Author Topic: Overheard today  (Read 120705 times)

Guy

  • Retired
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #325 on: 05 June, 2017, 09:00:45 am »
My Line-Manager to the Chief of Staff, in a conversation about the maintenance contractors:

Typical Carillion-Amey, about as much use as a chocolate tea-guard

 :D :thumbsup:
"The Opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject"  Marcus Aurelius

Re: Overheard today
« Reply #326 on: 05 June, 2017, 10:46:40 am »
My boss, who is an architect:
"I could draw a monkey f*cking a duck, but I can't make it happen!"

Also:
"She could hold her own on a seesaw"

Wombat

  • Is it supposed to hurt this much?
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #327 on: 05 June, 2017, 01:59:19 pm »
That's unusual, because most of the architects I've worked for, believed that they could make it happen!  Generally by drawing said event, and expecting us technicians to translate their airy-fairy doodle into something that could actually be built (and possibly even stay up, and maybe even keep the rain out).
Wombat

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #328 on: 05 June, 2017, 04:01:31 pm »
Yup. My papa was a draughtsman, and the things he had to say about architects would have lifted the veneer off the dining-table if he hadn't been bringing up two kids in the 50s.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Re: Overheard today
« Reply #329 on: 05 June, 2017, 04:42:14 pm »
So you're saying the architect sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus is actually quite well-grounded in reality? :demon:
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Re: Overheard today
« Reply #330 on: 05 June, 2017, 05:08:04 pm »
"... effing loony left do-gooder wanting to save the effing planet.   Why?"

"Climate change is our children's problem."

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #331 on: 05 June, 2017, 07:26:59 pm »
Careful now!  Miss von Brandenburg is an architect and has been known to lurk in here...
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

ElyDave

  • Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society member 263583
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #332 on: 05 June, 2017, 07:30:18 pm »
Yup. My papa was a draughtsman, and the things he had to say about architects would have lifted the veneer off the dining-table if he hadn't been bringing up two kids in the 50s.

similar things are often said by process engineers who have to operate plants, about the project engineers who designed and built them
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

Andrij

  • Андрій
  • Ερασιτεχνικός μισάνθρωπος
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #333 on: 05 June, 2017, 09:40:14 pm »
Yup. My papa was a draughtsman, and the things he had to say about architects would have lifted the veneer off the dining-table if he hadn't been bringing up two kids in the 50s.

similar things are often said by process engineers who have to operate plants, about the project engineers who designed and built them

My father worked in the automotive paint biz.  Clever Engineer who designed new $system in new $plant finished giving a tour and Dad takes him aside: "I'm responsible for $1m of our product going into that system, and I won't sign off on it.  $partofsystem will not work."
ClevEng: [fx; greatly offended] Where did you get your degree?
Dad: Crawling around systems like these for a few decades in a score of countries.
Boss joins conversation: What's up?
Dad: ClevEng was just saying that, as things are ahead of schedule, he wants to take the opportunity to recheck $partofsystem, just to be safe - and I agree.
Boss: No problem, get to it.
  Time passes, $partofsystem is rejigged, all honour maintained (publicly), $system commissioned on time (barely) and $product not ruined.  ClevEng even admitted his error, eventually.
;D  Andrij.  I pronounce you Complete and Utter GIT   :thumbsup:

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #334 on: 05 June, 2017, 09:48:41 pm »
My personal tutor at university told an apocryphal story of a new chemical plant that included a packed column for separating two liquids (for non-chemical engineers, this is basically a big tower full of ceramic or metal packing - a lot like penne or conchiglie pasta shapes -  with a reboiler at the bottom.  You condense and extract the lighter liquid at the top, with a certain amount allowed to run back down through the column as reflux, and the heavier stuff is tapped off the bottom).

This packed column wasn't achieving much separation at all, even with almost full reflux (which meant virtually no throughput).

After a few days of this, the plant had to be shut down, at vast cost penalty, and the column opened up to see what was going on.

The operative tasked with filling the column with its packing pieces hadn't bothered to open the plastic bags they came in, and had just thrown in the full bags  ;D
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

woollypigs

  • Mr Peli
    • woollypigs
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #335 on: 05 June, 2017, 10:02:41 pm »
At uni one of my class mates was in placement at brand new coal fired power plant, so saw it all first hand, This plant had the newest and best anti pollutant filter that loads of money could buy. First day of testing big cloud of DARK DUSTY STUFF exploded out of the chimney's which gave the local fields a good a thick covering (so glad it was not within city limits). Minutes later many staff was running around in white overalls in the plant and fields scratching their heads trying to figure out how to clean this up and who forgot to plug what in.
Current mood: AARRRGGGGHHHHH !!! #bollockstobrexit

rr

Re: Overheard today
« Reply #336 on: 05 June, 2017, 10:09:44 pm »
Careful now!  Miss von Brandenburg is an architect and has been known to lurk in here...

