In Germany we ask apprentices to fetch a spare bubble for the spirit level.
Spannungsabfalleimer gotta be my favorite.
That actually seems like it could be a legit thing, like a replacement tube.
Other classics are in aviation asking them to grab a bucket of prop wash, and then the numerous automotive ones like blinker fluid, muffler bearings, etc.
We used to have ramp newbies handle the lavs as a sort-of right of passage. The Lav fluids we called “blue juice.” One day I told a newbie to go to maintenance and get a bucket of “red juice.” He disappeared for an hour. We were wondering where the hell he went about when he showed up looking a bit stressed out, actually carrying a bucket of red fluid of some sort. Apparently he started going around the entire airport’s maintenance shops asking them one by one for red juice, none of them knowing what the hell he was talking about. Instead of asking for clarification over the radio he just kept going. Eventually somebody in a completely different concourse poured some hydraulic fluid in the bucket for him. I was a bit astonished and then had to figure out what the hell I was going to do with a bucket of hydraulic fluid.
I just shake it as hard as I can. There ya go lotsa bubbles.
go get the breastplate stretcher!
My favorite is sending an apprentice to the tool crib for a long weight.
Tool crib guy will say “Yeah it’s out back, I’ll go grab it”, and then go for a smoke
Is this how the apprentice becomes the tool crib guy?
Naw, tool crib is an old-timer’s job; it’s for guys who know everything, but are too physically broken to actually do much anymore
My senior manager at work once tried to start a vacuum cleaner, apparently he had never used one before. Anyway the cleaners told him the power cable was in fact a rip cord like on a generator.
On a drive when I was ten, I asked my dad why the tall, skeletal towers had blinking lights. He said so planes wouldn’t crash into them. So I asked what the towers were for, and he said to hold up the lights.
That fucked with me for like ten more years.
I mean, he’s not wrong…
I just wanted to let you know this comment made me laugh like an idiot in front of my coworkers
When I worked in a hardware shop in the 90s an apprentice mechanic came in and asked for halogen for headlight bulbs
I went into the storeroom and brought him one of those giant packing bubbles
He was chuffed as fuck
My go-to is asking then for a metric crescent wrench.
My high school chemistry teacher told me that when he was in university, they’d send the frosh chem majors down to the depot to get a “bucket of mercury”. The depot guys would be in on it and fill up a bucket and laugh at them while they struggle to move it. Even a small bucket would weigh something like 200 lbs.
That seems a bit much for a prank since mercury is a toxic substance.
Not long ago they didn’t care so much about that. He also talked about how they’d play with it with their bare hands. He’s not dead because mercury is only toxic when ingested.
Edit: in retrospect, he is dead. I forgot that cancer got him a few years back and that high school was 30 years ago…
mercury is only toxic when ingested
Doesn’t it give off toxic vapors?
I’m not an expert, but from what little I remember: mercury doesn’t immediately kill you like other poisons. What it does do is build up in your body until it hits a tipping point and starts causing problems. Your body has no way to process or get rid of it. Which was why accumulations of it in seafood was a big deal because eat enough of it, even in tiny amounts over a long time, and it starts to mess you up. The amount of mercury that you would be exposed to by breathing near an open source would be minimal I imagine. Or something like that. Like I said. Not an expert. Better to just stay away from it entirely, I’m sure.
Mercury boils at 356.7©
Yes, but every liquid has a vapor pressure because some moleciles always evaporate - else anything wet would never dry unless heated to water’s boiling point.
For mercury it’s fairly low at room temperatures but because it accumulates in the body, frequent exposure to unsealed mercury is harmful.
How much is that in ™?
45/79^™
He’s not dead because he absorbed so much chemicals over the years it all cancelled out. Those tech room uni workers are supermutants. That’s why you are so scared of them instinctively when meeting one for the first time.
My friend’s dad thought he could send me to ask my dad for a square drill bit when I was like 10 but my dad had me helping him build an airplane in the garage as young as possible. So I told him
“You mean a mortising bit?”
He was doing it as a trick though. The guy didn’t build anything besides maintain his motorcycle
Are those really square or do they just stop drift?
Those drill square holes; it’s a drill bit and a chisel combined, basically
OHHHHHHHHHH. That’s cool!
