Best story I heard was when a company I worked for sold out to a huge corporation. They owned 4 shops in different cities and they owned the buildings they were in. The owners had assumed that the buildings were part of the 60 million sale but at the end of signing one of the lawyers for the big corp piped up and said "ok! now we should discuss rent for the locations". One of the owners said he was so shocked because this was around 8 million in property and in that moment he had to try to stay calm and deadpan like he knew that was the deal. Suddenly 8 million richer lol!
Hard for me to grasps this, the longest shifts I've ever worked are the ones when I'm either done the moment I sit at my workstation or the ones where I'm done 2.25 hours into an 8 hour shift. Make me happy give me a good 7.5 hours of work that leaves me time to get up check the machines talk to the young guys in the dept and make sure things are going well for them, and before I know it, shift is over.
As an apprentice an older machinist was training me on a big machining cell. Once a week we had to clean the whole thing and when he was done, he locked all the doors and left me inside. I almost shit myself when he pressed start. Luckily I could climb out of the cell and he was fired soon after.
@@thefailbrothers345 Well that is an OSHA violation haha. There are ways to make things that old to not work when being operated on (cutting power to a junction box, etc).
I heard from a coworker that shop labour guys at an auto plant would load eachother on pallets and put them on high shelves so they could have naps without being found/disturbed.
The absolute worst thing I have ever been around was two guys on the same machine but different shifts fighting. Let's just say that it ended when the guy on the off shift crapped into the coolant tank and left it overnight for the first shift to discover about half way into his shift the next day. The second shift guy was fired as soon as he walked into the door. I've seen tool boxes drilled and tapped for a zerk fitting and then filled with grease. I was once told by a operator that he didn't run a machine at 100% programmed rate because "You don't run your car wide open" I replied "But you do run your refrigerator wide open" . I just retired after 47 years in machine shops, believe me I've seen it all!
The guy in ‘receive and dispatch’ was selling parts to existing clients for cash out the back door and said that the money went into a bucket to pay for grog for the company’s annual Christmas party but later on in a shopping mall one of these clients ran into the business owner and made an off the cuff comment that the Christmas party bucket must be pretty full by now to which he responded “we don’t have a bucket”. After doing some auditing someone was left unemployed.
Not mainly a machine shop story but figured you all would get a kick out of a stupid decision from the top brass. Food product manufacturing was the job, mostly bagged ready to use ice cream and coffee. They brought in a team to map out our warehouse and setup an entire ROBOTIC FORKLIFT that was supposed to be faster and quicker than us on our actual forklifts. (It was not for any reason at all, thing was so slow we could out pace it even with our slowest forklift.) All of us on our shift kept telling the upper brass that it would not behave even with all the updates and also manually programing from the company. Kept stopping in odd places, going the wrong way, sent a few pallets flying at times destroying all the finished product and my favorite was when it almost took out an entire rack of ingredients but thankfully the emergency stop worked. One night it came to a head. Got a call from work at roughly two in the morning and it was my main boss telling me to get to work and don't even dress out. I hauled tail and walked in covered in oil and grease from working a riding mower all day to see the robotic forklift had drove through a wall and crushed the HIGH PRESSURE STEAM PIPE which made each line not only lose sterile state but shut down all of them. Upon further inspection it had also taken out the secondary power for several machines on the bottle line as well. All the top brass where sweating bullets when they showed up and the CEO was looking at them with dagger eyes and was mad to say the least. Took two weeks to get the facility back up then another week to have it all inspected and certified again. Don't know how much that cost but when you lose all the product in the silos along with other raw materials in the mixing tanks and the repairs and down time did not look good to anyone.
The embezzling happened at my shop just now. Except they were taking $$ from us-their employees. For over half the year, all of our IRA contributions and company matched contributions were not deposited to our accounts. This is all unfolding in the moment. We're still not sure where the money was, but we've been told the money was accounted for and will be in our accounts asap. And our 'lost moneys' will be calculated and reimbursed. Also there was similar to your tool purchaser, our guy was charging $200 on paper for a $60 impreg process per part, pocketing the difference. The list goes on....Our shop is managed by people with the poor morals.
We had a guy for a few years who would defecate in a cardboard box and seal it and then store it in the warehouse with the 'ready to ship' finished parts. Once in a while, someone would notice the smell, and we drew lots for who would have to find. Another story we had the old owner of the shop was kept on when a corporation took over and kept him on as manager of the conventional nc machine department. He had a drinking problem, and by the time it was lunch time, he was already already loaded. We all lunch breaked at the same time and ate together at the same table. This guy would get there in the middle of break while everyone was eating and place his colostomy bag on the table while his did a magic trick show for the shop. Not too many would stay to finish their lunch,and if you said anything to him, he would get belligerent and threatened to fire everyone. The good thing was he wouldn't remember it the next day, so he never remembered who he fired. I used take over the evening shift at the same shop. One time the day shift guy i would take over for was in the middle of a set up, and for some reason he decided to switch out a CNC facemill for a flycutter from the Bridgeport. I don't know the feed rate or the spindle speed he was using, but that insert bulleted through 3 pieces of safety plexiglass and landed 80 yards from the machine. He was watching with the door closed and another 3 inches to the left he would have died. He wasn't fazed at all, in fact, he didn't even blink.(He never really ever blinked, he always wore a blank expression on his face.) He turned to look at me and calmly stated "Wow I almost died, I guess that was a fugazi." I got a bunch more, but this is a family show.
One- an old shop I did maintenance at had 2 guys on off shift steal a 55 gallon drum of used carbide and drive it right to the scrap yard. The yard called the only machine shop in 60 miles and they confirmed it was stolen. They got arrested. Two- 3 off shift guys got caught at Walmart when they were clocked in at work by a 1st shift supervisor. Three- My favorite- while I was a QC supervisor we had a group of 2nd shifters take a shipping crate that a new Hass machine came in and carried it across a creek behind the shop and hid it in a tree line. Made a walking bridge. And ran an extension cord from the shop and made in a drug shack. Come spring the farmer neighbor was turning over his field and saw it in his trees. Call our shop and we walk out there and they had furniture, radio and a heater. When we fired the guys that did that they had the nerve to ask if they could keep the shack. We flattened it with a backhoe.
My instructor at his old job had a leisurely sloth that would slow down the feeds so frequently on his machines using the overrides that my instructor went into the config of the employee's machine and disabled the feed overrides.
I was a machinist for 50 years. This incident happened in California, South Gate to be exact. We had 36 hi speed Davenports. One of the operators on 2nd shift told me he was having trouble with the cutting oil going sour after a couple days. He would clean out machine and put in fresh. Same thing happened. So he hung around at end of his shift and watched. Lo and behold, about an hour in, his shift replacement took a leak in the oil tank. Need I say more. Did not end well for him.
Oh boy where do we start. My employes stole caribide from me, did machining and chill and slowed down speeds and feeds from this list. But two cases stand out in my shop. 1. One of my eployes tried to put down a flaming bucket of gasoline with his foot. He was hand grinding some large industrial bearing neer that bucket, and even though my other employes told him to and how to secure it it lit on fire. I even have a video of that on my onedrive hounting me as a reminder every day... Thankfully he got out in one piece. 2. I cought my employes having made whole equipment for exploding water bottles with compressed air. They made one tool to puncture the bottle and another to hold an air gun in it untill compressed air explodes the bottle. Then they made pranks on one another when they set up the bottle behind one of them, then they hide and turn the valve to explode the bottle behing the worker who didin't notice untill to late.
Back in the 70's, I worked graveyard shift in a union shop that had a lot of N/C machines, which they used to build N/C punch presses among other things. One area of the shop cranked out punches & dies by the thousands using cam-operated, bar-fed turning machines. One of my co-workers came up with the idea of making lug nuts (for cars) on one of the machines, using company materials on a company machine. Just before the day shift would clock in, he would haul several tote pans full of lug nuts out to his car. Eventually, he got caught, and disciplined, but not fired, thanks to union intervention. However, he thought he was treated so unjustly that, on the day that the company president handed out Thanksgiving turkeys as we punched out at the end of the shift, this a-hole took his frozen turkey, slammed it down at the President's feet, and told him to shove his turkey up his ass. Again, disciplined, but not fired. I watched it happen. Unions suck.