Strangely enough I had a conversation with a site manager about this today, after slagging off architects and saying to hadn't got a clue how to actually build their designs:- he went on "when I was a site manager in Germany we used to get all these young women on site. They were trainee architects who had to do a stint with all the trades so that they did understand how things are built."

Re: Overheard today
« Reply #337 on: 06 June, 2017, 12:33:26 am »
Yup. My papa was a draughtsman, and the things he had to say about architects would have lifted the veneer off the dining-table if he hadn't been bringing up two kids in the 50s.

similar things are often said by process engineers who have to operate plants, about the project engineers who designed and built them

No doubt i am guilty of this, but at the moment i am reviewing a commissioning plan that talks about sampling the product quality without identifying the parameters, location, duration or intervals. Worse still is how they will run the unit in full forward flow without the product mixing with the parallel units and going into supply. The contractor has had some rather pointed questions sent his way.


Re: Overheard today
« Reply #338 on: 11 June, 2017, 10:16:13 pm »
Careful now!  Miss von Brandenburg is an architect and has been known to lurk in here...

Strangely enough I had a conversation with a site manager about this today, after slagging off architects and saying to hadn't got a clue how to actually build their designs:- he went on "when I was a site manager in Germany we used to get all these young women on site. They were trainee architects who had to do a stint with all the trades so that they did understand how things are built."
How wonderfully sensible.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Re: Overheard today
« Reply #339 on: 12 June, 2017, 08:43:38 am »
You have to cut the Architects some slack. The Sydney opera house was unbuildable when first designed. The builders made it work and the world now has a landmark building.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain

Re: Overheard today
« Reply #340 on: 12 June, 2017, 09:01:49 am »
You have to cut the Architects some slack. The Sydney opera house was unbuildable when first designed. The builders made it work and the world now has a landmark building.
I think it was the structural engineers (Arups) who enabled the building of the SOH.
Rust never sleeps

LittleWheelsandBig

  • Whimsy Rider
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #341 on: 12 June, 2017, 10:10:27 am »
The Sydney Opera House is all Arup. The architect did a couple of pretty sketches of an impossible structure and then stamped his feet and held his breath when it couldn't be built as he wished.
Wheel meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #342 on: 29 July, 2017, 02:18:48 pm »
My Line-Manager to the Chief of Staff, in a conversation about the maintenance contractors:

Typical Carillion-Amey, about as much use as a chocolate tea-guard

 :D :thumbsup:

Just seen this. Absolutely. Amey could be accused of having a Sloping Shoulders department designed to avoid work in a contract.
It is simpler than it looks.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #343 on: 29 July, 2017, 02:21:10 pm »
"Basically this event is about noise". Someone on the phone in the Artist Village at Womad.
It is simpler than it looks.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #344 on: 30 July, 2017, 01:05:36 pm »
*circular saw stops abruptly* "ARRGH FUCK!" "[inaudible]" "Not really, no..."

It's all going quite well with the builders, then...

essexian

Re: Overheard today
« Reply #345 on: 10 November, 2017, 09:53:07 am »
In that London on Wednesday when I heard one of a group of youths say the following...

"I am going to have a word with some people later...."

"Why" replied one of his mates.

"Cause they showed me no disrespect." he replied.

So of course I walked up to him and called him a twat...well he would have wanted me too.  ;D




Re: Overheard today
« Reply #346 on: 11 November, 2017, 12:44:01 pm »
In reception at work, a member of staff who recently left for pastures green was being discussed.
'Is that far from here?' The receptionist asked.
Bless.

Re: Overheard today
« Reply #347 on: 11 November, 2017, 11:58:27 pm »
In reception at work, a member of staff who recently left for pastures green was being discussed.
'Is that far from here?' The receptionist asked.
Bless.

What, Pastures Green? One stop before Putney Bridge, innit?

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #348 on: 12 November, 2017, 12:13:47 am »
The drunken zombies are singing James Blunt.

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Overheard today
« Reply #349 on: 13 November, 2017, 12:34:18 pm »
In reception at work, a member of staff who recently left for pastures green was being discussed.
'Is that far from here?' The receptionist asked.
Bless.

What, Pastures Green? One stop before Putney Bridge, innit?
In Derby, 'Pastures' was used to refer to Pastures Mental Hospital (formerly the Derbyshire County Asylum).
Getting there...