They do indeed really cut square holes. They’re called mortising bits. Like the other commentor stated, they’re basically a combination of a chisel and a drill. The drill does most of the work in waste removal while the square blades give you 90° corners.
One could also potentially consider a rotary broach to be a “square drill” (supposing that it is a square and not a hex or other shape).
In the British army, getting sent to the quartermasters stores for a long weight (wait).
While camping, I was sent to the ranger station to ask for a “left handed smoke shifter”. Fortunately for me, the ranger had no poker face and just laughed. I felt like a dumbass, but it was a long walk back to the campsite, so by the time I got there I was able to laugh with everyone else.
Shopkeeper should glue a fake label to a can and actually sell it to the kid. Get both the kid and the dad lol
The Scoutmaster of my troop got a kick out of sending new kids to the camp nurse to ask for “some fallopian tubes so we can start a fire”.
And what would you have done if they actually returned with some?
Imagine the nurse goes in on it and gave them something. That would be somebody who ends up on “Tell me something someone convinced you was true but you realize later in life was bullshit”
Actually, we need a bunch of people to do that. Start seeding future content. In like 20 years it’ll pay off.
Embarrassing someone for not knowing something is stupid.
It’s critical thinking. In life, it’s not always about knowing but about understanding.
It’s also about having thick skin and the ability to take a joke. Nobody is hurt, it is funny when you think about it, and it will encourage you to think about things in the future.
I do not need to know turn signals don’t require blinker fluid. Because it’s a fuckin light bulb.
The people in this comments section are acting like this is somehow traumatic. How fucking sheltered are you people?
Yeah it’s often done a bit to get you used to the environment which includes joking, but it’s also to make you think before you do.
We told the dumbass that worked with us at Wal-Mart he needed to fill up the water fountain. He made 3 trips to the hose and back with one of those big Gatorade coolers dumping it down the drain on the fountain before someone asked him what he was doing. It was hilarious. If it wasn’t for the entertainment value he provided I would have hated that guy for all the problems he caused being an idiot.
To understand something (critically think) you need to know the information. So it boils down to embarrassing someone for not knowing things. There is too much in life to know absolutely everything, thus my example of the kid embarrassing the parent for some tech thing they don’t know.
The parent is supposed to teach the child that information. Not mock and embarrass them for not already knowing it.
Yeah. In this case you’d need to know that paint is a liquid, and comes in a can. Is it logical that paint is going to come in stripes? How would that be applied to a brush? How would that be applied to a wall?
If you take 2 seconds to think you realize this is a nonsensical request.
If you think everything in this world needs to be explained to you, you aren’t going to get very far. Also an important lesson to learn.
Learning to use a software interface, or the intricacies of how a thing works is not necessarily dependant on critical thinking. Understanding that a light bulb is not powered by blinker fluid, or that a liquid paint could not possibly be sold and applied to a wall in stripes is dependent on critical thinking.
Idk, they do have peanut butter and jelly in the same jar!
People who think they know everything don’t ask questions. Asking questions is part of critical thinking.
Guess who think they know everything?
Who asks questions? The ones that feel safe asking them.
The ones that get set up and embarrassed? They learn to never ask anything because they’ll get laughed at.
These types of light hazing are actually trying to lower the stakes. The greybeards get to tell the stories of when they were young and dumb going on snipe hunts. we all make mistakes, developing the ability to laugh at YOURSELF is important. Its an inoculation against embarrassment. If someone is so prideful that they cant stand to ever be wrong, when the make a mistake that matters, they will try to hide it and that is when things go from bad to worse.
They will hide mistakes when mistakes are not accepted. When they will be punished or laughed at for making mistakes. So which parent will kids trust? The one that sets them up to be embarrassed? Or the one that is safe to approach?
There are plenty of mistakes in life, you really don’t need to set up your kids to make even more. All you’re teaching your kid is that they can’t trust you, to whatever degree.
Someone sure picked on this guy for not knowing something and now he’s rationalising it.
Just someone with life experience 🤷♂️
And honestly I’m just amazed at how thin skinned people are that they’re labeling a harmless joke as traumatizing. If you really need everything in life explained to you, expect to not get very far.
Aww cry more about it. I’m an LGBTQ refugee that fled Russia. Most of my life I’ve lived under the constant very present fear of deportation, death or at least homelessness, just to hold on another day. What’s worse is I fled to the UK, which looks more and more like Russia every day.