We had a manager in charge of inspection. He copied every print and file he could of parts we made for pharmaceutical machinery. Also grabbed a vendor list of outside machine shop and other suppliers. Gave his two weeks' notice and opened his own business. Starting selling accessories & replacement parts for the machinery the company sold.
Worked for a division of Sandvik that was later sold to Nobel Biocare years ago . At the time ,my neighbor was the CEO . He and his administrative assistant embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars and no one really knew till Nobel took over. This guy, in the middle of the night moved 3 towns away into a 500k house I personally knew he couldn't afford and wondered how he could do it.. After Nobel ran an investigation, this man was arrested and sent to prison with over 900k being stolen and Sandvik never knew..
@Roberty98 the division I was at was Procera Sandvik. We m made dental implants. Same building as Sandvik Coromant , but another division. Infact , we were blocked off from Coromant by concrete walls
One day at night Shift a forklift Driver wants to get a Cola from the Cola Automat, without dismounting the forklift . He pinched His head Just enogh that He could Not get Back and stayed Like this the hole night😂
Hide and seek 2 : Being an inspector trying to find the guy responsible for a first article part to tell him its passed/failed The scarlet setter.... we seek him here, we seek him there.. is in heaven or is he in hell..... He's got so good at hiding lately we haven't seen him for 6 months...
The Leisurely Sloth is my personal favorite. Had a guy in my shop grinding cranks as slow as possible and showed him how to speed the grinding machine up without stressing himself more. I told him its better for the machine, better for him so he hasn´t to stand so long at the machine and better for us and the customer. As soon as I went away I heard the grindinh machine slowing down. Askind him why he did that his answer was "if you don´t like how i´m working you could fire me". Had him working overtime on a Saturday. Came later in the shop and he had set up a crank for grinding and after 3 hours he hadn´t even ground one single journal.
After years of working in workshops and a foundry. I have some stories to share, we had one guy stealing raw metals and then sold them openly in socials. Then we had a guy in the quality dep. doing false positive and then steeling them after work at night, they caught him by the times he used the pass card at the gate, after that they did bag checks for a year... fun times 😅
The shop I was Purchasing Manager for years, whe had a shop manager I found out was bring men in on Saturdays on overtime and was sawing up good finished parts, Rae material, then selling it scrap. To top it off he had contractors come to his house and do work there and charge it to the company. I starting receiving invoices which had no purchase orders. Sad, because he had a great job and a generous owner.
Haha, love that video. I remember a man who used to take away a box full of metal chips in his lunchbox every day. But I never saw him arrive in a new SUV or live in a mansion with a mountain view.
We had someone stealing multi tonne steel plates...him and the delivery driver where in cahoots together and when the delivery would come in he would unload the material then load an older plate back onto the truck and then sell it for scrap...didn't take long to get caught...lose your job of a couple hundred £ plates...morons
The first shop I worked in I was there for almost a decade before I got married and moved. There was a welder who would walk around the shop at the beginning and end of the shift and empty all of the aluminum can recycling bins into his own bags, then walk through punch press and take all the copper slugs he could carry in his lunch box. He did this for the last 20 years he worked until he retired. When he told the company he was retiring they came back to him and had him on camera stealing it all and had totaled up their losses and handed him a bill for $65k or they were going to be filing charges for their losses
The biggest problem is with the ants in the shop. You know, the two legged ones that carry off all the little hand tools and cutters and taking them home to sell. Amazing how much money this can add up to over time.
Leisury sloth: Somebody told me that one guy likes this program because it has a feature he programmed for 6 hours and runs for 5 minutes because it is milling where you could have it done in a good one minute in a not so powerful lathe driven tool. If he sees it, he wants to do it in large quantity so he can chill while it runs.
We had a couple people break into our work on a Sunday night. They cut the security fence found an open door stole a bunch of vices and tools then found the keys for the work van loaded it all up and then proceeded to drive the work van thru the security gate and just left. That was 3 weeks ago and the police haven't recovered anything yet.
My programmer colleague, for his own competition (titanium+carbon fibre) bicycle, had been using company titanium, company new tools and machines without letting anyone know. Realized it, because I run out of titanium I ordered for a job. He got his ears pulled... But that's all
We had a guy that would crash machines all the time. We're talking spindle going straight down full speed into vices on milling machines. Crashing the turret on lathes into the spindle. Start making changes to already proofed programs for whatever reasons - which would then crash or fault the tolerances on the part. Shit happens and we all make mistakes but the worst part was that he would NEVER EVER admit fault. Not a single fucking time did he ever say "sorry" or "oh my bad". You had to stand there literally looking at the spindle being busted up and listening to him trying to squirm his way out of it. Its like.... I dont really give a shit about you breaking things - it aint my money - but I have to stand there and waste time because you asked for help to fix it - and I know you fucked up and I know you know that I know it... but nope. Mustve been the CAD/CAM systems fault. Tool suppliers fault. Collegaues fault who wasnt even on job that day. Postprocessing fault. You name it. Thank fuck that guy was fired in the end. Im not even supposed to have grey hair at my age but god DAMN if he wasnt making me tired
At work, im watching my parts being made, measuring my parts, polishing, and listening to my machines. I get home after a 12 hour shift and then i watch titans of cnc videos. 8 months into machining and I made parts that had a .0003 tolerance on it. I only scrapped 1 because my drill pecks werent dragging shavings out and the shavings ate up and tapered my ID. Granted these parts were aluminum but i was so impressed with myself and proud of my work. Im confident i could do it on 304 material. Honestly 304 is the worst ive worked with. I did 1 inconel job so far but it went fairly smooth cause i was told to watch my tools and i watched them like a hawk
A shop I worked at had a guy that would load a part (cycle time ~45min) then go take a nap in the back of the machine 😂 He crashed the machine for $200k in damage, then did it AGAIN a while later and finally got fired.
I'm retired now but after 45 years in the business I think I've seen it all. When I worked for a jet engine manufacturer, they had a zero tolerance for theft. The security guards would random check people leaving the plant looking in the employees' coolers, backpacks...I've seen a guy get fired for stealing two rolls of masking tape. Another for a flashlight. But I saw so much stuff leave that plant. It was a great place to work with the highest wages and best benefits around but there was an "inmate" mentality with many employees. They were always trying to get away with something. The biggest theft of all was time. Guys would dog jobs all week just to get the extra overtime. If anyone hustled, coworkers would get on them to slow down. It was like money grew on trees. The best thing that ever happened to me was getting laid off from there in 1992. I could tell stories all day about working there.
We had about $50k worth of inco 718 forgings stolen from our shop. The broke the gate lock and backed their truck right up to where the pallet of material was. They knew what they were there for.
We had a guy who stole tungsten cooper scrap from EDM electrodes in nightshifts. He brought the boxes with the forklift to his van. When they realised, they found five boxes in his garage.
At my job we've had strangers steal scrap metal. All of the scrap metal is contracted to be picked up. After having scrap stolen a few times, 3 at least, the company had security cameras installed and a fence put around the dock that the scrap gets put. If there's something I want to take home I will ask a supervisor first if it's okay. This is usually designated recycled scrap that's getting thrown out, like cardboard.
We have a semi-retired guy that's works 20 hrs a week. If we don't have enough material he slows it down to what I call "Grandpa Mode." He like to watch fishing vids while working; boss doesn't mind since it lets us work on other things. I "machine and chill" - I watch the Pakistani guys in sandals forge and machine with antiquated equipment.
We had a guy stealing the scrap carbide by putting bricks in the bottom of the bucket, he was caught red handed on a Saturday by the owner, one of the only guys that has ever been fired.
