"Send Bobo to the Snot Machine!" Topic

So I'm out on the bottle lines and I get a radio call from the shop manager, known as Too Tall Tommy (because he's 5' 2", of course). "Hey, Hung Far Low says the palletizers are complaining about no non-skid on the 18 packs. Can you send Bobo to work on the snot machine?"

"No can do, Bobo is on the Muffin Monster with the Great Sanchini."

"Okay, I'll send out All-Day-ez."

"No, don't do that, it will take all day. Seriously, if we want the snot on, he'll need help."

"Roger that, how about I send out Chicken Little to help him out?"

"No, Chicken Little is on the chlorine feed programming problem on 10 pasteurizer. Can you free up Special Ed to help him out?"

"Done, I'll send Special Ed right now."

"Cool. And while I have you on the horn, is Grumpy available to help with the gasket work for the Muffin Monster?"

"He's working on a gearbox in the shop, but I think we can free him up. He'll be there in a few minutes."

Meanwhile, I made it to the snot machine, found it has a giant booger on it, so I clear it off, it works again, and I have the guys run a quick purge cycle on it and clean the eyes. (The snot machine sprays a light adhesive spray on the cases so they don't shift during transport. It gets things that look like boogers on the nozzles every now and then, hence the nickname. And we really do have a waste grinder called the Muffin Monster—it's a brand name.)

Just another day in the brewery working maintenance. But the above sequence of nicknames and machinery was so ridiculous I had to share it.

We had a wheeled derrick, with a hand cranked winch. It could lift a 100 lb roll high enough to put the roll on a shelf. It was light duty. Since it had a sticker on it that said "NO RIDERS", we naturally called it the "no riders".

It sort of sounds like code names the mob or somebody would use over the phone to confuse the cops. We don't have too many colorful names at work, but once we had a product roll out for some business travel software where the marketers proudly announced its name "Business Solutions". With out missing a beat, before the applause could begin a programmer from the back of the room moans loud enough for everyone to hear, "Crap, I work on the BS project." Stunned marketers, huge laughter, and project renamed.

LLC aka Ron

We have a sev 1 incident in progress. Rat now. Power got unexpectedly cut in the xxxxxx data center. For some reason the UPS didn't work (again). Target for restoration of service: not known. A whole fleet of servers are flat on their backs, drawing flies. I'm on standby on the conference call. Another day at the orifice…

…and I was blinded by the light…

I worked on one of the first integrated point of sales systems in the UK- when you go into a electronics retailer and the have a computer for ordering, rather than a till, there is a little bit of me in there (well spritually anyway from 20 years ago, though I believe the way the system got sold on etc it is possible part of my print code could still be buried!).

The idea of these things is the order is placed automatically from the terminal to the central ditribution point for home delivery when the sale is confirmed. Now this is back in 1990, when 56k dial up would have looked light speed. We had shops all over the south west and they tried to place loads of info to the mainframe. Many solutions were tried, and the rule was the team on the communications had to go 'one off – one on' to keep volumes down, meaning you had to let the next person they could go on.

The boss turned to a contractor (Oriental descent, surname Su) and said
"Mr Su, you have the Comms"
When I started to laugh they looked at me. No Star Trek fans on my team.

I wasn't The G Dog until my co-workers decided that I was in fact "The G Dog". I'm fine with that, but I wish they would stop referring to my home as "The G Spot".