Very little bothers me personally and if anything I have developed an unhealthy habit of thriving on conflict, but that doesn’t prevent me from empathising with others and seeing how some things affect people differently.
It’s called going outside and touching grass and realising people have different contexts for things and that the world is very harsh and parents need not pile on that shit for a kid who may already have trust and confidence issues and viewing things systemically - using actual critical thinking - rather than simply humble bragging about how “tough” you are and how everyone else must be thin skinned and weak.
It’s a slippery slope to reactionary thinking of “good” and “bad” people and that makes it way worse than just macho posturing. I hope you can see my perspective but good day either way.
And nowhere in there did you touch on how sending a kid to the store for striped paint could somehow cause trauma, rather than teach a valuable lesson about gullibility, critical thinking, and being able to laugh at one’s self.
Not everything in this world is as serious as escaping a country to avoid punishment or death for who you are. Having the emotional intelligence to differentiate between the serious and light hearted is something a person should develop when they’re young or life will be much harder for them.
cause trauma, rather than teach a valuable lesson about gullibility, critical thinking, and being able to laugh at one’s self.
Because it was already stated in the thread: parents shouldn’t lie to their children to take advantage of their trust to teach them that trusting them leads to them set up for embarrassment and that they’re an idiot. Idk how this isn’t obvious but I guess beating kids was acceptable and reasonable too.
Emotional intelligence to differentiate
That’s absurd, what’s funny and light-hearted to one is usually at the expense of another (in this case), and sans reading their mind, you have no idea how they feel about your “just banter bro”, you’re just assuming this because you have no ability to imagine that anyone at any time might feel differently to you and you’re scared to confront that idea.
I’m not saying that harmless playful teasing is impossible or should be banned, but this doesn’t really come off as that, and the experiences ITT don’t either, especially with descriptions of such things as “hazing” which often also includes things that are without question just violent abuse/bullying.
I don’t disagree, but there are variations in how these go. This one here aounds like a friendly, good-natured way to teach a younger mind not to believe everything they hear
I think there is an important lesson here though. It’s not really about not knowing but not thinking. An inquisitive nature is hard to instill, jokes/games/play are ways humans communicate these abstract processes.
If the story’s actually true, it’s a harmless prank which doubles as some alone time for a quickie. His dad sounds slick as fuck.
You gotta get those trust issues started early!
It’s a very good motivator for critical thinking though.
We know that, through much study, it really isn’t. And the negatives outweigh the positives especially compared to other methods. It’s a trauma response more than anything at that point and if it does work they probably just used those skills to realize what an asshole the shamer was/is.
We know that, through much study
could you link some of these studies?
Someone hard facts would really help out in this comment-section
As an example, I could say two things:
- That took me, like, a minute to google both of those answers. C’mon, dude.
- Yea good point. I tried to search “does shaming actually teach” but needed to move to “does shaming someone…”. Reading the articles I think “humiliation” is more the keyword here.
The problem with shame, in my experience, has been that it might reinforce one very specific thing strongly but it also closes people off to learning anything else. If they learn the wrong thing, new information changes what’s right, or they simply don’t know something yet it’s hard for them to admit that they’re wrong/missing info.
Being shouted at by an authority figure for leaving your dishes out, for example, might make sure you can’t see a dish without remembering that horrible event so you put it away but the extra baggage that comes with is so not worth it, not even a little.
Maladaptive learning, being bullied into certain behaviors makes you worse at others.
You learn a task like washing dishes but also a behavior like focusing only on outward appearance or letting other considerations go to the wayside to complete visually obvious tasks - the result may be using short cuts like improper cleaning methods which result in sickness (cleaning only the visible dirt) but also could lead to a culture of hiding faults (why do our guns look so clean but misfire so often, why are these reports filled in neatly and completely but ikey information is often wrong or fabricated)
The army and others try moving away from it but of course it’s hard getting the changes through to people because when the army experts say ‘stop hazing it’s making us worse’ everyone that was hazed says ‘I was hazed and I’m the best possible version of myself!!!’ or ‘This is just liberal nonsense making us weak!’
100% for days, yea. None of it ever gets to the root cause and it all comes back eventually.