Back in 2005 I worked at a Automotive trade plastic injection moulders and the company went broke and the bank took it over until the lot could be sold. The 2 toolroom guys started a scam with the older machine tooling. They found a old locked gate that they replaced the lock with their own. Then organised a deal with a local metal recycling place, and had a heavy duty skip like the ones they use for quarries and soil removal. They then started filling it up every weekend ready for a 5am monday collection. I heard all of this from my shift tech I used to be paired up with, on shift with. The key to the gate was left in a fag box by the gate and afterwards it got full of £50 notes as well. Considering some tools we had used to be something like 37,500kg something like 85 U.S tonnes you can soon understand they had some £50 notes. All I couldn't believe is how the lorry managed to pick everything up and transported the load.
I worked in the tool crib at my first shop. The night shift lead asked me about a 2 inch shell mill that we had at one point. I went to get it from the crib, but it was nowhere to be found. After I rold hom I couldn't locate it. We came to the conclusion that someone had crashed it and tossed it ro get rid of the evidence. Come to find out he had stolen it along with thousands of dollars worth of tooling. He was selling it second hand ro his buddies shops. He asked me about the shell mill to test me to see if I was on to his scam.
Never take anything without asking or offering funds for it. I know of several foreman that over ordered materials to do work in their homes with the surplus supplies. Ridiculous
This guy was clocked in every weekend for OT at this place I used to work but he was nowhere to be found - ever! They found him sleeping under a desk in one of the offices as HR did not work on the weekends
The slowing feeds thing makes me so mad. I work solo on nights to do all the programming and set up for our lathes. Had 150 parts that needed to be faced to length (10 sec/part), then turned between centers(1min per part). Maybe a 3-4hr job. Came in the next day, 2 button pushers that work 10 hr shifts managed to only face 40 of them, none tbc.
Might be an unpopular take but if the company you work for is so ignorant to whats going on that someone can buy double of tooling and shop supplies without being caught or even asked about it, they probably deserve to be ripped off... In 20+ years, Ive seen just about everything at the shop level go down. We call it "wage theft" when people are abusing bathroom breaks or dicking around when they should be working and will have a conversation a couple times with said employee but after enough talks, they go out the door. Its no different than working at a convenience store and taking money right out of the cash drawer. Same goes for shop supplies. I have worked for shops that are really lax about shop stuff and some that dont mess around with "company property". at the large shop I used to work at, they would encourage employees to take gloves and safety glasses etc home with them for use around the house cause it was a minor expense to encourage safe behavior at home but some shop Ive worked at, Ive seen people get written up for something as simple as trying to take a couple washers home for a DIY project in their garage. Gotta read the room with the company. Probably the worst one I had seen was one company I worked for had a tool reimbursement program that helped new guys get tools quickly and do it as a payroll reduction out of their check in payments to soften the blow of the investments for calipers, mics etc. One guy they hired right out of school that looked like a tweaker, they somehow let him put a full 3 tier kennedy toolbox, a set of 0-4" mitutoyo digi mics and a 12" digi mitutoyo caliper on his work account, then he quit like 3 weeks later after like 1 payment came out of his check but he took his tookbox home on an off shift when nobody seen him doing so. between the tools and the fact that I knew he was hoarding mitsubishi MZS carbide drills in his box, I figure he walked out with around 5-6k worth of stuff and they couldnt even come after him for it. they just kept his last paycheck which didnt even come remotely close to covering it all.
Ridiculous argument..The reason it would probably work in the short term in my company is that we are a multi billion pound company...But you will always be caught eventually and it's best to not be known as a thief
My dad owned a machine shop, I can remember being there on a weekend once and a nicely dressed man came in and needed an a/c hose for his classic Mercedes welded. I was surprised my dad stopped what he doing and welded it. It was more than a 5 minute job it needed cleaned and checks for leaks. He gets it done and says it will be 20 dollars. The man acted shocked and was trying to negotiate, after a minute or 2 my dad said hold on, walks over to a grinder ground off the weld, takes it back to him and said here it's free!
It is not a machining story. A guy in Finance who worked at Maxell Video Cassettes set up a false company that placed orders, orders were made, orders were collected by customer transport and orders were marked on the system as paid. He only got found out when he went on holiday and forgot to cancel the orders while was away. The main line broke down so sales had to phone customers to apologise and then it was discovered. He got away with hundreds of thousands of pounds in the late 1980s and Maxell didn't want the bad publicity.
For me my darkest days were when I became aware of misplaced worker trust and a workers failing to be worthy of the companies trust. The real cost was to allow/lead me to become sardonic which affects all within my organization. This for me was always the most mentally challenging for issues that always pointed out to me the risks in judging who to trust and the effort needed by myself and company management to not become cynical and aloof with co-workers. Tight systems at companies are helpful and over time make for a stabile more friendly open work environment and for me are a core necessity for a sucessful operation for all. Ray
I cant top them. But i worked at a machine shop. That used brass bar stock from a 1/2 inch up 2 inch bars. And they stole a 13 foot box of them at 2 in morning. Thinking the Camera, s All over the place wouldn't see them😅😅.
I've seen a coworker sitting on a lawnchair hooking pieces out of a machine with a stick and another who sat on a stool perched on top of a pallet because he couldn't reach his parts without standing up between cycles.
Reading all these comments reminds me of many years ago when J. R. Williams drew the ‘Out Our Way’ comic strip (for newspaper ‘funny’ pages) that featured at least once a week about his time working in a machine shop. Sure, the times, conditions and machines have changed, but human nature has not. Whether in biblical times or in present day, human nature has not changed but technologies have! Fascinating!
I got a lot of stories but just to name a few at where I am currently working 1. We got a guy that will work 70-80 a week regardless of it he has any work or not, this same guy will move to a manual lathe and after every cut will sweep the floor and wipe the machine down ( Major brown nose) 2. We had a guy looking through cabinets looking for a metric tap like m12 by 1.5, the supervisor thought he would "help out", said supervisor then found a m12 by 2 and told him to use this, then the guy told him he needed a 1.5 to clarify and the supervisor reply was can't you just take a half inch off.
A superintendent at a union plumbing shop a friend of mine worked for threw away/hide $250,000 worth of copper plumbing that he over purchased for a job. Crazy thing is they didn't even fire him.
Worked at a place that the guy there told me someone years ago before caneras ..came in thru the HVAC duct work outside the building somone figured coming in thru that and they took brass bars of stock 6 ft 8ft who knows but that was something out of a movie
Literally have all of these in my one shop. One guy who does all of these everyday. The only one they don’t do is the last one because nobody orders tools but they definitely keep them in their tools boxes. Another thing that makes me mad is when they leave all there tools from the last job still in the holders because they used the wrong collet and it got stuck or something.
Last shop I worked at we had a guy that would crawl under his cnc punch press machine and piss in bottles. ** he was only 10 feet from the bathroom.** Same place my shop lead would spit his chew into the machines as he did not want to get caught with a spit bottle in the shop. Same lead would walk across the street every break and on lunch and smash tall boys (about 4 total through the night.) He would do this every single day without fail. Drank so much he refused to get a drivers license so he would not get a DUI wife drove him to and from work everyday. As soon as I found a better place to work I was out of there!!
previous admin lady at my company managed to embezzle almost $200k by falsifying purchase orders before she was eventually caught. back in the day there were other people who were paying for mortgages, toys, and all kinds of other stuff on their corporate card which had a $40k credit limit for as hyper focused as corporations are on profit margins they sure do suck at managing them lol
My cnc dept is in the prep area so along with the saws and tube and plate lasers and we have 4 overhead cranes one time the hook crashed into the back of the mill luckily nothing was damaged.
