Practical Jokes

[morinput]

In keeping with the long standing tradition of torturing new employees, I'd like to hear of some of the tricks and jokes people have played on new trainees and apprentices. Here's my personal favorite: We always kept a ultrasonic cleaner in the lab and new salespeople would routinely drop their jewelry in there and forget about it for several hours. As you may know this heats up the water quite a bit so I would remove the ring or necklace from the water and replace it with a puddle of alloy. The look on their face when they finally remembered to retreive thier jewelry was truly priceless:D

[Pete Hanlin]

Oh, that's a good one! We used to take their keys and put them in the salt pan for about 10 minutes just prior to closing time (heh heh).

Also, we used to have this one fella that would leave his pd stick barely sticking over the edge of the counter in the lab. He'd go whisking by and grab it with a flair, so we trimmed up some leap pads and stuck the sucker down to the counter. Unfortunately, as it was a metal pd stick, he cut his hand pretty bad and had to have stitches... (ooops). That was a very odd injury report, to say the least!

[harry a saake]

send the apprentice down to the local lab and have them bring back a box of optical centers.

[Caroline]

Could you run down to 'X Optical' and see if they have any spare lensometer dots?...and while you're there, ask if we can borrow their lens stretcher...:bbg:

C

[Excel-Lentes]

I used to work for this OD who was a real tightwad! When I asked him if we get any benefits his reply was, "You have a job, don't you?"

Well, knowing how cheap this guy was, I crazy glued a quarter to the floor of the lab. The next day the OD was on his hands and knees trying to pry the quarter off the floor with a pd stick. What a sight!

The next day another employee told me he poured acetone on the floor and got the quarter. Unreal!!!

[Mike Fretto]

Love to play jokes

Oh man where to begin, at one lab I worked at we put a live catfish in a trough that ran from one end of the counter to the other where the finers and polishers stood. When the girl who ran the machines went to rinse off some tools she let out quite a scream :D Then there was the new employee at lense clean up we had a conveyor where the lenses where deblocked then sent to lense clean-up and the on to final inspection in the surface room. I gave this new employee a full face mask with filtration cartridges and told him OSHA required anyone working with this particular soap we where using in the ultrasonic cleaner was required to where the mask. It was hillarious especially when the company president came down to intrduce himself to the new employee. I couldnt keep a straight face when he approached me and in a muffled voice said Mike you know its kinda hard to breathe with this on.

[Mike Fretto]

Sorry about the new post this should have gone to the thred on practical jokes. I guess the jokes on me:hammer:

[Steve Machol]

Originally posted by Mike Fretto
Sorry about the new post this should have gone to the thred on practical jokes. I guess the jokes on me:hammer:

No problem - I've merged it with the main thread.

[Judy Canty]

How about the old LEAP pad on the lensometer eyepiece. Funny if they're wearing glasses. NOT funny if they're not!

[Don Lee]

Our old stand by was to send a greenhorn to get a seg or lens stretcher. We'd put some old parts in a box send him around to the labs and shops in town. They'd trade the piece or add to it. The phone reports, after each visit, would keep us in stitches.
Eventually a know it all would ruin the fun by going to his rescue.

If all went well he'd figure it out in a couple of days and the laughs would continue.

I haven't heard of anybody doing this around here for years.

I eventually made a small medical stretcher, about 2" long, and kept it at my work bench. Eventually everybody would ask what it was.

Don

[Duane Metcalfe]

Practical Jokes

1. When assembling 1-hour stores we would ask the greenest of the green to go to Sears/Monkey Wards, $20 in hand with a P.O. filled out with catalog number, to retrieve an 'anodized, rubber handled, metric Crescent wrench'. Of course it had to be 10*F or colder, long walk across the parking lot. We 'gave up' the $20 if they came back with at least the Crescent wrench, or took 'em to lunch after all had guffawed at them.
2. Sending one for '3 pounds of prism' is always good.

I liked the one above about wearing the filtration hood. Good idea!

[Jubilee]

Jokes!

For a while there we had a series of practical jokes going on.

We have several people fond of the leap pad on the lensometer trick. Others were leaving the plate on the handstone but taking out the sponges and cranking up the water flow.

One time a group of us who were closing the store bought a bag of feeder fish and put them in the troughs on the cylinder machines and in the dip buckets. The assistant opening the next day decided to retaliate by sewing up the sleeves of our lab coats.

Of course we also had more than a few water fights as well...

Cassandra

[Excel-Lentes]

A friend of mine used to walk by the cylinder machines and turn off the cold water to the gutters under the cyl. machines. This would leave only the hot water running. When the guy (my friend didn't get along with him) reached in to rinse off the lenses...YOW! It reminded me of the movie Caveman when they learned to make music.

[Clive Noble]

Back in the late 60s / early 70s we'd get students from a receptionists course come to our offices just to see how a wholesale manufacturer worked.

We'd give these young pretty girls the tour and before they got their tea and cakes we'd take them to the final inspection stage where the finished glasses were checked.

Now in those days, 99% of production was in glass.

The final test was to take a beautifully wrapped pair of specs out of it's case and smash it to smithereens with a 5 pound hammer.

"No, that one's failed" said the 'inspector' throwing it into a bin and he'd then proceed to take another pair of specs and smash this one up too.

It was so funny seeing the looks of horror on the faces of these receptionists.

I should add that all these 'finished specs' were glasses that had been given to us by a lost property department after 2 years of not being claimed. We'd use them for spare parts ( and practical jokes)

[jcasowder]

pd rulers

We use to train new employees in optics on measurements and other such optical things :bbg: . We would show them how to take a PD manually, and use them to take the measurement. While holding the ruler up to their face to take the measurement, we would use a finger and pull the ruler back, and slap them right in the forehead! It work best with plastic rulers, and not those flimsy little things you get for free from some lens company. I don't recommend using the wood or metal. Those hurt a little too much and leave a mark for a while. The look on their face is priceless!!! We would take our lensometer bulbs, hide all the china markers, and one guy would edge, take the screws out of the glasses, and move them further down the line so that the guy assembling had to search for screws for every pair! :p