What Was Idiot Proof Before an Employee Proved Otherwise?

▶ Fresh AskReddit Stories: employers/managers of Reddit, what was idiot proof before an employee proved otherwise?

[nolongeramused]

The axiom is "If you make something idiot proof, nature will provide a better idiot."

[Jedidiah_Martin_]

_"The most common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."_
~Douglas Adams

[mikhail]

I was welding one day, just some structural steel but I had my fire watch and he had his water hose and fire extinguisher. While I was welding I noticed movement off to the side but due to the dark lens couldnt tell what it was. I finished burning that rod and lifted my hood to find a 5 gallon can of gas had been sat right beside where I was welding. Of course I stopped, stood up and saw one of the newer guys who was on the Safety committee. He smiled at me and said "I just wanted to see if your fire watch was paying attention". So I said "Let me get this straight. You, a highly paid journeyman, on the safety committee no less, thought it was a good idea to place 5 gallons of an explosive liquid within 2 feet of a man stick welding and you did this as a test to see if the person who makes less than one third what you do would catch it." He started looking antsy about then which was just as well as it cost him his job.

[patmx]

You cannot make things idiot-proof, it is impossible. The best you can hope for is idiot _resistant._

[crispycrunch]

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
- Albert Einstein

[imofage]

"Make it idiot-proof, and someone will make a better idiot"
Not a manager, but I have a good one. I was around 23, working at a CNC wood shop that mostly dealt with plywood and particle board. About 7 months into that job, they hired this new guy and asked me to train him on how to run the Edge Bander, a large machine that hot glues and trims plastic bumpers on the side of particle board to pretty it up. So I start new guy off collecting the boards as they exit the machine. A simple 2-step process of grab the board and stack it on this pallet. So far so good, he seems to have it down after 2 hours, but there's no real thought involved. Then we switch places and he takes over feeding the machine. I tell him "Here's what you do: Insert the board here. Wait until it gets past this bolt, " indicating a baseball-sized black bolt on the side of the powder blue machine about 6 feet from his position, " and feed the next board in.".
New guy indicates he understands and I go to the back of the machine to collect the boards. He managed to go 15 minutes before he fucked it up by inserting a board too close to the previous one. Machine jams. I hit the emergency stop and tell him "you fed these boards too close together. You need to wait longer. It's alright, we can fix this." And I spend 15 minutes unjamming the machine and resetting.
"Ok, let's try again. Remember, you have to wait until the board passes this bolt completely, " indicating the baseball-sized highly contrasting bolt, "before you put the next board in."
Now I'm worried he'll do it again. So I watch him closer. And I notice his timing is getting shorter. He's speeding up and feeding the boards too close again. "Slow down!" I yelled. And he slowed down for a moment and started to speed up again. "Slower! You're going to jam it again." He ignores me. * Clunk * The machine jams again. I glance at my watch, 15 minutes of work again.
Fast forward to the end of his 2 hours feeding the machine, he managed to made the exact same mistake 4 times, as I'm yelling to correct him each time. I thought that job was idiot-proof. That was the day that I met a better idiot.

[plastiqueneurosis]

One of our previous managers forgot about the existence of cameras and stole almost $600 out of our company safe. She came in wearing her company uniform and no mask or anything that could hide her identity. She also bent the living heck out of our safe key because she also apparently forgot how to open it. The company I work for spent an entire 40 hours looking at security footage and filling out legal paperwork to take legal actions. She used to be our manager, I have a really hard time comprehending how she forgot we had cameras. Other peoples kids, I swear!

[tullyDT]

I once saw guy pushing a vacuum cleaner back and forward across a dusty floor wondering why no dirt was being picked up I had to remind him it needed to be switched on

[snowwann]

I use to work at an Arby's, we had an old retired slicer that was used to chop up the onions and tomatoes but, because it was retired and the blade wasn't taken care of it would often grab or throw away the onions or tomatoes, causing the persons hand to be pulled into the empty space infront of the blade.

