Work Tales

Every Friday morning at work, we have a staff meeting. As far as story-telling is concerned, the staff meeting usually provides pretty tedious material, but there are exceptions (such as today):

• The company has been doing wintertime smog check testing in Fairbanks, Alaska. One colleague discovered that a hose containing nothing but car exhaust had been diverted into the cab of a truck outside, where people were sitting. They were using the car exhaust to warm themselves up (the dangers of freezing outweighing the dangers of auto exhaust).
• One colleague was watching the live-feed of a stenographer's notes from a court-room deposition. A computer takes the stenographer's phonetic notations and converts them into scrawling text. Sometimes, when the computer can't recognize the notations, it inserts random characters, making it appear as if the witness is cursing.
• After repeated, detailed, technical testimony at the deposition, the stenographer parenthetically noted that this is why she dated her science teacher, rather than bothering to actually learn the stuff.