Was doing a half assed job so I named him 50%, I thought the Boss was gonna schit his pants laughing.

Never 1/2 ass two things, whole ass one thing.

On my roofing crew I had several duds. Happened to two duds at the same time named “Jimmie”. No relation

The good one, I called him Slow Jimmie
The super dud, I called him Real Slow Jimmie

Did he respond to the humiliation by doing a better job? Or did he not give a flying fart?

Used to work with a guy I nameed Flat Spot. As soon as he found a flat spot he sat on it. The name stuck. Can not remember his name anymore but when I remember him it's still Flat Spot.
George

no matter when or where, or in what endeavor, 10% of the folks do 90% of the work

Weed.

Egg sucking dogs. Cut em loose, it ain't ever gunna get better, only worse until one day they wreck your work truck or run into your customers house with a piece of equipment. They won't give a schit and will quit a week later only to find another sucker to hire them. Seen it a thousand times.

Related to that quote...........10% of the folks are troublemakers and 90% just do their jobs.

I was an Elect engineer, then Supv, then Division Manager for a large utility, and that what I found to be true. And usually about 5% were total Aholes.

Had a guy I nicknamed "Biscuit" because he always got the "gravy" jobs.

Had a guy on a bridge crew we called Crescent Wrench. Every time you needed him, he’d slip off.

Had a kid who worked for me in retail, dyed his hair and put a tiny little pony tail in the back after shaving a bunch of his scalp.

Called him My Little Pony, it stuck.

He was caught on camera doing pushups and running in circles and checking his temp so he could claim covid fever and go home.

Lol some people's kids...

JFC….Sterilize him, like his parents should have been before he was born.

🦫

Shop hired a young kid straight out of diesel school. Unreal how he graduated, had zero mechanical skill or knowledge, zero !
We called him "Spooky" - we were afraid to ask him to do anything.

Weed made me nail shingles like a machine gun. After a while it was all I wanted to do. More shingles got laid, more weed I could buy, more houses got roofed.

I had an empire

His mom was a homeless meth addict who slept under bridges. He lived in his car at one point. Rough life.

Had a guy on the crew we named pockets. As his hands were always in them

At work we used to call the foam earplugs you had to use at some places in the mill Dave - O’s because Dave always had something stupid to say.

The kids we hired out of UTI were like that. The local, state college diesel programs were pretty good in comparison.

results of bad choices

Truth

Used to have a pair of goofy 'alleged' industrial maintenance men were I worked I tagged with the nicknames, Lenny & Squiggy, because they resembled those characters on the old Laverne and Shirley TV series.

Everybody dreaded when they showed up to work on something because you could pretty well bet the farm with full confidence that it would have to be redone, often even before they got out of sight.

We had a guy at work that would name everyone 😂

Our custodian had a cleft lip and palate and his teeth were kinda jacked up. Dude named him “Sharkey”

Oh Lort, forgive me. It was so wrong

I’ve had a couple of doozies work for me. I wasted enough time on them then, I ain’t wasting any more time on them now!

He's got a good sense of humor and took it well, he ain't a pussy and he wasn't humiliated in the least.

He's 19 and we knew we'd have to teach him a bunch but he's learning.

In my misspent youth I was high lead logging on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington for a big outfit. The 'mancatcher ' sent us a fine young specimen, strapping big kid, a picture of athletic health. Of course we interrogated him, he was a 2nd stringer in the UW football program, forestry student. Anyway what a disappointment, great kid, likeable, strong as a bull, kinda willing, a good listener...everything you could ask for...but he just had no stamina. 3 hours in the morning, he tried hard, fell down quite a little more than he should have. But about 3 hours after daylight, he was pretty well done. It wasn't a nutrition problem, we all ate at the same cookhouse...maybe metabolism or he just weighed too much or something, I'd guess he'd go 240 maybe...my rigging crew was all wiry Jiminy Cricket looking guys under 170 pounds. I asked that they find someplace to put him where he wouldn't get hurt, I saw him later and they put him on the log rafts, and it was working out. Always wondered how his football career panned out.

Many years ago I worked around a framing crew where the foreman had a name for most of his guys. The most memorable one was "Struggles". Watching the kid work it became clear why.

Had a "toolmaker" at work who couldn't hold tolerances worth a fůck on a lathe. He'd get a shaft down to about .005" oversized and out comes the 220 emery cloth. Ever after he became known as "220"

Some people are like that. I worked with a guy who was younger than me. I had more seniority than him. When we got sent on a job together he would tell me he was gonna do all the work, all I had to do was hand him stuff. The guy could work like a machine on weed!

as lineman crews went we all had a percenter either worthless white guy or another race guy so we did their share of the work and they still got paid . if they continued as a poor worker we just gave them the crappy things to do.

