Before starting with software development my business partner served around 10 years as a ship mechanic.
One of his favorite stories is about the way folks would be making fun of the “green” recruits and seeing just how clueless they were. Some of this stuff is out of their hands and comes with experience, some is just general intelligence testing.
This story of his falls in the latter category.
He was chilling on the deck when one of these green guys approached and asked:
– Mate, how do I get to where I should collect these measurements?”
– Left of the senior mechanic’s quarters – my partner answered
– … sorry, where are his quarters? – the recruit shook his head
– “Oh. Near where the artelka is” – Russian ship slang for warehousing part of the ship, basically storage
– “…
…
…
Where is the artelka?” – the guy sighs defeated.
– “Goddamit” – my partner gets visibly frustrated – “It’s right next to where the emergency brake is. Go bother someone else
* The green recruit runs around the ship, asking everyone he meets where the emergency brake is. They laugh. They’re all assholes about it.
* One of his superiors overhears and gives him an ass-whooping.
Kid didn’t even stop for a second to think that there was no gorram emergency brake on a ship.
I simply love this little story. I see this kind of stuff all the time in my line of work.
Someone says something and then their followers run around repeating it, without giving it a second thought. These people inevitably end up looking hilarious as hell.
Case in point:
The question of “compliance”. Now everyone runs around screaming how whatever cryptocurrency they are working on is gonna be “compliant”. Because someone smart said it once and it’s a thing now.
I should start using ridiculous words as counter-marketing on purpose, now that I think about it.
Pity it won’t work with this list. You guys are too smart for that…
Might not stop me from trying, though, just to check…
We’ll see.