This is standard business nowadays it seems! I’m not trying to downplay this video. As being in the trade we have all seen some pretty awesome things! But I could write a book on the things I’ve seen! I’ve watched a brand new (2 week old tow motor) that the company was leasing, getting torch cut up & loaded onto the scrap truck. I mentioned to the maintenance guys apprentice that was doing this that ur scrapping out the wrong one. He was certain that he was doing his job good. Same shop, I’ve seen a Bridgeport jump 2” off the ground. I may be exaggerating, but it definitely jumped & came off the floor. A guy power washing inside the building to clean the walls of the shop as well as the panel boxes & bus bars. 🤣. That was a firework show! He survived unfortunately!!! I’ve Seen numerous machines on fire….. numerous times. One guy was stiching up his own face in the bathroom.after he fell off the roof of the building trying to install his own surveillance cameras (so he could see if his parole officer was showing up), I watched a saw guy cutting up 1” dia. copper bars up so he could fit them into his trunk easier. Another guy was throwing brass parts straight off the machine into a 55 gal. Drum for scrap, b/c he thought he was making the company money. B/c scrap was high. Seen a guy grind a flat on a new carbide endmill for a solid holder. He put a flat on the flutes! He also showed up to work wearing pajamas pants & slippers. Worked w/one guy that argued that carbide is malleable! “He was an engineer” 🤦♂️. Another guy after 2 weeks of employment said he wasn’t feeling good b/c of the chemical/coolant in the shop, turned out that he was drinking solvent! The waste solvent besides! 🤦♂️I relocated recently & started a new job. I learned the roof caved in a few months ago b/c a long time employee that never made a bad part in his life has been throwing the bad parts that he never made on to the roof for 10 yrs. Scrap parts came raining down into the shop, when the roof couldn’t handle the weight of his “good parts”?There’s homeless people that live behind the shop in the woods, they tied an extension cord into the buildings service. Idk if that counts as crazy things uve ever seen @ a shop or not. Its a tough trade! Try to laugh & make the best of it & help out who you can that is willing to learn. You never stop learning in any trade. Be humble, try new things, learn from mistakes. Try & keep up w/new technologies & push the limits! Think outside of the box! Listen & try new things & ways of doing things.
had one that would do jobs twice. so production dropped in half. but it backfired because it created a back log, which meant other staff had nothing to do. so he got replaced by that staff and he was never asked back. had one with workers stealing material to do sideline jobs with. when the company clamped down on it, 30% of the staff walked out.
We got two brand new DMGmori mill turns. Somehow we lost both chucks. Then we got two mazaks mill turns and someone sent the steady rest to the scrapers
Personally I only taken used tools that I permission to take. Where I put it into my personal collection of very unic tools ex. A 1mm endmill that was relieved 30xd ( and that's a solid carbide endmill that's 30mm long and 1mm in diameter) or shared them with my old school ( telling them how much life there is left ) that the new students can use that doesn't matter if it breaks or not since it was almost out of life anyway and didn't cost the school anything extra in terms of carbide
some people working with open doors often because the production manager wouldn't replace old glass you couldn't see through anymore. also cleaning up like 20+ year old rusty tools holders and shit and people diging through the scrap container pulling out old drills and putting it back into their drawers and so on. not shocking but annoying af
Idk about crazy things I have seen, but a crazy thing that happened to me was, I was working 2nd shift at this machine shop in Michigan and I have been working there for 5 years on 1st shift at this point, but I had just went to 2nd shift and I seen both the 2nd shift managers walking out. I didn't think anything of it until the owner came up to me and asked if i could fill in as manager until they hire someone. So I asked what happened to them? Well they we're apparently using the work computer to look up porn all night lmao.. the worker's that have been there for 10 plus years by the time I started their wasn't too happy about me, a 23 year old being manager of their shift lol.
not a cnc shop buut two of the guys were putting bronze chips in thier boots , boss didnt fire them and did some shady stuff tho they basically lost thier accumulated pension funds because he technically fired and rehired thm
hammock left behind the machine by the night shift. Turning the feedrate down so the next shift can finish the job was a classic one. not rinsing out the water out of the acid rinsing baths in 10 years.. rinsing baths were more acidic than the acid dipping baths (chemical treatment - risk of micro fractures, impacting part life).Fitting the wrong inserts (no radius) on the milling tools leaving stress risers in the corners on 200k parts and not detecting it after 50 parts (expensive - in the millions to rectifiy)...Pallet fallout out if the machine...(maintenance error)... destroying a few millions worth of aluminium spindles on hard metal roughing...(management decision)... a few stories from more than a decade spent in the aerospace sector... :) But none of these were as bad for the company as getting targeted by a ransomware, crippling the DNC server, and a large chunk of the Siemens controls (mostly the older generation ones - running windows XP). It took the company several years to recover and millions / month in IT consultancy fees. Look after your shop IT and OT guys, its the backbone of your company. They learnt this the hard way after years of putting it on the backbench...
Each one of these instances is, itself, theft! Stealing scrap or embezzling through order fraud is more obvious as theft but the other cases are almost as bad because they are subtle and encouraged by the company leadership, policies, and culture.
Some of the biggest thefts I have seen over the years were to do with frauds involving swarf (scrap metal chips) mis weighing skips etc. and these involved senior managers. On the other end I have seen an employee walking out with armfuls of toilet paper. We all have to admit to bringing home a few drills and taps.
I've seen someone lose a leg...broken ribs...broken legs...missing fingers...although I'm in a production facility with everything together so most of these weren't the machining side of things
Aww, hell no. That's probably one of my worst fears about this job. Just before this summer holiday I had to call an ambulance for my coworker on the evening shift, so it'll probably just be me on my own for a couple of weeks after I get back. He cut his hand bad on a sharp edge part and I still don't know if the doctors managed to patch all the tendons, nerves, and whatnot back together.
We lock up the semichrome polish and diamond stones.. not because it is all that valuable just so we can keep track of usage. We had a new guy take a whole case of semichrome polish and 6 diamond files..he said because he wanted to make sure he had some.. a case lasts us about 2 years in the shop LOL he got fired
Regarding stealing from employer, guess how about every one who used to work in Finnish paper mills had their garden hardware made out of "leisure time steel", as aisi 316 is called here.
We were getting ready to take delivery of a new oil tanker. One of our crew members was notorious for theft of materials from shipyards. During a pre-delivery meeting the shipyard announced that they were missing a sealed 55 gallon drum of brand new welding cable. The shipyard asked if it was OK to search the ship. They searched from one end to other. Prior to delivery everytank was inspected and sealed. I never heard what became of the welding cable.
One supervisor had programmed a spindle monitoring progam and one of the gun drill operators would just turn on his spindles, put the kettle on to boil sit and enjoy his tea then get around to actually doing any drilling.
![АЛАУДИНОВ у Скабеевой: эти их ВСУ нас НЕ ДОГОНЯТ 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/an0anqU4WGQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Best story I heard was when a company I worked for sold out to a huge corporation. They owned 4 shops in different cities and they owned the buildings they were in. The owners had assumed that the buildings were part of the 60 million sale but at the end of signing one of the lawyers for the big corp piped up and said "ok! now we should discuss rent for the locations". One of the owners said he was so shocked because this was around 8 million in property and in that moment he had to try to stay calm and deadpan like he knew that was the deal. Suddenly 8 million richer lol!
Forget machining and chill we have guys just chill all day everyday.
Hard for me to grasps this, the longest shifts I've ever worked are the ones when I'm either done the moment I sit at my workstation or the ones where I'm done 2.25 hours into an 8 hour shift. Make me happy give me a good 7.5 hours of work that leaves me time to get up check the machines talk to the young guys in the dept and make sure things are going well for them, and before I know it, shift is over.
As an apprentice an older machinist was training me on a big machining cell. Once a week we had to clean the whole thing and when he was done, he locked all the doors and left me inside. I almost shit myself when he pressed start. Luckily I could climb out of the cell and he was fired soon after.
No lock-out/tag-out?
@@hool10 No beacause it is a pretty old cell an there were no emergency stops on the inside which is pretty irresponsible in my opionion
@@thefailbrothers345 Well that is an OSHA violation haha. There are ways to make things that old to not work when being operated on (cutting power to a junction box, etc).
@@hool10 In Germany we dont have OSHA but it still goes against all mandatory safety precautions... I am glad I dont work there anymore
Lady at the front desk managed to order 20k worth of stuff off Amazon with a company card
You know.... Women are really good at shopping... Just sayin...
I heard from a coworker that shop labour guys at an auto plant would load eachother on pallets and put them on high shelves so they could have naps without being found/disturbed.