Had one we called "Blister". Always seemed to show up after the work was done. In reality he got much better, but the name stuck.


Clyde

When the foam ear plugs first came out,we got a whole box of multi colored ones,one of the old Dockbuilders comes up to me,"WHAT KIND OF CANDIES ARE THESE ? THEY HAVE NO FLAVOR AT ALL,THESE SUCK!" When i told him they were earplugs he went bat s ..t, we were rolling on the ground laughing.

For some reason "Nashville diesel college"? Comes to mind. If there is or was such a place.
Pretty sure it was Tennessee, Nashville rings a bell.

Parents spoiling their kids. Paying for everything so little Billy can concentrate on his "studies".

Letting Billy take a couple years off after school.

Letting the prick come back home while he "looks" for a job that "speaks" to him.


Nice work...parents.

Is that what happened with the senior citizen you had digging holes?

LOL

We've got a couple youngsters one the excavation crew ones 20 ones 22 . Both very good kids and workers... But it took a while to find them. I'd say 75 percent range that apply either can't pass or won't take a drug test ..

Sounds like he has effectively sterilized himself

I went to bat for a parolee who was getting straight As in machine shop programming. Boss hired him. He could not do anything. Wasnt even good at pushing the green button. I figure the instructor passed him to get rid of him.
We had "grandma" there too.
My real grandma had a hired hand my uncle named speed

I banned recruiters from UTI from the high school auto mechanica program I taught after seeing firsthand what kind of graduates they produced. My father was Chief Instructor for Nashville Auto Diesel College for around 12 years, and he wrote most of the training material when they upgraded their curriculum in the late 1960's. I did some of the technical drawings in the worksheets he wrote as a college drafting project when I was in engineering school. NADC was owned for 60-something years by the same family and was one of the top automotive, Diesel, Collision repair and welding programs in the country. It's now owned by a big corporation that has schools all over the country, and the quality of the program has suffered pretty badly.

You know yourself that unless someone has a good grasp on machining and fixturing taking a course in programming a machinist does not make. People have too high of expectations out of someone who has had the basics in CADCAM programs like Mastercam or SolidWorks...

We have Wonder...the 8 hour loaf.

We have a guy we call Skin , someone asked why and we told them dick bag wouldn’t sit well with Human Resources

Worked w a black guy that had a gap between his top front teeth.

Dubbed him MC Clawhammer

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Humiliating is always the way to get less of a worker and more from your HR manager

Had a Stevie Wonder at a shop where I worked. We're always wondering what he was gonna crash/fūck up next...

I can remember a walking boss I had that would sidle up to a guy loafing and tell him "I am the only fugger gets to stand and watch, get to work or get gone." There was a day you could do that.

Had one I worked with, we called him 2 speed Slow and stop

The funny thing about work nicknames

Behind your back your coworkers have one or two for you....

They sure do, mine was azz hoole. Worked with a guy that was so slow, we nick named him rigamortus. He was the oiler on the job. I always thought he would be a good deer hunter, standing was his forte! A few years later he got arrested for shooting a deer out his pickup window. I called that wrong.

I've heard that 10% of the fishermen catch 90% of the fish and I do believe 10% of the criminals do 90% of the crime. In any case it is a small percent that do the most of it when it comes to the thieving.

You still can.

It's amazing how many guys don't know that you have to please the boss.

I had a salesman who started wearing a leather purse. The customers were "bull of the woods" types. So I told him to ditch the purse. He argued and told me it wasn't a purse but some kind of bag etc.

Then there was a sales manager who started to wear perfume. His whole office stank. I told him to ditch the perfume. Instead he argued with me about it being cologne, not perfume, etc.

Guys like that, if they don't shape up, get rid of them quickly.

LMFAO!!!!!

POS Lathe

Oh Boy, that's very bothersome.........

Until I got older any new job always came with a new nickname and catching a lot of [bleep] from everyone. You roll with the punches unless it gets personal. Do your job and dont be a bitch and pretty soon you are part of the team. Sensitive types never last. We had one fella we named Illene because he was always leaning on something.

Worked with a black dude in the oilfield.

Called him Gator....

Asked him why, he said you see al these teeth. 😂🤣😂

He more teeth than I’ve ever saw in 1 person.

I think he had both his baby teeth and adult....

I was fortunate in that the majority of those that worked under me were contractors. A chitt can was moments away if necessary.

You have impressive thickness of skin and such skill with words

Whoops, I didn't finish my sentence.

Oh Boy, that's very bothersome.........If'n yer a pussy.

