8. G’day mate
We (in Australia) recently had a national census – Government spent millions setting a up a website encouraging people to use it. Only it couldn’t handle more than a million queries an hour and so crashed just after dinner time – roughly 7pm (when not surprisingly more than a million people just happened to log in) on Census night. They’re now running ads to assure people they are competent enough to store all the private data gathered.
9. Paper Trail
For my job, I work with a lot of files and storing them.
This one lady didn’t quite get how that was done. So, she put a bunch of files in a box, and then wrote down the identifying number for each of those files on a piece of paper.
So then I get to the office, and I’m handed a stack of 20 boxes, and a stack of 20 sheets of paper. With no way of telling which box corresponded to which piece of paper.
We store thousands of boxes of files. No amount of explaining could get this woman to understand that we don’t go dig through every one of those boxes every time someone needs a file back.
10. “Hotter than Satan’s armpit”
I work in construction. Incompetence is a daily occurrence. In no particular order:
– Crane operator over compensated and slammed the 35-ton air handler he was placing on the roof into the wall of the hospital.
– Medical Gas Certification company didn’t check all the outlets on a line, just the last one. Well he screwed up and read the gauges wrong. Passed the system and it went into operation. Two weeks later, a patient is brought in to the ER and requires oxygen. So they hook him up to the oxygen wall outlet. Only problem is that during construction, some dumb person got the lines crossed and the oxygen outlet was actually connected to the vacuum line. Patient was fine….after some well deserved freaking out.
– All shaft walls are 2-hr rated, UL listed enclosures for fire safety and this is STRICTLY enforced and doubly so in hospitals. Well some hospital maintenance guy decided that the exhaust fan the hospital was putting in on the sly needed to have the ductwork go up this shaft. So he punch a 4’x4′ hole in it and ran some ductwork through it. Never sealed the hole, no fire/smoke dampers, no nothing. We found it during demo when we renovated the area.
– During an inspection, there was a problem with the way the sprinkler heads were installed. Nothing major, just needed to tighten some uplifts restraints. Well you need to be licensed to work on that stuff. So, the idiot plumber decides “Hey, I’ve got a wrench and can tighten stuff”, so he climbs on the ladder and starts going to town in front of the inspector. Came very close to failing the inspection.
– Everyone is complaining that there is no hot water to half the hospital and starts blaming my design. Ok, let me look. Well idiot plumber put all of the check valves in backwards so no hot water was allowed out of the system.
– Found a fire/smoke damper propped open with a 2×4.
– Previous contractor did not reconnect the storm pipes under the slab before re-pouring the concrete. Everytime it rained, water would bubble up through the floor tiles and flood the EKG lab. Hospital didn’t investigate until a patient slipped. They had just been sending a dude with a mop to clean the floor.
– An electrical ground wire zip-tied to a 1″ oxygen line.
– 2″ main hospital oxygen line installed above the main kitchen hood.
– Maintenance removed all the supply diffusers from the main hallway that had a west facing wall, a 60 foot long wall of glass and no shade because “they didn’t see the need for it during the last renovation”. Well then don’t complain to me when the insulation on the chilled water piping is soaked like a sponge and you have a nice brown line on your ceiling tiles showing the pipe path, and the room is hotter than Satan’s armpit.
11. Bagels
Went to a bagel place on a mildly busy Sunday morning. Ordered a bagel. Cashier looked at me wide-eyed, said nothing, went to her manager. Manager comes over, tells me it will be a good 40 minute wait.
12. The wrong card
Watched someone try to swipe a library card to try and get into a University building instead of his Uni card for about 5 minutes. He looked quizzically at the card and everything, and yes the two cards are completely different. The shock was so strong it took me a while before I corrected him.
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