Clown Memo
When we made frozen pizzas, we made our own dough. If the dough was bad for some reason, we would put it in 55 gallon barrels, leaving some empty space because the dough would rise.
Then for some reason, we would stretch wrap the top of the barrels. It seemed like a waste of time and wrap since the scrap had its own clean room and nothing but waste food was in there. I suppose some hands-off manager thought the wrap would keep it from rising over the top and falling all over. Anyone who has ever worked with dough knows that all you have to do is punch it once in awhile, and it will nicely collapse about halfway down. You can't keep stretch wrap in it while punching.
At least one other company I worked with sold their junk dough to a hog farmer. That was back when they raised the hogs to be as fat as possible. Before pork was the "other white meat."
The management at this place was tyrannical. They would threaten to fire someone for a wide array of things, and often carried it out. Perhaps being fired from there was a blessing without any disguise.
Once day a guy back in the scrap room decided casually to amuse himself by taking his finger and drawing a clown face on the stretch wrap on a barrel. The whimsical artwork did in no way damage anything, or demean the reputation of the Company.
Well. . .this would never be tolerated! In fact, the next day a memo came out with the threat that when the person was discovered who drew the clown face, they would be fired. It certainly had to be one of the stupidest memos ever written in American industry.
I saved the memo, along with several others in the same category. The funny thing about the stupidorandums is that they almost always threatened to fire someone.
I think someone told the author of the memos that I was collecting the goofy things and they dried up at the source.
I think I know who the stretch wrap artist was, but I would never dream of turning them in for something like that. If the perp was who I thought, he was a hard working valuable employee who only succumbed to a moment of boredom.
Water Hose Battles
One of the plants I worked at used a great deal of water. High pressure hot water was used by the sanitors in the plant to clean everything. The hot water was generated by turning on the cold water, then opening a valve to mix steam with it. If you did not turn the steam off first, then turn off the water, you would sometimes get a very loud blast of steam coming out. Or, if a kink got into a hose the water would block, but the steam would come out with a lot of force. It was not all that uncommon for it to happen. It wasn't that dangerous, because you could feel the steam on its way. The noise could be very startling at times for others.
So naturally, some people would create the effect on purpose. One guy called it "Crack-A-Hose". A particular dough mixer operator used to complain about this guy a lot. He would see her sleeping at the dough mixer. There was a hose station right behind her. He would open the water, and turn on the steam. Then he would turn off the water as fast as possible, leaving the steam on. It would make an incredibly loud noise. She would wake up and act like nothing happened.
Sometimes sanitors would get into vicious water fights with the hoses. Then, on occasion, it resulted in hand-to-hand combat.
One of the best battles I saw was a guy somehow got pushed onto a large turntable, about ten feet across. It spun like a merry-go-round. The victim was getting hosed off all the while he was rolling around on the table trying to get his balance.
I did not want to get into trouble water fighting. I knew when I was cleaning around an ambush point to listen for other hoses around the corner. If I heard one go on, I had a few seconds to act. I would position myself to soak them before they even got around the corner to see me. Armando, (from Canadian Adventure) got the worst of it. (retaliation from the wrestling match) When I was getting them, I kept getting them until they were almost drowning. He didn't know how I did it. I kept my tactics secret, and everyone pretty much left me out of it.
Note: Horseplay is very dangerous. Don't do it or encourage it.
Turning Stupid: I was in the dark break room. The break room had a partition. Someone came in the other side. Another person came in. I couldn't see either one of them. The next thing I heard was one of them threatening to kill the other because he was bad mouthing the quality of the drugs he has sold him. It was very scary. If I would have went out the door they would have seen me. I thought It was a matter of time before one of them came over to see. At least I could behave as if I heard nothing. But they never came over or knew I was in there.