I've seen ppl loos bits of their fingers or hands to the retired slicer.

1 morning I was doing the prep and it kicked the onion out and I was able to react just fast enough to not lose my fingers. I got super mad unplugged it and slammed it on the ground breaking it and the no-slip tike floor.

The shift manager came around asking wth, I said it slipped off the table and broke itself.

I then put it outside by the dumpsters.

We got a new slicer with safety covers and a sensor.

Arby's is cheap. Also we had the chain mail gloves, but the blade was so chipped and bent that it grabs the gloves and pulls them into the back cover where it cuts through them with its evil intent on slicing hands.

I'm so glade I broke that pos.

[usagi]

Making coffee. An idiot decided to offer to make the coffee, she put the water, the right amount of coffee, and turned the coffee maker on. Then a flood of hot coffee reminded her it was necessary to put the jar too.

That idiot was me

[rayopeongo]

There was a guy at my office that could break any computer application we developed. When I thought I had finished something, I would always go to him first to test it, and he almost always broke it. He would enter weird stuff in a field, he would push a weird combination of buttons, whatever. Basically, he would try things that no one else would ever think of trying. Once you had plugged all of the holes that he had exposed, it was passed on to the business to test. He was my go to "idiot" to make sure that my programs were idiot-proof.

[henrikhyrup]

That was me...
I worked at a factory that made mayo, ketchup, mustard and other condiments/dressings. One time I had made a batch of mayo, but because the filling line had stopped (I think they switched from buckets to small bags or something) I was supposed to stop as well - but I didn't. I started filling the machine for another batch and connected the pipe to pump in oil. All of a sudden the big 1000 litre container lid sprung open and oil flew out everywhere. Took me the rest of the day to clean that mess up. So because of me all the machines got sensors installed in the containers which would switch off the machine if it got overfilled.

[scruffblackie]

In response to the fried onions story, when I was at catering college one of the other new starters asked me how he could tell if the oil in the fryer was hot enough, I responded "just stick a finger in" not expecting he would actually do so. The admins at the college wanted to discipline me but the chef trainer defended me on the grounds that no one could be expected to be that stupid.

[specialopsdave]

I can confirm that Green Dot gas station scam: We have 3 signs over the employee side of the store warning us against it, a label on the phone saying "DO NOT ACTIVATE CARDS OVER PHONE", and a popup on the terminal that says "Person not in store? HANG UP! Never activate cards over the phone."

[shontaewilliams]

I used to work for a home health care agency as a data entry clerk. They had a handful of data entry clerks that were paired with a nurse. The nurse would take home care referrals and the data entry clerk would enter the referral into the system. We had one person "Clark" who was so slow at data entry that she was often put on other duties. One day, she was told to create more files and label each file after the letters in the alphabet. Thus, there was a file for A, B, C...X, Y, and Z. She got the files and proceeded to do the work. When I went to file my referrals later in the day, I see As, Bs, Cs, Ds...and so on. This chick literally thought she was supposed to put an S after each letter. I about lost it when I went to place a referral in the Bs file. I completely agreed it was BS. She was let go about a week later.

[RickyBBlessed]

Shes been fired before but keeps coming back. 🙄

[graham]

Is that supposed to be on fire? Is more common than you'd think.

[ALucreLC]

The story of the babysitter/maid that let the dog out reminded me of when I got my dog. He was barely 3 months old and the lady working at my mom's house asked me to bathe him, I told her no because he was too small for shampoo still... when I came back he was shaking and hiding. He ran to me immediately and smelled strongly of "clean bathroom".
She had washed him... with desinfectant.
He is 12yrs old now, still scared of running water and strong smells.

[philclip]

"Tweedle Dee and Needle Thumb."
Damn, that's funny.

[VegetaReal]

Bruh I laughed so hard, "And he's using a rubber mallet to force .45 dummy rounds into a .36 revolver."