The absolute worst thing I have ever been around was two guys on the same machine but different shifts fighting. Let's just say that it ended when the guy on the off shift crapped into the coolant tank and left it overnight for the first shift to discover about half way into his shift the next day. The second shift guy was fired as soon as he walked into the door.
I've seen tool boxes drilled and tapped for a zerk fitting and then filled with grease.
I was once told by a operator that he didn't run a machine at 100% programmed rate because "You don't run your car wide open" I replied "But you do run your refrigerator wide open" .
I just retired after 47 years in machine shops, believe me I've seen it all!
The guy in ‘receive and dispatch’ was selling parts to existing clients for cash out the back door and said that the money went into a bucket to pay for grog for the company’s annual Christmas party but later on in a shopping mall one of these clients ran into the business owner and made an off the cuff comment that the Christmas party bucket must be pretty full by now to which he responded “we don’t have a bucket”. After doing some auditing someone was left unemployed.
Not mainly a machine shop story but figured you all would get a kick out of a stupid decision from the top brass. Food product manufacturing was the job, mostly bagged ready to use ice cream and coffee.
They brought in a team to map out our warehouse and setup an entire ROBOTIC FORKLIFT that was supposed to be faster and quicker than us on our actual forklifts. (It was not for any reason at all, thing was so slow we could out pace it even with our slowest forklift.) All of us on our shift kept telling the upper brass that it would not behave even with all the updates and also manually programing from the company. Kept stopping in odd places, going the wrong way, sent a few pallets flying at times destroying all the finished product and my favorite was when it almost took out an entire rack of ingredients but thankfully the emergency stop worked.
One night it came to a head. Got a call from work at roughly two in the morning and it was my main boss telling me to get to work and don't even dress out. I hauled tail and walked in covered in oil and grease from working a riding mower all day to see the robotic forklift had drove through a wall and crushed the HIGH PRESSURE STEAM PIPE which made each line not only lose sterile state but shut down all of them. Upon further inspection it had also taken out the secondary power for several machines on the bottle line as well. All the top brass where sweating bullets when they showed up and the CEO was looking at them with dagger eyes and was mad to say the least. Took two weeks to get the facility back up then another week to have it all inspected and certified again. Don't know how much that cost but when you lose all the product in the silos along with other raw materials in the mixing tanks and the repairs and down time did not look good to anyone.
The embezzling happened at my shop just now. Except they were taking $$ from us-their employees. For over half the year, all of our IRA contributions and company matched contributions were not deposited to our accounts. This is all unfolding in the moment. We're still not sure where the money was, but we've been told the money was accounted for and will be in our accounts asap. And our 'lost moneys' will be calculated and reimbursed.
Also there was similar to your tool purchaser, our guy was charging $200 on paper for a $60 impreg process per part, pocketing the difference.
The list goes on....Our shop is managed by people with the poor morals.
We had a guy for a few years who would defecate in a cardboard box and seal it and then store it in the warehouse with the 'ready to ship' finished parts. Once in a while, someone would notice the smell, and we drew lots for who would have to find.
Another story we had the old owner of the shop was kept on when a corporation took over and kept him on as manager of the conventional nc machine department. He had a drinking problem, and by the time it was lunch time, he was already already loaded. We all lunch breaked at the same time and ate together at the same table. This guy would get there in the middle of break while everyone was eating and place his colostomy bag on the table while his did a magic trick show for the shop. Not too many would stay to finish their lunch,and if you said anything to him, he would get belligerent and threatened to fire everyone. The good thing was he wouldn't remember it the next day, so he never remembered who he fired.
I used take over the evening shift at the same shop. One time the day shift guy i would take over for was in the middle of a set up, and for some reason he decided to switch out a CNC facemill for a flycutter from the Bridgeport. I don't know the feed rate or the spindle speed he was using, but that insert bulleted through 3 pieces of safety plexiglass and landed 80 yards from the machine. He was watching with the door closed and another 3 inches to the left he would have died. He wasn't fazed at all, in fact, he didn't even blink.(He never really ever blinked, he always wore a blank expression on his face.) He turned to look at me and calmly stated "Wow I almost died, I guess that was a fugazi."
I got a bunch more, but this is a family show.
The first story was really hilarious
One- an old shop I did maintenance at had 2 guys on off shift steal a 55 gallon drum of used carbide and drive it right to the scrap yard. The yard called the only machine shop in 60 miles and they confirmed it was stolen. They got arrested.
Two- 3 off shift guys got caught at Walmart when they were clocked in at work by a 1st shift supervisor.
Three- My favorite- while I was a QC supervisor we had a group of 2nd shifters take a shipping crate that a new Hass machine came in and carried it across a creek behind the shop and hid it in a tree line. Made a walking bridge. And ran an extension cord from the shop and made in a drug shack. Come spring the farmer neighbor was turning over his field and saw it in his trees. Call our shop and we walk out there and they had furniture, radio and a heater. When we fired the guys that did that they had the nerve to ask if they could keep the shack. We flattened it with a backhoe.
My instructor at his old job had a leisurely sloth that would slow down the feeds so frequently on his machines using the overrides that my instructor went into the config of the employee's machine and disabled the feed overrides.
I was a machinist for 50 years. This incident happened in California, South Gate to be exact. We had 36 hi speed Davenports. One of the operators on 2nd shift told me he was having trouble with the cutting oil going sour after a couple days. He would clean out machine and put in fresh. Same thing happened. So he hung around at end of his shift and watched. Lo and behold, about an hour in, his shift replacement took a leak in the oil tank. Need I say more. Did not end well for him.
Oh boy where do we start. My employes stole caribide from me, did machining and chill and slowed down speeds and feeds from this list.
But two cases stand out in my shop.
1. One of my eployes tried to put down a flaming bucket of gasoline with his foot. He was hand grinding some large industrial bearing neer that bucket, and even though my other employes told him to and how to secure it it lit on fire. I even have a video of that on my onedrive hounting me as a reminder every day... Thankfully he got out in one piece.
2. I cought my employes having made whole equipment for exploding water bottles with compressed air. They made one tool to puncture the bottle and another to hold an air gun in it untill compressed air explodes the bottle. Then they made pranks on one another when they set up the bottle behind one of them, then they hide and turn the valve to explode the bottle behing the worker who didin't notice untill to late.
You have a great team
Freakin Barry pops up out of nowhere, lol😂 Funny take on some real problems in many shops.
Nah, you can see his feet at 5:30 behind the tire.
Back in the 70's, I worked graveyard shift in a union shop that had a lot of N/C machines, which they used to build N/C punch presses among other things. One area of the shop cranked out punches & dies by the thousands using cam-operated, bar-fed turning machines. One of my co-workers came up with the idea of making lug nuts (for cars) on one of the machines, using company materials on a company machine. Just before the day shift would clock in, he would haul several tote pans full of lug nuts out to his car. Eventually, he got caught, and disciplined, but not fired, thanks to union intervention. However, he thought he was treated so unjustly that, on the day that the company president handed out Thanksgiving turkeys as we punched out at the end of the shift, this a-hole took his frozen turkey, slammed it down at the President's feet, and told him to shove his turkey up his ass. Again, disciplined, but not fired. I watched it happen. Unions suck.
We had a manager in charge of inspection. He copied every print and file he could of parts we made for pharmaceutical machinery. Also grabbed a vendor list of outside machine shop and other suppliers. Gave his two weeks' notice and opened his own business. Starting selling accessories & replacement parts for the machinery the company sold.
Worked for a division of Sandvik that was later sold to Nobel Biocare years ago . At the time ,my neighbor was the CEO . He and his administrative assistant embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars and no one really knew till Nobel took over. This guy, in the middle of the night moved 3 towns away into a 500k house I personally knew he couldn't afford and wondered how he could do it.. After Nobel ran an investigation, this man was arrested and sent to prison with over 900k being stolen and Sandvik never knew..
Crazy, he was stealing the money of one of the top insert manufacturer
@Roberty98 the division I was at was Procera Sandvik. We m made dental implants. Same building as Sandvik Coromant , but another division. Infact , we were blocked off from Coromant by concrete walls
Sandvik is massive. Mining is a huge game for them. They won't miss 900k.. Doesn't make it right though!!
