• He asked me to get my team to start small fires in their waste-bins to make sure that the smoke detectors were working (we were due for a visit from the health and safety officer).
• Determine if there was a calibration method that was more accurate than the National Bureau of Standards. - Can you say, "that's what STANDARDS means"?
• He did not want to fire "somebody." He called in sick and asked me to persuade HIS boss to fire "this person." His boss also did not have the stomach to do it. It turns out he wanted to fire me.
• He once asked me to get a senior technician to put hole-reinforcers on every page of the ring-bound project manuals.
• Rearrange the storeroom in alphabetical order--that put cups in one room and lids in another.
• Alphabetize our phone book - It already was (That's why all the 'As' were at the beginning...)
• Pointy-Haired Boss: "Have Jim check every co-ax connection on the network." Me: "But the network has 100's of nodes, there's no evidence of a network problem, and we don't have any instruments!" PHB won. (It actually was a major software bug). Network was fine.
• Science project for PHB's kid. Big surprise - they won -- must've just barely edged out all the other kids with a $30B company behind them I guess.
• "Get Joe to take a transfer to another department." She wanted to hire her brother-in-law to take his position. I talked Joe into staying and demanding a raise.
• Get him to use this (highly carcinogenic product that makes your eyes water and will give you a really nasty rash) to clean the inside of the elevators.
• Movie theatre: She told me to get someone to help me put new shows on the marquee. He was to hold a two-story metal ladder still in a windy, heavy thunderstorm.
• INSISTED that I convince our vender to change some major functionality of an earlier software release that we are no longer using.
• We're partnered with an overseas company. Their VP attorney handles our PL litigation. I was asked to get their attorney to declare a product illegal in the US so we could get an upgrade for free.
• Boss insists on new procedure, and makes us enforce it. Then he won't do it himself and makes us persuade him why he should.
• Work here. We've got competitive salary and benefits. (That is, you've got to fight for everything.)