It feels like most of the world runs on it from thousands of years of reinforcing those behaviours. If the threat of death or jail time is what you got for communication, even just as the messenger, then why even bother?
Good lord, of this is your definition of trauma, you’ve had an incredible life
I’m not here to play olympics with people who struggle to empathize with others. I’m sorry awful things have happened to you, that doesn’t give you any right to invalidate someone else’s pain.
My god guys it was terrible, my Dad sent me to the store for a bucket of steam, and the cashier laughed at me.
How was I supposed to know steam didn’t come in pre-packaged buckets? Nobody ever explained the particulars of steam packaging!
Literally nothing worse could ever happen to me. Now I’ll be in therapy for years.
Ok.
A grape doesn’t have weight because a banana is heavier
A mouse can not move because a race car moves faster
Covid can not make you sick because ebola makes you sicker
This is how you think?
Jesus Christ not every god damn thing is a form of “trauma”
Yeah I’m with you a 100%, but this very much isn’t appropriate behaviour towards a child imo. They may recover, or they may end up on Lemmy rationalising it 20 years later as “hazing” to the horror of onlookers.
JFC. How will the child ever recover from a joke they figured out in the middle! Poor kid is probably still in therapy 31 years later! Just their life completely ruined by realizing a can of paint can’t come in two different colors. I think the dad should be in jail to this day for such heartless abuse.
You and another person can experience the exact same things and one can be traumatized while the other is not. Telling your children lies can be traumatic no matter what the context is, because it teaches the kid not to believe what you say is true or to expect fuckery, a bit like the crying wolf thing.
Am I traumatizing my children telling them about Santa?
Personally I’m good with my children being suspicious of me. Don’t trust me blindly just because I’m an authority, trust me because you know me and my motivations.
Am I traumatizing my children telling them about Santa?
Depending on what you are telling them, you could be. If they are afraid of Santa and you use him as a boogeyman, absolutely. If you teach your kids that he is always watching and judging, and can be used to exact punishment against them, there’s potential for it to cause trauma.
Teaching kids little myths for fun is generally harmless, but inventing things for your kids to be scared of, especially to exert psychological control over them, can do real harm. Actively lying to children because you think they’re stupid or gullible just earns you a shit reputation with your kids as they grow older and realize you don’t have any respect for them.
Don’t trust me blindly just because I’m an authority, trust me because you know me and my motivations.
Or don’t trust you, because you told lies and destroyed the foundation of trust by doing so.
Love when everyone on the internet turns into a developmental psychologist because of some ribbing.
I’ve been bullied, beaten, hell I’ve watched people die. Those are traumatic.
Being asked to find a thing that doesn’t exist is not traumatic. It might be a little mean, but it does teach a lesson to use your head when you’re working on projects.
It really isn’t. Think about a kid embarrassing their parent over some tech thing they don’t know.
*Taking from my other reply:
To understand something (think critically) you need to know the information. So it boils down to embarrassing someone for not knowing things. There is too much in life to know absolutely everything, thus my example on tech.
The parent is supposed to teach the child that information. Not mock and embarrass them for not already knowing it.
That’s an old dog though.
My grandmother can use her iPhone just fine, thanks. Old people just grew up still very deep in the “shame” style of teaching and so many are incredibly hesistant to learn knew things. They ‘re either proud they don’t know so it’s “cool” or laugh it off and say “haha old dog!”. Learning the new thing would require exposing themselves to a lot of information they don’t know and the struggle of learning it which all that trauma makes them afraid of.
And a young dog knows absolutely nothing. Really, you know absolutely nothing when you’re born into the world.
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Right, because we own our kids and can do with then what we please. Great take.
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I would never dare do that to my child because my parents never did such a thing with me so it feels so disrespectful.
E: Guess I’m back with the unpopular opinion again. I’m not telling you what you should do, I’m telling you what I wouldn’t do. But please, feel free to disrespect your children however you see fit. 🤭
E2: ITT people who think that respecting their children is special treatment that needs to be treated by a professional. My condolences to their childhoods and their crotch goblins. The quality of responses is quite telling. Take your traumas out on me, it’s ok.
How’s the view atop that high horse?
Please don’t tease. His parents never teased him growing up, so he finds it very disrespectful.
Dude needs therapy now!
I did! And so do you. I usually find those who make fun of mental health the most at need.
