What is the strangest thing you've ever done to accomplish a task at work?

[bertha katzenengel]

Not just "strangest thing you've ever done at work." I mean, you could've run around the office with a bagel on your head (cream cheese-side down), hanging up everyone's phone and yelling "all clear! All clear! The school of Our Lady of Psychological Warfare* has burned to the ground!" That's not what I'm looking for.

No, I mean, the strangest thing you've ever had to do in order to get your work done.

Did you fix the copier with a hair from your own head? Finally break down and just GET the boss a frickin' frappucino and some smokes with your own money so she'd leave you alone and quit whining about giving all her cash to her husband? Put tomato sauce in the ketchup bottles because the manager would fire you if you didn't fill the bottles and he'd fire you if you pointed out that he forgot to order ketchup? Babysit the receptionist's kid so she'd actually show up for once? Use a typewriter because you had to get that brief filed before your computer was fixed?

Me? Today I took hi-res photographs of my boss's bookshelves.

He needs a card catalog, and he wants everyone to give me the corresponding card every time they borrow a book from his shelves, because his books keep getting "lost." Although I was assigned this task months ago, I haven't had the time to get it done. Yes, a simple task, won't take very long. But there just hasn't been the time.

So I took the photos, and began typing the card catalog by reading the titles from the photos, rather than standing in his office with a steno pad.

Believe me, I felt pretty damned strange taking flash photographs in my boss's office.

I figure this thread is too obscure to get many hits, and it'll probably sink like a stone. Surprise me! Reach into your memory, into the realm of the absurd ("nah, they'd never believe that" -- of course we will!) and tell your tale!

* shout out to Kate Clinton for the name of the school

[mzteris]

1. I sat under a desk

with couch cushions all around and made a tape recording for the "new answering machine"... there was so much noise in the background it was the only way I could get it QUIET enough....

[bertha katzenengel]

3. Perfect!

What a pain but well done.

[mzteris]

10. I forgot to mention

that I had to sing the company jingle as part of the message.......

[kedrys]

2. I gave a coworker $20 to get out of my cube

He was actually tooling for donations for something or other, and I absolutely couldn't stand the guy anyway. He asked for $10, and I gave him $20 after extracting a promise that he'd 1) leave my cube NOW, and 2) never speak to me again unless spoken to first. It worked.

[bertha katzenengel]

5. Love it.

[PretzelWarrior]

4. hmm..I've hand carried a box of prototype PC boards

from Fort Collins to Denver Airport to San Francisco Airport to Taipei Taiwan. Then, they were failures all of them....

so a few days later did the same dam drill from Denver to Seattle to Taipei.

Was fun....but tiring.

[Lisa]

6. I'm in teaching -- and I've done some pretty bizarre stuff ...

... in the hope that students will retain the lecture material! I've written things all over the floor with chalk. (This actually got me called in to the Chair's office to explain, because a couple of students who had it in for me decided to complain I was being "silly" -- but the funny thing is, they both recalled the points I was trying to illustrate, even though they weren't normally attentive in class!)

I've given people money if they volunteered to come up to the front of the room to teach particular concepts to the rest of the class. I ran a crapshooting game (with oversized dice) up at the front of the room, for a class on probabilities. I've thrown handfuls of candy into a full auditorium. I've played cuts from sitcoms and Hollywood films on the "big screen" digital projector, to get people's attention.

But a lot of other instructors have done things like this. I think one of the strangest jobs I ever had was working in a vet clinic, looking after wild and zoo animals. I spent one Saturday night feeding frozen mice into a blender (dinner for the baby owls).

[kittenpants]

7. this doesn't technically fit since you said "accomplish"

but I worked at a library for 4 months as the only person in the Audio Visual dept & everyone brought me broken library materials, but nobody ever taught me how to fix them, so every day the time alotted to fixing these items I would rearrange the pile of work on my desk to try to make it look like I had fixed a few things. Eventually I got tired of doing this & tried to fix a tape which I then broke & had to throw away & take out of the library's computer system. Then I started hiding materials under my desk to make it look like things had been fixed. I don't know if anyone expected me to be fixing things or not since they knew I hadn't been trained & didn't know what to do, but they kept piling the work on & I felt pressured to respond!

[bertha katzenengel]

8. yay everyone! i have to go to bed but keep those cards & letters

coming. can't wait to read them in the morning! :yawn:

'night, all

[bertha katzenengel]

11. hello, Thursday morning people . . .

[fudge stripe cookays]

9. I love Kate Clinton.

Just bought a used CD of hers the other day.

Hmmm...I can't think of anything REALLY unusual.

But I had to write a document once about a sound recording software we used, so I had to sit at my desk with a high powered microphone and make REALLY loud noises to get the sound wavelengths to extend too far off the graphics (to show the reader what they DIDN'T want to do).

It was embarrassing because I had to be so loud! I didn't want other employees complaining about the noise.

FSC

[sniffa]

12. douse a machine in WD40 and ignite

controLed fires are sexy.

[SmokingJacket]

13. Cooked up a mess of homefries on a hot plate...

because my boss was too hungry to continue dictating. We actually went to the grocery store together, he found the bag of frozen homefries and said, Can you cook these? Well... sure...

The office was in his garage -- it was a non-profit environmental group. He was a complete nut. Sometimes he had to sublet his house and move into his van in order to get the rent paid. Whenever we'd drive anywhere in his van, his shirts -- he kept an entire wardrobe in there -- would be flapping out the window.

Once he called me at 10 o'clock at night because he couldn't find his cat, and wondered if I'd seen her. Um, no. But I went over to his house with a flashlight because I felt sorry for him.