Favourite sentence ever recieved in a work related email . . .

[Glenstache]

"Until we do the calibration, that heat treat furnace could be in spec or out of spec... but we can still make parts in it. It's basically Schrodinger's furnace."

THAT is a winner.

[JetBlast]

I don't have the exact wording, but it was a reminder to all crew members that fishing in hotel atrium koi ponds was not the professional behavior expected at our company.

[Alchemilla]

My children just asked me if I was laughing or crying as I lost control at the last one.

[Rightflyer]

"Until we do the calibration, that heat treat furnace could be in spec or out of spec... but we can still make parts in it. It's basically Schrodinger's furnace."

THAT is a winner.

+1

We have been tittering about that for 2 nights now. Well done.

[Tris Prior]

"If I approve this today, what's the last day that I can still make changes to it?"

facepalm. That's not what "approve" means!!

[CheapskateWife]

"Until we do the calibration, that heat treat furnace could be in spec or out of spec... but we can still make parts in it. It's basically Schrodinger's furnace."

Perfection...I love it.

"(insert name of enormous federal agency here) reserves the right to be arbitrary and capricious."

[Guses]

"Until we do the calibration, that heat treat furnace could be in spec or out of spec... but we can still make parts in it. It's basically Schrodinger's furnace."

THAT is a winner.

Maybe I am misunderstanding the quote here, but I don't think it's a very good analogy for quantum particles. The act of observing whether the furnace is out of spec or within spec does not affect it's ability to make parts or any of it's other properties.

[Joggernot]

"Until we do the calibration, that heat treat furnace could be in spec or out of spec... but we can still make parts in it. It's basically Schrodinger's furnace."

THAT is a winner.

Maybe I am misunderstanding the quote here, but I don't think it's a very good analogy for quantum particles. The act of observing whether the furnace is out of spec or within spec does not affect it's ability to make parts or any of it's other properties.

Of course it is.  It also means that the furnace is quantum entangled with the parts made.  Identifying which state the furnace is in, immediately causes the "spooky action at a distance" of causing the parts to be good or not good.

[galliver]

Academia is a bit more casual so there tend to be a lot of them I like. One that stuck in my memory:

"Professor [NAME] received a small package from [NAME] in [LOCATION].  It appears to be very tiny toy car parts.  Was anyone expecting this package?  Perhaps it was misdirected?  Professor [NAME] isn’t sure who [NAME] is or why he would have received this."

Not sure if they figured it out.

[clarkm04]

 I rescued a dead squirrel from being squashed in the west drive leading to the upper parking lot.

[Cannot Wait!]

Boss to all:  We've created a new form ABC to replace the useless form #123.
Me, being in an adjacent department :  The ABC form doesn't apply to my area, should I continue to use the useless one?
Boss:  Yes please.

[ncornilsen]

"Until we do the calibration, that heat treat furnace could be in spec or out of spec... but we can still make parts in it. It's basically Schrodinger's furnace."

THAT is a winner.

Maybe I am misunderstanding the quote here, but I don't think it's a very good analogy for quantum particles. The act of observing whether the furnace is out of spec or within spec does not affect it's ability to make parts or any of it's other properties.

Of course it is.  It also means that the furnace is quantum entangled with the parts made.  Identifying which state the furnace is in, immediately causes the "spooky action at a distance" of causing the parts to be good or not good.

Precisely.

[Guses]

"Until we do the calibration, that heat treat furnace could be in spec or out of spec... but we can still make parts in it. It's basically Schrodinger's furnace."

THAT is a winner.

Maybe I am misunderstanding the quote here, but I don't think it's a very good analogy for quantum particles. The act of observing whether the furnace is out of spec or within spec does not affect it's ability to make parts or any of it's other properties.

Of course it is.  It also means that the furnace is quantum entangled with the parts made.  Identifying which state the furnace is in, immediately causes the "spooky action at a distance" of causing the parts to be good or not good.

But the act of observing whether the furnace is in spec or out-of-spec does not CAUSE the parts to BECOME good or bad. There is no "spooky action at a distance" there is only observation of results.

To put it another way, the parts produced by the furnace are either all good or all bad, they are not simultaneously good and bad until the moment of observation.

In quantum physics, the observation of the quantum properties is what causes them to be fixed.

[Playing with Fire UK]

"Until we do the calibration, that heat treat furnace could be in spec or out of spec... but we can still make parts in it. It's basically Schrodinger's furnace."

THAT is a winner.