One day at night Shift a forklift Driver wants to get a Cola from the Cola Automat, without dismounting the forklift . He pinched His head Just enogh that He could Not get Back and stayed Like this the hole night😂
Hide and seek 2 :
Being an inspector trying to find the guy responsible for a first article part to tell him its passed/failed
The scarlet setter.... we seek him here, we seek him there.. is in heaven or is he in hell.....
He's got so good at hiding lately we haven't seen him for 6 months...
Schunk paid him to steal the TECO vise - "Get that thing OUTTA HERE!"
The Leisurely Sloth is my personal favorite. Had a guy in my shop grinding cranks as slow as possible and showed him how to speed the grinding machine up without stressing himself more. I told him its better for the machine, better for him so he hasn´t to stand so long at the machine and better for us and the customer. As soon as I went away I heard the grindinh machine slowing down. Askind him why he did that his answer was "if you don´t like how i´m working you could fire me". Had him working overtime on a Saturday. Came later in the shop and he had set up a crank for grinding and after 3 hours he hadn´t even ground one single journal.
After years of working in workshops and a foundry. I have some stories to share, we had one guy stealing raw metals and then sold them openly in socials.
Then we had a guy in the quality dep. doing false positive and then steeling them after work at night, they caught him by the times he used the pass card at the gate, after that they did bag checks for a year... fun times 😅
The shop I was Purchasing
Manager for years, whe had a shop manager I found out was bring men in on Saturdays on overtime and was sawing up good finished parts, Rae material, then selling it scrap. To top it off he had contractors come to his house and do work there and charge it to the company. I starting receiving invoices which had no purchase orders. Sad, because he had a great job and a generous owner.
Haha, love that video. I remember a man who used to take away a box full of metal chips in his lunchbox every day. But I never saw him arrive in a new SUV or live in a mansion with a mountain view.
We had someone stealing multi tonne steel plates...him and the delivery driver where in cahoots together and when the delivery would come in he would unload the material then load an older plate back onto the truck and then sell it for scrap...didn't take long to get caught...lose your job of a couple hundred £ plates...morons
The list of kleptomaniacs at my old place is very long. Tig welders, 55 gal barrels of brass chips, tooling, power tools, and on and on.
The first shop I worked in I was there for almost a decade before I got married and moved. There was a welder who would walk around the shop at the beginning and end of the shift and empty all of the aluminum can recycling bins into his own bags, then walk through punch press and take all the copper slugs he could carry in his lunch box. He did this for the last 20 years he worked until he retired. When he told the company he was retiring they came back to him and had him on camera stealing it all and had totaled up their losses and handed him a bill for $65k or they were going to be filing charges for their losses
The biggest problem is with the ants in the shop. You know, the two legged ones that carry off all the little hand tools and cutters and taking them home to sell. Amazing how much money this can add up to over time.
Leisury sloth: Somebody told me that one guy likes this program because it has a feature he programmed for 6 hours and runs for 5 minutes because it is milling where you could have it done in a good one minute in a not so powerful lathe driven tool. If he sees it, he wants to do it in large quantity so he can chill while it runs.
We had a couple people break into our work on a Sunday night. They cut the security fence found an open door stole a bunch of vices and tools then found the keys for the work van loaded it all up and then proceeded to drive the work van thru the security gate and just left. That was 3 weeks ago and the police haven't recovered anything yet.
My programmer colleague, for his own competition (titanium+carbon fibre) bicycle, had been using company titanium, company new tools and machines without letting anyone know.
Realized it, because I run out of titanium I ordered for a job.
He got his ears pulled... But that's all
We had a guy that would crash machines all the time. We're talking spindle going straight down full speed into vices on milling machines. Crashing the turret on lathes into the spindle. Start making changes to already proofed programs for whatever reasons - which would then crash or fault the tolerances on the part.
Shit happens and we all make mistakes but the worst part was that he would NEVER EVER admit fault. Not a single fucking time did he ever say "sorry" or "oh my bad". You had to stand there literally looking at the spindle being busted up and listening to him trying to squirm his way out of it. Its like.... I dont really give a shit about you breaking things - it aint my money - but I have to stand there and waste time because you asked for help to fix it - and I know you fucked up and I know you know that I know it... but nope. Mustve been the CAD/CAM systems fault. Tool suppliers fault. Collegaues fault who wasnt even on job that day. Postprocessing fault. You name it.
Thank fuck that guy was fired in the end. Im not even supposed to have grey hair at my age but god DAMN if he wasnt making me tired
Someone wasn’t paying attention to the hoist and pulled to the ground a completely brand new machine installation.
Guy was fired stealing shop paper towels. He had them in plain sight in the back of his hatchback.
At work, im watching my parts being made, measuring my parts, polishing, and listening to my machines. I get home after a 12 hour shift and then i watch titans of cnc videos. 8 months into machining and I made parts that had a .0003 tolerance on it. I only scrapped 1 because my drill pecks werent dragging shavings out and the shavings ate up and tapered my ID. Granted these parts were aluminum but i was so impressed with myself and proud of my work. Im confident i could do it on 304 material. Honestly 304 is the worst ive worked with. I did 1 inconel job so far but it went fairly smooth cause i was told to watch my tools and i watched them like a hawk
I'm sorry but wtf!!! 75 parts 3 weeks 12 hour shifts is beyond taking the piss lol
Night shift pissing in coolant tanks.
Oh my freaking gravy.....wow. New hell of coolant mist...
All of the machinists at one shop I worked at spit chew spit in the tanks on all 3 shifts..
And cigarette buds
Here in Germany, an old employee always had a bottle of vodka in the coolant tank of his milling machine.
This apparently happened before my time somewhere I used to work too. And judging from the comments here it's sadly not that unique!
A shop I worked at had a guy that would load a part (cycle time ~45min) then go take a nap in the back of the machine 😂
He crashed the machine for $200k in damage, then did it AGAIN a while later and finally got fired.
200k in damages? What machine was it?
@@willyharris4199I think a DMG Mori NTX 3000. The 5 axis head was hanging by a wire lol
I'm retired now but after 45 years in the business I think I've seen it all. When I worked for a jet engine manufacturer, they had a zero tolerance for theft. The security guards would random check people leaving the plant looking in the employees' coolers, backpacks...I've seen a guy get fired for stealing two rolls of masking tape. Another for a flashlight. But I saw so much stuff leave that plant. It was a great place to work with the highest wages and best benefits around but there was an "inmate" mentality with many employees. They were always trying to get away with something. The biggest theft of all was time. Guys would dog jobs all week just to get the extra overtime. If anyone hustled, coworkers would get on them to slow down. It was like money grew on trees. The best thing that ever happened to me was getting laid off from there in 1992. I could tell stories all day about working there.
We had about $50k worth of inco 718 forgings stolen from our shop. The broke the gate lock and backed their truck right up to where the pallet of material was. They knew what they were there for.
inside job for sure
We had a guy who stole tungsten cooper scrap from EDM electrodes in nightshifts. He brought the boxes with the forklift to his van. When they realised, they found five boxes in his garage.
At my job we've had strangers steal scrap metal. All of the scrap metal is contracted to be picked up. After having scrap stolen a few times, 3 at least, the company had security cameras installed and a fence put around the dock that the scrap gets put.
If there's something I want to take home I will ask a supervisor first if it's okay. This is usually designated recycled scrap that's getting thrown out, like cardboard.
We have a semi-retired guy that's works 20 hrs a week. If we don't have enough material he slows it down to what I call "Grandpa Mode." He like to watch fishing vids while working; boss doesn't mind since it lets us work on other things. I "machine and chill" - I watch the Pakistani guys in sandals forge and machine with antiquated equipment.
We had a guy stealing the scrap carbide by putting bricks in the bottom of the bucket, he was caught red handed on a Saturday by the owner, one of the only guys that has ever been fired.
how does that work? bricks like masonry bricks? and what bucket? the bucket of broken carbide?
