On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 16:07:34 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
.. .

I've been in situations where Union work rules just got in the way of
simple tasks that any bozo could do - from electrical cords to
erecting a display booth - silly, stupid things that are only designed
to keep somebody busy.

That stuff's just plain stupid. The audio store where I used to work would
have a booth at the car & boat shows here. The convention center rep gave us
a speech about how we weren't supposed to plug in our equipment. An
electrician had to do it. Once, one of us wired a fat car amp to the display
speakers with 18 gauge speaker wire. The boss told him to use the fancy
Monster Cable. Someone came over and said we had to wait for an electrician.
He turned out to be wrong (because it didn't involve an AC line), but the
guy still acted like the world was about to end.

The funny thing is that we were all installers with 10 years' of experience.
The electrician probably would've burned his car down installing some of
that stuff.

Speaking of which, we once had a car come in for repair. The old lady said
the radio kept cutting off & on. It was an aftermarket unit. When I got
under the dash, I found all sorts of nasty stuff, obviously the work of a
slob. I cleaned it all up in about 10 minutes. Then, I told the lady
"Whoever did this was a real hack. Totally incompetent. Don't let him touch
your car again". She gives me this look and says "My son did it, and I'll
have you know he's an engineer with NASA".

Oh boy. I didn't charge her. :-)

Some day we'll have to get together over pizza and swap stories about
engineers and other highly skilled technical people. :)

I've got a ton of them.

All the best,

Tom
--------------

"What the hell's the deal with this newsgroup...
is there a computer terminal in the day room of
some looney bin somewhere?"

Bilgeman - circa 2004