When did I say I wasn’t teased? I said I wasn’t disrespected. Yeah, you can do that! I’m sad you never had that.
If you’re gonna be funny, at least don’t insult us with some shit takes, they hurt my feelings.
The incredibly high horse of showing basic respect to your kids? 😂 It’s great, and I highly recommend it to those of you who never had that growing up. Or do you mean the high horse of simply sharing my opinion? Because wtf are you on about high horses, honestly. If you felt moralized, that’s on you. The shoe fit, and I apologize like your parents never did.
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The only L take here is you making no sense.
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Yeah, don’t drop them. They’ll keep from typing more nonsense.
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As far as pranks go, this one’s pretty harmless. The trick is not taking oneself too seriously.
I could see how sending a kid to the store might be a bit too far, but aside from that it’s just harmless teasing. Nothing more than a mild practical joke.
Kids can handle jokes. It’s important to learn to laugh at yourself and not take everything seriously. Otherwise you just end up being boring and stuck up.
How is it too far? At worst the kid got a bit of exercise.
Otherwise you just end up being boring and stuck up.
And apparently many of those people end up on lemmy.
Holy shit Lemmy is fragile
People who were hazed often suffer empathy problems and emotion stunting.
It could be that like many boomers you’re just not aware of the damage generational trauma has caused you.
This isn’t hazing, is a father son joke. People thinking this is hazing is my point.
Hazing: " The imposition of strenuous, often humiliating, tasks as part of a program of rigorous physical training and initiation. “army cadets were hospitalized for injuries caused by hazing” humiliating and sometimes dangerous initiation rituals, especially as imposed on college students seeking membership to a fraternity or sorority. “seven officers of the fraternity were charged with hazing” "
Walking to a store for paint that doesn’t exist does not align with the severity described in the definition from Oxford languages. OP experienced a prank.
I’m not a boomer.
Yes ‘it’s just a prank’ that magic excuse which works 100% of the time at convincing no one.
I’m not playing semantics, what I’m saying is that this type of behavior however you label it is often harmful in a number of ways.
You disagree and that’s why I likened you to the boomers who used to say ‘I was beaten and it never did me any harm’ society will continue to improve and one day people will look back and say ‘wow watching old media is hard, they’re all such needless assholes, no wonder they were always having so many proplems’
Being sent to walk to the store is not a beating. It is not hazing.
Not being able to take a harmless prank (yes I mean harmless. Walking to a store and asking an employee for a product that does not exist is not harm) is fragility.
When I was a starting line cook, they told me to recirculate the air in the freezer. I said “what?” They said “recirculate the air in the freezer.” while handing me one of those giant black trash bags. I opened the door to the freezer, opened up the bag fully, and then went “wait a minute…” they had a laugh, and I started eyeing all of their requests through the lens of “is this bullshit?”
Later on, at more professional jobs, they have the same sort of requests. Not ones that are hazing jokes, but just actual bullshit assignments that mean very little, are looked at by nobody, and that accomplishes nothing. Except now those assignments are like 90% of the job. Hooray office work among middle management!
Kitchens will also yell at new cooks to “GO GET THE LEFT HANDED FRYING PANS!!!”
If they’re yelling/aggressive about it, it’s not as funny. People are just going to feel pressured which is lame compared to someone subtly making a ridiculous request that has every right to be questioned
On work experience the guy sent me to get a long weight and I was like to myself ‘fine ill go look for something that doesn’t exist and have my lunch too. If you want a long wait…’ I go back and he gets off his ladder exasperated, goes to the van and gets a long string plumb line.
What kind of work was this?
Pardon my ignorance, I only know surveyors that use plumb bobs.
I think he was using it to align a speaker so that the cable drop would be vertical to the hole where the cable came out. It was something like that, it was about 25 years ago so details as hazy.
Thanks for getting back to me.
I do a little cabling so the idea of using a plumb to align a cable drop sounds wild to me lol.
Then again I haven’t been doing cableing very long so what the hell do I know.
Ha yeah honestly it’s weird to me too but they were old boys and did a lot of odd things.
We did trash bags for exhaust testing in the army. Have the privates fill the bags up from the exhaust on a cold start, tie them up, then bring them to the motor pool sergeant. You have to label and sign the bags though.