Maybe I am misunderstanding the quote here, but I don't think it's a very good analogy for quantum particles. The act of observing whether the furnace is out of spec or within spec does not affect it's ability to make parts or any of it's other properties.

Of course it is.  It also means that the furnace is quantum entangled with the parts made.  Identifying which state the furnace is in, immediately causes the "spooky action at a distance" of causing the parts to be good or not good.

But the act of observing whether the furnace is in spec or out-of-spec does not CAUSE the parts to BECOME good or bad. There is no "spooky action at a distance" there is only observation of results.

To put it another way, the parts produced by the furnace are either all good or all bad, they are not simultaneously good and bad until the moment of observation.

In quantum physics, the observation of the quantum properties is what causes them to be fixed.

Oh come on. Anyone who works in manufacturing knows that if you use a possibly-off-spec machine it will be off spec, but if you leave it idle it will turn out to be fine all along. That is the 'spooky action at a distance'. /notrealscience

[ncornilsen]

guses, You're right.. it is not a completely accurate metaphor. But it makes a lot of sense if you don't think about it tooooo hard, which is what made it funny.

[teen persuasion]

"All Personnel" should really not be something that anybody can email. The most epic screwup of this at my work was that somebody scanned a document and instead of hitting the email address they wanted on the scanner, sent it to some baffling email list that was named "987xgf56009 North America Europe" or similar. Thousands and thousands of people. The "I don't think this was meant for me, please remove me from this list" emails came quickly - replying to an email address assigned to a machine! - and about every fifty emails somebody replied all "STOP REPLYING ALL!!!!1"

The only consolation as my email became useless for most of an afternoon was one guy in Austin replying-all "Is this an Aggie joke?"

I remember an incident like this in college.  You knew the world was ending when the CS profs preempted class to hustle us all down to the lab to have us delete, unread, the email that some clueless freshman had sent out Global, that was prompting endless reply all responses.  They were trying to kill it before it brought down the department network, Klaatu.

[Bracken_Joy]

Okay, not a work email, but my favorite phrase I ever read in a co-worker's charting:

"Patient attempted to bite LPN, then stated, 'You make every day worse than the last'. Emotionally labile."

Nursing guys. Shit gets real.

[I'm a red panda]

"Well, Euclid was wrong."

[PAstash]

"It was a isolated occurrence." It was the 36th one this year. We will call it a work place accident.

[Kitsune]

"We are the Purple Cow of our industry."

Oh, I've got that one beat. The president of the company I last worked at read that horrendous purple cow book and had a life-sized purple cow comissioned. With a motion detector. SO THAT THE PURPLE COW WOULD MOO WHEN YOU WALKED BY IT.

[I'm a red panda]

Is there a purple cow other than Milka?  (http://www.milka.com/)


(When I was in Germany one of the guys I met told me he was shocked when he found out cows weren't purple, because the Milka was the only one he had ever "seen")

[Kitsune]

Is there a purple cow other than Milka?  (http://www.milka.com/)


(When I was in Germany one of the guys I met told me he was shocked when he found out cows weren't purple, because the Milka was the only one he had ever "seen")

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/641604.Purple_Cow

[markbike528CBX]

Ok 3 sentences:

To: All [Semi-big corp] Employees Worldwide

Flash Message: Recall on Emergency Automobile Safety Device Keychains

Last month to recognize [Semi-big corp] Safety Day, employees around the globe received an emergency automobile tool keychain.

......several more paragraphs.................. 

TL;DR  Safety prize is not safe.

[Goldielocks]

"We are the Purple Cow of our industry."

"Our [company] goal is to become the 'Walmart' of engineering" 


Say what?!  A design firm is not a distribution company selling retail...

Then repeated at the townhall.  Then I was given 2 wk working layoff notice, 2 days after my award of a good raise  (layoff details which violated one minor labour law), and then they went out of business after a year or so.

[mustachepungoeshere]

"The fact is I'm not used to being rejected as a writer... the fact that you didn't give me any reasons for the rejection doesn't help."

I contacted a guy about a project. This woman was a friend of his family and apparently felt she should have been consulted. Given that she had no involvement in either his project or my reporting of it, her level of entitlement was breathtaking. She took this 'rejection' very hard, and sent me a very long email explaining how qualified she was, followed up by, "This is not small beer!"

[SoccerLounge]

"Dear [SoccerLounge],

I am pleased to extend an offer of employment for the position of..."

No matter how much bullshit follows in a job, nothing beats the euphoria spike of getting a long-hoped-for offer.

[Lski'stash]

I don't think that's even a sentence.

FrugalShrew is right. It's missing a verb phrase to go with the subject.

