Anyone made a Faraday cage or anything else to skive off?

[Eednud]

Has any P+Ber been this inventive to pretend they were working? Before any c**t moans chip means crisps or in this case Twisties (Fonzies in some parts north of the Equator). 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-27/employee-sacked-over-chip-packet-deception-faraday-cage/9196732

[Cerberus]

Does anyone always read these Aussie articles in Crocodile Dundee's voice?

What's that about?

[nsr]

Didn't anyone find it odd that they couldn't track where he was?

[banana]

https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/

Quote

 

After 30 days, I became convinced that I was a forgotten, non digestible entity in the corporate stomach. No man ever comes over to ask me for anything - although I am but a Manager, and Directors roam the hallways like rabid hyenas, I am much too senior to all of them for them to attempt an attack. Every once in a while, the phone will ring, and an old acquantance will ask for help solving a problem - I gladly comply. Sometimes, I let the phone ring... but the voicemail light never comes on. They move on to the next target, under the false assumption that I am much too busy to be bothered.

It hit me this morning that perhaps all of my endless toil and hard work has landed me here. I've transferred so much within the company that all paperwork on me has been long since misplaced. I exist only in a computer program that spits out a 4 digit paycheck to my bank account every other thursday - just another tick on the underbelly of the corporate warthog. Too senior to be fired, too misunderstood to be bothered, I am truly the forgotten employee.

 

[banana]

And another...

Quote

I'll say it - anytime I've retold this story, I don't think anyone has ever believed it - I have to be honest, I wouldn't either. However, me and at least two other people in the world know this to be absolutely true.

I was doing a contract for a major national public sector organisation. Obviously no names, but if you've ever been to London, you've been a customer. It was your standard high staff turnover, pay em till they get bored, throw them the BS tasks kind of role. Anyway, one day, myself and another contractor were set the task of a machine hunt. Basically the network was a hodge-podge of bolted on spokes using various standards, practically held together with poor soldering and bits of gaffa tape. However, there were a list of umpteen Windows 9x machines which were apparently alive on the user subnets which needed reimaging to XP or replacing. Our job was to do the pre-project hunt to determine who was using them and where they were. I say pre-project, it wasn't exactly "thought out"... it was some task that appeared from the ether which would most likely be re-filed into the ether. This is the same organisation who only a few months prior saw a £70,000 shipment from Dell literally get delivered outside their offices, which nobody retrieved or was aware even being ordered and over the course of the next 24 hours were promptly retrieved by members of the public! Yep, it got left there overnight and there were only docking stations left! Good use of public money, eh?

Anyway, we hunted down an old Compaq on our list. Serial matched, IP matched, now to talk to the user. The user was a guy who wore a grey suit, impeccably turned out but who looked like he was about to wet himself with fear. He asked us several times who we were, what we wanted, what for, where was this information going, etc. After placating him as much as possible that it was just an upgrade programme and we were IT Support, he finally relinquished his name.

It just so happened, another machine we were hunting for was right next to his desk; our decision to wait around for this user to return was overshadowed by his worried glances... after a few minutes of uncomfortable "I'm pretending to not acknowledge you" silence, we went away aiming to return later - ideally when he had disappeared.

A few days later, the same contractor and I were out on a pub lunch. The guy happens to come in and immediately notices us. He's weird, really weird. He walks quickly to the back of the pub, hovers, glances at us and then makes for the door. Of course now we're talking about him, like WTF!? He makes an about turn at the door and comes up to us; he nervously asks "Are you definitely just IT support?" We reply and say yep, and he just immediately leaves with an "OK thank you".

Of course we're weirded out, but whatever. We just put him down as a fruitloop.

Again another few days later, we're out on a smoke break, this guy appears again seemingly on a smoke break too. His eyes are wide as soon as he notices us, but as he's already lit his cigarette, he kinda has to come out now. We're wary of him, this guy is a fruitcake. He tries to make small talk; it seems to me he's probing, so I just come out and talk about what we do all day, pretending to moan about our menial duties.

Anyway, it turns out after a few more chance encounters he kinda settles down and starts talking - mainly about F1 racing, etc. He shows up again on a friday afternoon drink, this time with his wife in tow. It turns out that he has every right to have been nervous.

