clueless intern stories thread

[MongGrel]

I miss the days when we used to send new people all over the base looking for sky hooks, or flight line, but that was decades ago.

NM, seems a bit dif I guess.

I need to go to bed.

 

[mikeford]

Mechanic I know used to work in a huge commercial fleet service, new guys all the time and they would give them the normal razz, Halogen oil, blinker fluid, muffler bearings, but one new kid got the full treatment. Boss called the first parts shop they sent him to and let them in on the joke, and that shop sent the guy on his way to the next shop and called and let them in on the joke.

 

[lupi]

Apache's only use one or two kinds of missiles, as far as I know.

If it were a Hellfire, Wikipedia says ~100 lb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_70

 

[Imp]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_70

I consider missiles to be guided. Video games taught me it's Hellfire or Stingers in that department. Rockets are for spamming things.

 

[xSauronx]

Never had another problem but I always wondered what kind of jobs did the kid have in the past.

none. no jobs. and lousy parents.

 

[xSauronx]

I was an intern in the IT dept of a large, local hospital. There were several other guys from the local university.

Parking at the place sucked. it took 10 - 15 minutes to either circle the lot and try to get a spot, or to park at the bus and ride in. So one of the guys would stop in front of the building, go swipe in, and then go spend 10 or 15 minutes parking and getting back to the office.

Which didn't get him fired, but got *all* of the other interns hassled.

We also had to do a 2-part project [because the CIO was an idiot]
step 1 - re-image all PCs, one at a time, from Windows 2000 to Windows XP
step 2 - upgrade all PCs from XP SP2 to XP SP 3 {!} ONE AT A TIME

I'll spare a lot of detail, but I ended up refusing to work on phase 2 and just started asking other teams to give me work. But this intern started to updated update PCs behind the scenes en masse. HEres the catch: SP3 breaks some services until you restart. So he'd come in from like, 5am - 10am, reboot all the pcs he updated yesterday for the first 2 hours [without warning anyone] and start updating more pcs. Then hed do it again the next day.

Not only was he constantly rebooting pcs that were in use in a hospital [you know, for nurses, doctors, office staff, admissions, whoever]. But they were sometimes broken for 20 or so hours until he got in the next day to restart them. He took down half a floor of PCs listed as medical devices, and nobody knew it until he was gone for the day.

they never fired him. i couldnt believe it. he basically disabled medical devices and the IT dept didnt kick him the hell out.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

One from my brother in law:

He was serving in Afghanistan when a brand new private arrived on base straight out of Basic. They liked to play this prank on new guys who didn't know the weapons they used on the Apaches... so when this 18 year old walks into the bay they start showing him one of the missiles (can't remember what kind) and there's a light that activates when the missile is armed... so one of the sergeants manually activates the light and yells to the rest of soldiers in the bay that the missile is armed and they all take cover. When my brother in law looked up after laughing his ass off, he saw the new private running down the bay with the missile in hand and he throws is out the back door... THROWS THE MISSILE. Needless to say, that prank was never pulled again.

Don't they teach you extremely basic "How things work" in training?

Even if it was properly armed, why would everyone take cover? Do they think that armed missile will just go off by itself?

 

[Eug]

my first job out of school, come summer time, the summer intern shared my office because the guy who used to sit in there left.

at the end of summer when he was leaving, i asked him what he thought about it.

he said that he is glad he did this internship because he now knows he doesn't want to do development his whole life, and that he was going to change majors lol.

That kid seems pretty smart to me.

One from my brother in law:

He was serving in Afghanistan when a brand new private arrived on base straight out of Basic. They liked to play this prank on new guys who didn't know the weapons they used on the Apaches... so when this 18 year old walks into the bay they start showing him one of the missiles (can't remember what kind) and there's a light that activates when the missile is armed... so one of the sergeants manually activates the light and yells to the rest of soldiers in the bay that the missile is armed and they all take cover. When my brother in law looked up after laughing his ass off, he saw the new private running down the bay with the missile in hand and he throws is out the back door... THROWS THE MISSILE. Needless to say, that prank was never pulled again.

That sergeant sounds like a bit ass-ish.

 

[lxskllr]

Don't they teach you extremely basic "How things work" in training?

Even if it was properly armed, why would everyone take cover? Do they think that armed missile will just go off by itself?

You get what; 18 weeks of training? I assume the people taking cover are in on the joke. Light training isn't enough to ingrain competence, so when everyone ducks, he thinks "Holy shit! This is serious!". When you have a missile that you think will do /something/, it overrides reflective, rational thought.

 

[lupi]

I consider missiles to be guided. Video games taught me it's Hellfire or Stingers in that department. Rockets are for spamming things.

and which ones fits the story.

 

[Proprioceptive]

You get what; 18 weeks of training? I assume the people taking cover are in on the joke. Light training isn't enough to ingrain competence, so when everyone ducks, he thinks "Holy shit! This is serious!". When you have a missile that you think will do /something/, it overrides reflective, rational thought.

Exactly, everyone in the bay was in on the joke. This kid also was part of the quartermaster corps. He was just excited to see "things that go boom". And as far as throwing the missile, no, he didn't throw it like a javelin. Yes, it was heavy, and he heaved the freaking thing out the back door. BIL tells me that even though it shouldn't have exploded from him throwing it out, there's still a small chance it could have.

 

[Imp]

and which ones fits the story.

Fit 18 year old man scared out of his mind and pumped full of adrenaline thinking he's about to get exploded, either one is possible. About ~100 lb is heavy but not impossibly heavy to "throw" a very short distance, especially if you think you're about to die and not worried about pulling a muscle.

 

[MongGrel]

Fit 18 year old man scared out of his mind and pumped full of adrenaline thinking he's about to get exploded, either one is possible. About ~100 lb is heavy but not impossibly heavy to "throw" a very short distance, especially if you think you're about to die and not worried about pulling a muscle.

This.

maybe they are making them lighter these days, but 100 lbs sounds really light for most of the missiles I knew in the past.

 

[master_shake_]

not an intern but another tech at a shop i help out

he calls me about a kia that the windshield washer doesn't work so i went down to see what was going on.

he's got the steering column ripped open wires dangling everywhere washer jug on the floor with a test light in the place of the pump.

the car was in pieces.

he tells me he changed the pump the switch etc...

i said you checked the fuses right? he said yeah i said well it should work.

so i jump in the car and push the switches button and the test light lights up.

he said what did you do? i said i pushed the button.

turns out he was pulling on the lever and didn't notice that in this car its push the end of it not pull it.

4 hours of "diagnosis" and parts down the tubes.

 

[Imp]

This.

maybe they are making them lighter these days, but 100 lbs sounds really light for most of the missiles I knew in the past.

This guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire

They use them on drones...

 

[zmaster]

i used to work in the biggest fashion house...

we had a big koi pond in the middle of our building with 3 small ones connecting to it and the fishies swimming happily between the, .
the running gag on interns was to make them count the exact amount of koi in the pond...an impossible task as they number in hundreds...one asian guy even created a mathematical algorithm for counting the speed/distance the fish moves before he records it.

another time we had first year auditors in the warehouse demanding to count the amount of bags we had on the 4th floor storage. we put her in one of those crane things, and sent her up, and left for lunch. we "forgot" to tell her how to get down (there is a duplicate set of controls both in the crane basket and at the bottom of the unit)...oh well

yet another time we had interns coming in to the head office dressed up as models...they thought that the job requires you to dress up as if you are going to the runway every day...our ceo ended up sending one of them home and told her to go put some clothes on