[Slow&Steady]

To: State Agency Rep

From: Consultant working with us

...

You asked why labs do not include descriptions of nomenclature in their reports. I have the same question and can only conclude that chemists are from outer space and they don’t care if we understand anything they put in their reports.

...

[deadlymonkey]

"All Personnel" should really not be something that anybody can email. The most epic screwup of this at my work was that somebody scanned a document and instead of hitting the email address they wanted on the scanner, sent it to some baffling email list that was named "987xgf56009 North America Europe" or similar. Thousands and thousands of people. The "I don't think this was meant for me, please remove me from this list" emails came quickly - replying to an email address assigned to a machine! - and about every fifty emails somebody replied all "STOP REPLYING ALL!!!!1"

The only consolation as my email became useless for most of an afternoon was one guy in Austin replying-all "Is this an Aggie joke?"

Is it bad that my workplace has an internal wiki page that documents all of the "reply-all" storms listing total number of emails thread associated with, total number of messages, what started it, and days since last storm.  Our record is 326 days in 2010.  Currently 13 days and counting.
I remember an incident like this in college.  You knew the world was ending when the CS profs preempted class to hustle us all down to the lab to have us delete, unread, the email that some clueless freshman had sent out Global, that was prompting endless reply all responses.  They were trying to kill it before it brought down the department network, Klaatu.

[boarder42]

follow

[mustachepungoeshere]

Ok, this was a voicemail message someone just left me at work but I immediately thought of this thread.

"Hi, this is Michael from x. I'd like to speak to you about y. You can call us back through the website."

Guess who's not getting a call back.

If he can't be bothered to leave a phone number, then I really can't be bothered following up.

Also, this is how I imagine that scenario would unfold: I Google them to find the website, find the contact details, call the number, get through to a switchboard, ask to speak to Michael, and get asked "Michael who?" ... no idea. End of treasure hunt.

Edited for grammar.

[Curbside Prophet]

Our company will be undergoing a name change.  We have concern that the current acronym ICES, will be affiliated with the terrorist organization.

[Guses]

Our company will be undergoing a name change.  We have concern that the current acronym ICES, will be affiliated with the terrorist organization.

Free publicity?

[andy85]

we were having a team pot luck...maybe 10 people on the email, thank god. and they were all jokers so it was fine

Me: "i will bring in the cock pot"
*seconds later*
Them: laughter
Me: ashamed and red, but also laughing

(*crock pot)

[Greenstache]

This is one of my favorites (white collar professional setting)
"No Need for Paper Towels:  Building Management reports to us that some of our employees are using paper towels in the toilets.  Flushing paper towels clogs the toilets and causes them to overflow!  If anyone has a reason to use paper towels in such a manner, they should contact [facility director's name] so the issue can be thoroughly discussed."

[homestead neohio]

Following an announcement of the board accepting an acquisition offer:

"We have no additional information at this time.  We will have a site-wide meeting to discuss this tomorrow."

[Uturn]

20 years ago I was a hot head, I was also somehow hired as a department manager over 15 IT techs.  I sent out an email to my team that started with "are you all fucking stupid?"  Yup, I may have not been too smart either.  That email still exists, and I get to hear about it every couple of years.   

[andy85]

20 years ago I was a hot head, I was also somehow hired as a department manager over 15 IT techs.  I sent out an email to my team that started with "are you all fucking stupid?"  Yup, I may have not been too smart either.  That email still exists, and I get to hear about it every couple of years.   

But were they?

[Bracken_Joy]

Our company will be undergoing a name change.  We have concern that the current acronym ICES, will be affiliated with the terrorist organization.

I grew up with a girl names Isis. I can't imagine life is super easy for her right now... =\

[Kitsune]

20 years ago I was a hot head, I was also somehow hired as a department manager over 15 IT techs.  I sent out an email to my team that started with "are you all fucking stupid?"  Yup, I may have not been too smart either.  That email still exists, and I get to hear about it every couple of years.   

But were they?

OMG I have been SO TEMPTED to do this so many times...

[Spork]

20 years ago I was a hot head, I was also somehow hired as a department manager over 15 IT techs.  I sent out an email to my team that started with "are you all fucking stupid?"  Yup, I may have not been too smart either.  That email still exists, and I get to hear about it every couple of years.   

Larry?  Is that you?

[Metric Mouse]

Following to pretend that I have a super cool office job...