This guy was initially hired as part of a major projects team in the organisation. He applied for a role, got accepted, gave in notice at his old job and duly showed up for work as prescribed. However, as it turns out, in between getting confirmed for his role and actually starting, the entire major projects department had gotten nuked. The manager who hired him had left the business, members of the team were scattered far and wide, yet he showed up, some receptionist showed him to his desk where he was to wait for someone and nobody showed up. He made enquiries, all he ever got told was that someone would come talk to him eventually - but nobody ever did.

For the last 11 years, he had shown up for work. Nobody ever hassles him, nobody ever asks him for anything, sometimes he just doesn't show up and nobody questions it, he gets paid every month, gets a statutory annual pay rise and that's it. He's been filling his time writing books for the past 8 years on this that and the other, and that is literally what he does every day. As the physical office he's in also has a high staff turnover, there's no time to make relationships or for anyone to even really acknowledge him.

Of course, he was slightly inebriated at that point. I just thought he was plain outright nuts permenantly resident in psychos-ville. I didn't believe a word of it. It's too hollywood to be true!

That was until the Monday morning, we had to check. Sure enough, HR systems showed his dept had indeed been nuked mere days after he was recruited and his active manager on the HR system had indeed long since left the business. Everything we did to verify his story checked out. We even performed a few random drop-ins and, sure enough, there he is with Word opened and he's tapping out page 370 for a novel. He never seems to do anything. Of course, he's back to being nervous again as he let his guard down while drunk and told someone. Even his wife at the time seemed to corroborate his tale.

I left the contract a couple of months later, but as far as I know, he's still there. I still even questioned the reality of such a situation.

 

[Tony Ferrino]

9 hours ago, Cerberus said:

Does anyone always read these Aussie articles in Crocodile Dundee's voice?

What's that about?

Alf Stewart.

[GingerSaint]

1 hour ago, banana said:

And another...

 

Too long; didn't read.

[nsr]

1 hour ago, banana said:

https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/

 

That was plausible until the bit where the VP spilled his guts.

[banana]

35 minutes ago, GingerSaint said:

tl;dr

FTFY

[carpetmonster]

Bouncer, for me. 

Bouncer's a Tedi. And on a Gunther level, fair dinkum to him.

[D.A.F.C]

Heard someone in rosyth dockyard made a fake wall and inside there was electrics for tea and a chair etc.
That place was full of dossers in the 80s and 90s

[BFTD]

One of my college lecturers was a former officer in the US Navy. He told us a story about a ship where some of the sailors discovered that you could slope off behind the big microwave antennas and they'd keep you warm on a cold night. Word spread, until they started card games during shifts. One night they had a wee party and got a bit pished, so some of them fell asleep.

They were found the next morning, lightly cooked, and thoroughly dead  

[tamthebam]

I'm slightly seething because Michael Faraday was actually English, born in London. 

Faraday only has a cage though- Van der Graaf- now there was a dude. At least he had a band named after him. And Tesla- he got a OMD hit in the 1980s. 

 

 

 

[tamthebam]

4 hours ago, BigFatTabbyDave said:

One of my college lecturers was a former officer in the US Navy. He told us a story about a ship where some of the sailors discovered that you could slope off behind the big microwave antennas and they'd keep you warm on a cold night. Word spread, until they started card games during shifts. One night they had a wee party and got a bit pished, so some of them fell asleep.

They were found the next morning, lightly cooked, and thoroughly dead  

I just scraped a Physics Higher but that sounds like pish to me. 

[Tony Ferrino]

8 hours ago, carpetmonster said:

 

Bouncer's a Tedi. And on a Gunther level, fair dinkum to him.

 

You should be so lucky.

[BFTD]

17 minutes ago, tamthebam said:

I just scraped a Physics Higher but that sounds like pish to me. 

Don't ruin it for me, man. Those sailors died to warn us of the dangers of high-power microwave emitters. Mr Frederick wouldn't lie to me.

[Miguel Sanchez]

10 hours ago, nsr said:

That was plausible until the bit where the VP spilled his guts.

You mean it was plausible until he claimed to be a Something Awful user in gainful (well, paid) employment

[Wile E Coyote]

Load of pish. No way would external contractors get access to HR records.

[Richey Edwards]

I once set the Beastie Boys lyric "What's the time? IT'S TIME TO GET ILL!" as a Facebook status and my manager saw it and covered my shift with an agency worker because she thought I was implying that I was unwell.