That's kind of how it was in the firehouse. All the new kids get called kid. We all took a certain amount of chit for our rookie mistakes but there was always some vet that took pity and would help you unfug yourself. Now some of these stupid rookies fresh out of the academy will roll their eyes when you give them some extra chore to do.

Lol, one time the fire dept had a guy on it that when he missed a call he'd sit on a 5 gallon bucket and pout because they left without him.

They named him Bucket, LMAO!

I’m wont to point out to employees standing around that I don’t need a supervisor. I’m guessing half or more don’t get it.....

Some years back we had Mickey. Mickey got nicknamed dumbass. He started answering to it. Nice enough kid, 2 year college education, but thought a 1/4” screen was smaller than 1/8th” screen. That turned out to be an expensive day on the fish farm.......

Oh hell it got better...

One night I'm getting slammed with walk-ups from a major break down when my boss tries to give 220 a hot job. Ole 220 tells the boss he can't do the job, he doesn't know how to run one of the bigger lathes in the shop. Boss comes over to me, tells me to show 220 how the levers on the lathe work. We head over to the lathe department, calls 220 over and I explain the controls to him. Boss tells him to get busy, while doing so the boss cranks the cross slide handle a turn. 220 blows up, tells the boss he wants a committee man to file a grievance against him. Then 220 starts running his mouth trying to throw me under the bus. 220 starts to walk away, I tell him to come back and we'll settle this right quick. 220 hesitates for a minute, I tell him it's party time, come on back. Boss takes off headed out of the shop, guess he didn't want to watch the a$$ whoppin that was about take place. 220 recognizes that I wasn't playing, couldn't get out of the shop fast enough. Few hours later the committee man comes up and asks what happened. He tells me that 220 filed a complaint against the boss for walking off leaving him alone with me to get his a$$ kicked. Then 220 trys to use my size against me crying that if I caught him I'd break him in half. 🤣

He was probably thinking you were complimenting him as those were his marks in school.

My sons are partners in a business where their sons each worked at times before they moved on in life. One younger son, Ben, is there now. Last week they had a new hire who was paired to work with Ben, who has become a savvy, hard working foreman. That evening the bookkeeper wanted some more info from the new guy and asked where he was.

“Ben sent him home,” one of the men said. Ben explained later that the kid didn’t work, wasn’t teachable and just was not a fit on this job, so he laid him off right away before it got worse.

A couple of wormy guys in the oilfield #1&#2
One was a partial tard and two was a total tard

Had another goofy guy where I used to work that was literally a walking, talking, breathing, disaster. His real given first name was that of a well known city in Texas so he gave himself the nickname of, "Tex", although he never had stepped foot in Texas in his entire life. He even made himself a belt buckle out of a piece of brass and inscribed, "Tex" in big letters across the front. He always wore the buckle so the "Tex" was upside down, though, and when asked why his reply was "so when I look down I can read it".

"Tex" had had some high school vocational training in commercial / residential electricity so got accepted into the company industrial electrician apprenticeship program. He didn't last long though after wiring a big bug zapper to 440 volt instead of 220. Don't know if it was true or just shop humor but some claimed when a bug got within a foot of the 440v zapper it was fried instantly. His brother-in-law worked there too and said he had made the mistake of letting, "Tex", wire his new house and had to have it all torn out and redone.

"Tex" then went into a Job and Die Setter classification. Lost count of the die sets he crashed. "Tex" liked to drive fork-trucks pedal to the metal. While transferring a big die set via fork-truck from factory to outside tooling storage building one evening he hit the slightly elevated concrete floor entrance at high speed and literally catapulted the big 1,000 lb + die set off the forks and into the air a good 3 feet, landing on it's side, top half of die off of guide pins bending 2 of 4, 3 inch thick guide pins.

Last I heard of "Tex" he had went to a truck driving school to get a CDL but got washed out. Seems while on an extended ride-along test on an interstate he convinced his instructor it was okay for him to take a short nap while he drove. Apparently, "Tex" being "Tex", all full of his usual self confidence and enthusiasm got distracted or mind wandered, hit and ran over concrete median, corrected and ran back over median, bouncing instructor all over cab and out of his nap. Instructor promptly ordered "Tex" to pull over, got out, walked over to driver's door, told "Tex" to get down out of cab, instructor climbed behind the wheel, shut driver door and drove off leaving "Tex" standing there on the side of the highway.

"Tex' was the classic example of perpetual optimism, self-confidence and enthusiasm gone awry...

If I wasn't working in a hospital being a nurse....or corpsman in the military,
then I worked in field sales, so I was on my own... never had to worry about someone who was a lazy ass....

always worked longer and smarter than most of my contemporaries did, in any field job I did...

my numbers always showed it.... and so did my pay checks...

but those worth a crap, I use to go close business for them, that they weren't able to.. just to show them how its done...

could have taken half the business credit for the sale, but never did... was raised to be a team player... and always held true to that...

always shared credit for my support people, and got them their promotions and raises... that came back to me all the time...in loyalty and support...