Back in 2005 I worked at a Automotive trade plastic injection moulders and the company went broke and the bank took it over until the lot could be sold. The 2 toolroom guys started a scam with the older machine tooling. They found a old locked gate that they replaced the lock with their own. Then organised a deal with a local metal recycling place, and had a heavy duty skip like the ones they use for quarries and soil removal.
They then started filling it up every weekend ready for a 5am monday collection. I heard all of this from my shift tech I used to be paired up with, on shift with. The key to the gate was left in a fag box by the gate and afterwards it got full of £50 notes as well. Considering some tools we had used to be something like 37,500kg something like 85 U.S tonnes you can soon understand they had some £50 notes. All I couldn't believe is how the lorry managed to pick everything up and transported the load.
I worked in the tool crib at my first shop. The night shift lead asked me about a 2 inch shell mill that we had at one point. I went to get it from the crib, but it was nowhere to be found. After I rold hom I couldn't locate it. We came to the conclusion that someone had crashed it and tossed it ro get rid of the evidence. Come to find out he had stolen it along with thousands of dollars worth of tooling. He was selling it second hand ro his buddies shops. He asked me about the shell mill to test me to see if I was on to his scam.
Never take anything without asking or offering funds for it. I know of several foreman that over ordered materials to do work in their homes with the surplus supplies. Ridiculous
This guy was clocked in every weekend for OT at this place I used to work but he was nowhere to be found - ever!
They found him sleeping under a desk in one of the offices as HR did not work on the weekends
The slowing feeds thing makes me so mad. I work solo on nights to do all the programming and set up for our lathes. Had 150 parts that needed to be faced to length (10 sec/part), then turned between centers(1min per part). Maybe a 3-4hr job. Came in the next day, 2 button pushers that work 10 hr shifts managed to only face 40 of them, none tbc.
Might be an unpopular take but if the company you work for is so ignorant to whats going on that someone can buy double of tooling and shop supplies without being caught or even asked about it, they probably deserve to be ripped off... In 20+ years, Ive seen just about everything at the shop level go down. We call it "wage theft" when people are abusing bathroom breaks or dicking around when they should be working and will have a conversation a couple times with said employee but after enough talks, they go out the door. Its no different than working at a convenience store and taking money right out of the cash drawer. Same goes for shop supplies. I have worked for shops that are really lax about shop stuff and some that dont mess around with "company property". at the large shop I used to work at, they would encourage employees to take gloves and safety glasses etc home with them for use around the house cause it was a minor expense to encourage safe behavior at home but some shop Ive worked at, Ive seen people get written up for something as simple as trying to take a couple washers home for a DIY project in their garage. Gotta read the room with the company. Probably the worst one I had seen was one company I worked for had a tool reimbursement program that helped new guys get tools quickly and do it as a payroll reduction out of their check in payments to soften the blow of the investments for calipers, mics etc. One guy they hired right out of school that looked like a tweaker, they somehow let him put a full 3 tier kennedy toolbox, a set of 0-4" mitutoyo digi mics and a 12" digi mitutoyo caliper on his work account, then he quit like 3 weeks later after like 1 payment came out of his check but he took his tookbox home on an off shift when nobody seen him doing so. between the tools and the fact that I knew he was hoarding mitsubishi MZS carbide drills in his box, I figure he walked out with around 5-6k worth of stuff and they couldnt even come after him for it. they just kept his last paycheck which didnt even come remotely close to covering it all.
Ridiculous argument..The reason it would probably work in the short term in my company is that we are a multi billion pound company...But you will always be caught eventually and it's best to not be known as a thief
My dad owned a machine shop, I can remember being there on a weekend once and a nicely dressed man came in and needed an a/c hose for his classic Mercedes welded. I was surprised my dad stopped what he doing and welded it. It was more than a 5 minute job it needed cleaned and checks for leaks. He gets it done and says it will be 20 dollars. The man acted shocked and was trying to negotiate, after a minute or 2 my dad said hold on, walks over to a grinder ground off the weld, takes it back to him and said here it's free!
It is not a machining story. A guy in Finance who worked at Maxell Video Cassettes set up a false company that placed orders, orders were made, orders were collected by customer transport and orders were marked on the system as paid. He only got found out when he went on holiday and forgot to cancel the orders while was away. The main line broke down so sales had to phone customers to apologise and then it was discovered. He got away with hundreds of thousands of pounds in the late 1980s and Maxell didn't want the bad publicity.
For me my darkest days were when I became aware of misplaced worker trust and a workers failing to be worthy of the companies trust. The real cost was to allow/lead me to become sardonic which affects all within my organization. This for me was always the most mentally challenging for issues that always pointed out to me the risks in judging who to trust and the effort needed by myself and company management to not become cynical and aloof with co-workers. Tight systems at companies are helpful and over time make for a stabile more friendly open work environment and for me are a core necessity for a sucessful operation for all. Ray
I cant top them. But i worked at a machine shop. That used brass bar stock from a 1/2 inch up 2 inch bars. And they stole a 13 foot box of them at 2 in morning. Thinking the Camera, s All over the place wouldn't see them😅😅.
What's really shocking is that you haven't done a bloopers episode in awhile.
My coworker was caught drinking on the job TWICE and didn’t get fired
Another coworker got picked up by the cops and never came back
I love you guys so much I’m so proud of you boys putting up the hard work at titans of CNC keep up the good work
Machines running, tool room builds the tools.
In CT our trade is under siege by this it's so true..
cant wait to leave huh?
I've seen a coworker sitting on a lawnchair hooking pieces out of a machine with a stick and another who sat on a stool perched on top of a pallet because he couldn't reach his parts without standing up between cycles.
Reading all these comments reminds me of many years ago when J. R. Williams drew the ‘Out Our Way’ comic strip (for newspaper ‘funny’ pages) that featured at least once a week about his time working in a machine shop. Sure, the times, conditions and machines have changed, but human nature has not. Whether in biblical times or in present day, human nature has not changed but technologies have! Fascinating!
I got a lot of stories but just to name a few at where I am currently working
1. We got a guy that will work 70-80 a week regardless of it he has any work or not, this same guy will move to a manual lathe and after every cut will sweep the floor and wipe the machine down ( Major brown nose)
2. We had a guy looking through cabinets looking for a metric tap like m12 by 1.5, the supervisor thought he would "help out", said supervisor then found a m12 by 2 and told him to use this, then the guy told him he needed a 1.5 to clarify and the supervisor reply was can't you just take a half inch off.
A superintendent at a union plumbing shop a friend of mine worked for threw away/hide $250,000 worth of copper plumbing that he over purchased for a job. Crazy thing is they didn't even fire him.
Biggest theft of life hours is asking for 12hours shift.
12 hour shifts is great if it's for 3, and occasionally 4 days a week
@@vanguard6937 Yes, IF.
Loved the ending lmao 😂
Worked at a place that the guy there told me someone years ago before caneras ..came in thru the HVAC duct work outside the building somone figured coming in thru that and they took brass bars of stock 6 ft 8ft who knows but that was something out of a movie
Literally have all of these in my one shop. One guy who does all of these everyday. The only one they don’t do is the last one because nobody orders tools but they definitely keep them in their tools boxes. Another thing that makes me mad is when they leave all there tools from the last job still in the holders because they used the wrong collet and it got stuck or something.
😂😂NICE ENDING!!!
Last shop I worked at we had a guy that would crawl under his cnc punch press machine and piss in bottles. ** he was only 10 feet from the bathroom.** Same place my shop lead would spit his chew into the machines as he did not want to get caught with a spit bottle in the shop. Same lead would walk across the street every break and on lunch and smash tall boys (about 4 total through the night.) He would do this every single day without fail. Drank so much he refused to get a drivers license so he would not get a DUI wife drove him to and from work everyday. As soon as I found a better place to work I was out of there!!
previous admin lady at my company managed to embezzle almost $200k by falsifying purchase orders before she was eventually caught. back in the day there were other people who were paying for mortgages, toys, and all kinds of other stuff on their corporate card which had a $40k credit limit
for as hyper focused as corporations are on profit margins they sure do suck at managing them lol
My cnc dept is in the prep area so along with the saws and tube and plate lasers and we have 4 overhead cranes one time the hook crashed into the back of the mill luckily nothing was damaged.