[Pigeon]

There is an educator bingo card generator as well, that my teacher husband is looking forward to using during next year's faculty meetings.  He has tenure.  My only beef with it is that 85% of the squares should say "assessment." http://www.sciencegeek.net/Bingo/index.html

Someone who reports to me at the university is incapable of writing a comprehensible or grammatically correct sentence.  I'm reasonably sure she doesn't understand her writing any more than her colleagues do.  A recent gem was, "I am looking at speculating transformative eco-systemic synergies for understanding carcerative processes and marrying outcomes to transformational and transliteral environments." 

Her actual job has nothing to do with this, whatever it might mean.  Sadly, while her writing would be excellent fodder for an academic jargon generator, I'm positive she comes up with this herself.  I get multi-page emails full of this crap several times a day.

[nobodyspecial]

Maybe I am misunderstanding the quote here, but I don't think it's a very good analogy for quantum particles. The act of observing whether the furnace is out of spec or within spec does not affect it's ability to make parts or any of it's other properties.

Of course it is.  It also means that the furnace is quantum entangled with the parts made.  Identifying which state the furnace is in, immediately causes the "spooky action at a distance" of causing the parts to be good or not good.

But the act of observing whether the furnace is in spec or out-of-spec does not CAUSE the parts to BECOME good or bad. There is no "spooky action at a distance" there is only observation of results.

To put it another way, the parts produced by the furnace are either all good or all bad, they are not simultaneously good and bad until the moment of observation.

In quantum physics, the observation of the quantum properties is what causes them to be fixed.

As it does in QA, the mere presence of a certificate causes the parts to be good, the absence of a certificate causes the parts to be bad.
Observing the certificate collapses the parts into the correct state

[mustachepungoeshere]

There is an educator bingo card generator as well, that my teacher husband is looking forward to using during next year's faculty meetings.  He has tenure.  My only beef with it is that 85% of the squares should say "assessment." http://www.sciencegeek.net/Bingo/index.html

Someone who reports to me at the university is incapable of writing a comprehensible or grammatically correct sentence.  I'm reasonably sure she doesn't understand her writing any more than her colleagues do.  A recent gem was, "I am looking at speculating transformative eco-systemic synergies for understanding carcerative processes and marrying outcomes to transformational and transliteral environments." 

Her actual job has nothing to do with this, whatever it might mean.  Sadly, while her writing would be excellent fodder for an academic jargon generator, I'm positive she comes up with this herself.  I get multi-page emails full of this crap several times a day.

This reminded me...

A family member is an exec teacher tasked with proof-reading and editing report cards written by other teachers. She emails me the real winners.

"He comprehends information read and uses strategies to sound out unfamiliar words and assisting with increasing his site vocabulary."

"He demonstrates a positive esteem for others, being humble and valuing the gifts and talents of others."

"She is beginning to work more efficiently as an autonomous learner although is encouraged to settle quickly and remain absorbed in her learning."

[Pigeon]

Slightly OT, but my husband's district has a report card system with a long list of stock comments, and the teachers select from those. There is an apocryphal story about a retiring physics teacher who added "Fails to complete sewing projects on time" to every report card.

He has another colleague, a former nun, who mused aloud as to why "Student is a f-ing moron" wasn't listed as a possible comment choice.

[teen persuasion]

Reply to email reporting unexpected effects after a system upgrade:

This is not a GLITCH.

NEVER hit CANCEL.



So, I'd really like to see the documentation on this 'feature' where choosing cancel does not exit the operation, but instead jumps ahead and performs the unwanted operation AND the next operation in the chain as well!  Especially since that second operation involves checking in an item at a different physical location and notifying a patron that the item is available at said location, while it's actually still in my hand. 

[Goldielocks]

Said to me on a site tour of a manufacturing plant, by the owner / manager.
(about upgrades to the employee lunchroom and patio).

"It is easy to keep employees happy -- all you have to do is provide them with a pot plant".


(i think he meant potted plant, but this was in B.C....? And IMO, he was one of those "bad" managers in terms of valuing employees and their work... constantly asking me for any improvement that could potentially eliminate another job, without there be any other reason other than shrinking the union..)

[Shalamar]

A coworker was leaving for another job.    This is an excerpt from his goodbye email:   "I'll miss some of you.   Some of you other people, though - and you know who you are - I'd like to drag outside by your stumpy hind legs and beat the living shit out of you."

[G-dog]

A coworker was leaving for another job.    This is an excerpt from his goodbye email:   "I'll miss some of you.   Some of you other people, though - and you know who you are - I'd like to drag outside by your stumpy hind legs and beat the living shit out of you."

Oh, I wish I would have had the nerve to say something like this! No repercussions?