I had a shop gopher once that I started calling "speedbump"...he wasn't totally useless, he could still be functional as a speedbump.

We used to have a plumb bob tied to a carabiner. Would hook it on the rear belt loop of "Flash".
He would get pizzed, we told him we had to see if he was moving or not.

Ha Ha we had Lenny and Squiggy too! They were like a comedy act and I looked forward to work because the of the laughs I got listening to the banter. Other than that they were worthless and did no work whatsoever unless someone stood there and directed every move.

I worked night shift with those two guys.

Ok.....union shop
That tells an entire story within itself

The first year i was Piledriving i thought my real name was," GOD DAM THAT F ING KID." Sharp learning curve back then,show up every day,on time ready to work,do as you are told,when you are told how you are told and keep your mouth shut.

So, you met my brother Daryl and my other brother Daryl...

These guys looked like they came right out of the movie Deliverance. They were brothers. We worked 11 at night to 11 the next morning.

Had a guy named “can’t”. He always had an excuse why something couldn’t get done.

I name all our mexican field guys. I have 3 Jose's.
So: Hose A, Hose B and the third has long hair so I named him J-Lo

Had a guy we called Doobie, not from being a stoner but shortened his name.
Another guy blew up weight wise. His name was Robinson but became Blobinson and then shortened to "the blob."

A couple Tripods for obvious reasons.

Stupid Pete is self explanatory. He was a good fireman but around the station he didn't seem to get it.
Another guy believed he was God's gift to firefighting. His name was Larry so he became Sir Lawrence of Florence. Florence being a very ghetto neighborhood of South Central LA County.

No Spleen Dean. White guy dating a black woman got into a domestic scrap where she ended up gut shooting him. He lost his spleen in the trauma center.

Slo Mo Roe. Once off probation it was like he threw an anchor out.

A guy named Schmidt in USAF electronics school could tell some of the most ridiculous tall tales anybody had ever heard, and he appeared to sincerely believe his own lies. Of course, he got the moniker "Bull Schmidt" pretty quickly!

Was working on a project with a useless effer many moons ago he would show up late and do a half assed job on his assigned tasks so when we went to present the package we gave him a segment that we knew he would not prepare for predictably he just stuttered and we rolled right over him seemlessly like we planned.. suffice to say the client did not see him as critical to a successful project.

Working as an electrician on a building for Intel and on a fairly tight time line- as all Intel projects tend to be... this was a union crew and regardless of what you think there are some very good union crews to work with and this was one of them. We got a lot of work done in a very short time on that building but you always have one or two buttheads who show up and make you shake your head.
This one guy comes out of the hall to the job when we were about 2/3 of the way through the job and needed to get some sections of the job moving ahead a bit. We would all show up at the job shack in the morning, get our assigned projects and head out with our tools and get to work. This guy would show up at the meeting, we would all head out to the job and he would literally just disappear. No body could find him all day long and he would show up at quitting time and go home along with everyone else. This went on for about 3 weeks before the foreman caught on and he started asking where this guy went? Literally, no one knew where he was so the next day the foreman started following him to see where he went every day. He was a ways behind him to see where he was hiding and the guy went around a corner and disappeared and the foreman never did find him that day. At quitting time he handed him his check and kicked him off the job. Also called the union hall and black flagged him to never dispatch to that company's jobs again..

On the same job, we were putting lights in the ceiling at the end of the job. The one area we had to work on had a bit over 440 lights to install so I was on the ladder laying them in the grid ceiling, connecting them, and moving my ladder to the next one as my female apprentice was getting a new light each time from the stack in the middle of the floor. Now, this gal was fair looking but she had the biggest hooters of any female I had ever worked with. And she wore a thin tank top most of the time we were working inside so as we were working she would start sweating and it was like a wet Tshirt contest going on. Whatever she was wearing under her shirt wasn't hiding anything and I was getting an eyeful. I was sure I was going to say something stupid and get myself into trouble like I usually did so I told her she had to put something on because I just couldn't work with her like that. She put on a sweater over her shirt for the rest of the day but she wasn't happy about it- I guess she thought I was picking on her or embarrassed her... in any case, by the end of the week the job manned down and she went to her next assignment. I heard through the grapevine she was on a job with her boyfriend and somebody came over to the ditch they were working in to tell them it was lunch time and they were going at it in the bottom of the ditch like minks and had to throw their clothes on to come to lunch. She went back to the hall that day...

I could go on all day... but the ones I really remember are the great guys I worked with for years.