What are some of your rookie/silly mistakes?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Samwaldo

We always ask the freshmen for:
A aluminum magnet
A bucket of Steam
Left handed screw driver
Left handed wrench

We sometimes get one who looks for 10 minutes and then begins to ask mentors where they can find one.

At work last week, a couple of us were making a run out to retrieve something that was left by one of the machine shops. As we're leaving, my boss says "Hey, while you're out there, tell the shop that we need a stringer stretcher." (A board stretcher is a close approximation.) I start cracking up as soon as my coworker is out of sight around a corner, make some comment to my boss about sending newbies after the metric left-handed crescent wrench, and head out.

We quickly found the item we needed to retrieve, and I waited for a few minutes before my coworker came out of the shop. "They don't know what a stringer stretcher is." At which point, I filled him in that he'd been pranked. I think we got a couple of the other guys with a similar mission later.