent this I got a short keychain. It was only about 6” long and all you could see was the clip onto my belt loop and the first couple of links, it wasn’t a 3ft chain halfway down my leg like sk8ers wear.
While I was talking to the contractor my boss, the interim technical Director, came over and started asking me questions and I stood up talking to him.
While I was doing so I felt something down by my pocket and glanced down to see the contractor playing with my key chain.
Had it been anyone else in the company, male or female, I would have told them then and there to get off in no uncertain terms, and may have even smacked them. However, given the situation with the contractors transgender and my boss being right there I wasn’t sure what to do so after overcoming my initial shock/annoyance/anger…. I grinned and bore it.
I don’t think my boss noticed.
After he walked off the contractor started telling me that in his circles the chain meant something.
At this point I made my excuses and went back to my desk.
I considered making a complaint but given that for some reason almost all the women employees in the general admin office downstairs had taken a fondness to the contractor I figured this would be more trouble than it was worth, especially as the contractor was finishing in a few weeks.
Final part of the story, a few months later there was a story in a national newspaper about a group of male to female transsexuals suing a small country pub for not letting them use the women’s toilet, supposedly because some customers had complained.
Guess who one of the plaintiffs was……….
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
One pair in particular only had a small hole at the corner of one of the back pockets.
On a day I was wearing these pair of jeans, I was on project with significant earthwork being done, so it seemed I was constantly climbing around stockpiles of excavated material or what ever. This morning, my client as well as the owner of the prime construction company showed up on site to discuss some issue we were having. I was attempting to work with them as well as keep up with the ongoing work by the crews.
I was walking to the site meeting from a crew that was a short distance away, and in the process had to climb over a small stockpile of excavated material. For whatever reason my jeans didn't make it. They ripped, from the pocket/hole down along the center seam to halfway to my knee! I did that doublecheck to make sure nobody noticed and there was no obvious "notice".
It really wasn't something that could be fixed or "played off". Should I mention that I am female?
Luckily, I was wearing layers. I took off my sweatshirt and tied it to my waist hiding the rip. I finished my site meeting, made sure everything was operating smoothly and made an excuse to head back to my office. I wasn't far away from home and was able to change into presentable attire.
When I got back to the site, several of the workers had grins on their faces. During one of the breaks, the operator running the large excavator of that crew told me that he saw the entire event! I didn't notice him watching since he sits up higher than everybody else and he had "stadium seating"!!!!
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
Just goes to show one's undergear should be as professional as one's overgear, just in case...
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: Work related awkward/embarrasing/rare situation
When I worked for my previous company it was always more difficult because of keeping the expenses honest and arguments such as "None of the other guys/gals will have their significant others with them", "It's business, not play" cut no ice and often caused no little friction. Of course she was upset when I went to a conference in Buenos Aires and the sponsors of one of the evening events took us all to dinner at a Tango theatre.
However, at my last company I attended a conference in one of the US ski/casino resorts. Some guys did have wives in attendance but one guy told us about his colleague who attended a similar conference. He refused to take his wife since he would not be skiing, gambling or anything else axcept work.
She was not amused.
The conference turned out to be more than average boring and he did go skiing.
He fell and broke his leg.
He had all sorts of problems including that he could not drive so he rang and asked his wife to fly up and drive him back. When he explained why, she hung up on him.
He now had to fly (and arrange for his car to be brought back).
He tried ringing his wife to collect him from the airport but she hung up again. He got a taxi which, because of the distance, was very expensive.
When he got home he couldn't get in because she'd changed the locks.
True or not, there is a moral in here somewhere.
PS,
when not busy shopping like there's no tommorrow, my wife proved a very effective ambassador for the company at the cocktail party, dinners and of course, at the Monte Carlo Yacht Club reception. But it does mean I can now never go back to being employed by anyone because I will never be able to revert to "me at confernce and wife at home."
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
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