This is standard business nowadays it seems! I’m not trying to downplay this video. As being in the trade we have all seen some pretty awesome things! But I could write a book on the things I’ve seen! I’ve watched a brand new (2 week old tow motor) that the company was leasing, getting torch cut up & loaded onto the scrap truck. I mentioned to the maintenance guys apprentice that was doing this that ur scrapping out the wrong one. He was certain that he was doing his job good. Same shop, I’ve seen a Bridgeport jump 2” off the ground. I may be exaggerating, but it definitely jumped & came off the floor. A guy power washing inside the building to clean the walls of the shop as well as the panel boxes & bus bars. 🤣. That was a firework show! He survived unfortunately!!! I’ve Seen numerous machines on fire….. numerous times. One guy was stiching up his own face in the bathroom.after he fell off the roof of the building trying to install his own surveillance cameras (so he could see if his parole officer was showing up), I watched a saw guy cutting up 1” dia. copper bars up so he could fit them into his trunk easier. Another guy was throwing brass parts straight off the machine into a 55 gal. Drum for scrap, b/c he thought he was making the company money. B/c scrap was high. Seen a guy grind a flat on a new carbide endmill for a solid holder. He put a flat on the flutes! He also showed up to work wearing pajamas pants & slippers. Worked w/one guy that argued that carbide is malleable! “He was an engineer” 🤦♂️. Another guy after 2 weeks of employment said he wasn’t feeling good b/c of the chemical/coolant in the shop, turned out that he was drinking solvent! The waste solvent besides! 🤦♂️I relocated recently & started a new job. I learned the roof caved in a few months ago b/c a long time employee that never made a bad part in his life has been throwing the bad parts that he never made on to the roof for 10 yrs. Scrap parts came raining down into the shop, when the roof couldn’t handle the weight of his “good parts”?There’s homeless people that live behind the shop in the woods, they tied an extension cord into the buildings service. Idk if that counts as crazy things uve ever seen @ a shop or not. Its a tough trade! Try to laugh & make the best of it & help out who you can that is willing to learn. You never stop learning in any trade. Be humble, try new things, learn from mistakes. Try & keep up w/new technologies & push the limits! Think outside of the box! Listen & try new things & ways of doing things.
Truth be told.. lol 4 out of 5
had one that would do jobs twice. so production dropped in half. but it backfired because it created a back log, which meant other staff had nothing to do. so he got replaced by that staff and he was never asked back.
had one with workers stealing material to do sideline jobs with. when the company clamped down on it, 30% of the staff walked out.
Love the flow of this video. Super seamless and easy to watch. Great job Jessie1
We got two brand new DMGmori mill turns. Somehow we lost both chucks. Then we got two mazaks mill turns and someone sent the steady rest to the scrapers
Had one place where bunch of intramics came up missing sombody found them in a pawn shop found out who did it
subtitling barry 🤣
You forgot the pallet 😂
Personally I only taken used tools that I permission to take. Where I put it into my personal collection of very unic tools ex. A 1mm endmill that was relieved 30xd ( and that's a solid carbide endmill that's 30mm long and 1mm in diameter) or shared them with my old school ( telling them how much life there is left ) that the new students can use that doesn't matter if it breaks or not since it was almost out of life anyway and didn't cost the school anything extra in terms of carbide
some people working with open doors often because the production manager wouldn't replace old glass you couldn't see through anymore. also cleaning up like 20+ year old rusty tools holders and shit and people diging through the scrap container pulling out old drills and putting it back into their drawers and so on. not shocking but annoying af
I new a guy worried about getting a DUI driving home from work. He hit the liquor store at 9am break. He was thirsty.
Idk about crazy things I have seen, but a crazy thing that happened to me was, I was working 2nd shift at this machine shop in Michigan and I have been working there for 5 years on 1st shift at this point, but I had just went to 2nd shift and I seen both the 2nd shift managers walking out. I didn't think anything of it until the owner came up to me and asked if i could fill in as manager until they hire someone. So I asked what happened to them? Well they we're apparently using the work computer to look up porn all night lmao.. the worker's that have been there for 10 plus years by the time I started their wasn't too happy about me, a 23 year old being manager of their shift lol.
not a cnc shop buut two of the guys were putting bronze chips in thier boots , boss didnt fire them and did some shady stuff tho they basically lost thier accumulated pension funds because he technically fired and rehired thm
hammock left behind the machine by the night shift. Turning the feedrate down so the next shift can finish the job was a classic one. not rinsing out the water out of the acid rinsing baths in 10 years.. rinsing baths were more acidic than the acid dipping baths (chemical treatment - risk of micro fractures, impacting part life).Fitting the wrong inserts (no radius) on the milling tools leaving stress risers in the corners on 200k parts and not detecting it after 50 parts (expensive - in the millions to rectifiy)...Pallet fallout out if the machine...(maintenance error)... destroying a few millions worth of aluminium spindles on hard metal roughing...(management decision)... a few stories from more than a decade spent in the aerospace sector... :)
But none of these were as bad for the company as getting targeted by a ransomware, crippling the DNC server, and a large chunk of the Siemens controls (mostly the older generation ones - running windows XP). It took the company several years to recover and millions / month in IT consultancy fees. Look after your shop IT and OT guys, its the backbone of your company. They learnt this the hard way after years of putting it on the backbench...
Each one of these instances is, itself, theft! Stealing scrap or embezzling through order fraud is more obvious as theft but the other cases are almost as bad because they are subtle and encouraged by the company leadership, policies, and culture.
"If you've got time to lean you've got time to clean."
As it goes in your truck! Lol
Some of the biggest thefts I have seen over the years were to do with frauds involving swarf (scrap metal chips) mis weighing skips etc. and these involved senior managers. On the other end I have seen an employee walking out with armfuls of toilet paper. We all have to admit to bringing home a few drills and taps.
I've seen someone lose a leg...broken ribs...broken legs...missing fingers...although I'm in a production facility with everything together so most of these weren't the machining side of things
Aww, hell no. That's probably one of my worst fears about this job.
Just before this summer holiday I had to call an ambulance for my coworker on the evening shift, so it'll probably just be me on my own for a couple of weeks after I get back.
He cut his hand bad on a sharp edge part and I still don't know if the doctors managed to patch all the tendons, nerves, and whatnot back together.
We lock up the semichrome polish and diamond stones.. not because it is all that valuable just so we can keep track of usage. We had a new guy take a whole case of semichrome polish and 6 diamond files..he said because he wanted to make sure he had some.. a case lasts us about 2 years in the shop LOL he got fired
Regarding stealing from employer, guess how about every one who used to work in Finnish paper mills had their garden hardware made out of "leisure time steel", as aisi 316 is called here.
A hole town in Norway called Halden have water drains from roofs made of stainless steel ..... yes from a paper mill.
We were getting ready to take delivery of a new oil tanker. One of our crew members was notorious for theft of materials from shipyards.
During a pre-delivery meeting the shipyard announced that they were missing a sealed 55 gallon drum of brand new welding cable. The shipyard asked if it was OK to search the ship. They searched from one end to other. Prior to delivery everytank was inspected and sealed.
I never heard what became of the welding cable.
One supervisor had programmed a spindle monitoring progam and one of the gun drill operators would just turn on his spindles, put the kettle on to boil sit and enjoy his tea then get around to actually doing any drilling.
How about two guys getting fired for pissing in the coolant well. Still can't figure that one out to this day. 🤔
How you handle the Insert maintance on your machine‘s? I work on a dmg clx 450 tc and use the „Easy Tool Monitoring“ and i love it.
Was a person who broke in trying to get keys for company car and got into inspection and did not take anything ended up just braking the windo of car
Was the camera guy standing on the forks of the forklift for this video?
Honestly i gotta say that all those things are a joke compared to what i see on a daily base 😂