In 2000, I was working at a power plant somewhere on the East coast, basically as a gopher, sometimes getting to do cool stuff, and then I got transferred to the unit that was across the street from our unit. My first day, I knew I was headed for trouble, because this guy, I'll just call him "Shakes" did my training. We called him "Shakes because if he didn't hit the bottle for more than a few hours, he'd start shaking and babbling like crazy. Well, he takes me into this room that was completely seperated from everything else, and talks to me for about five minutes about what I'm supposed to do, and how to operate several different machines. And that was it. Five months later, I got my first phone call from my boss, "Richard". He wants to know what I've been doing, and how long I'd been there working for him!!! He came down and visited once or twice, but that was about it. During this time, I totally goofed off, looking at anything I wanted to online, making long distance phone calls to this chick in Georgia (Note, I'm not trying to make this out to be someone elses fault - it was all me on this one) I mean, I really screwed the pooch on this one. It was probably a combination of too much money being earned, too many women, not enough supervision and training, and immaturity on my behalf. Well anyway, on my last day, I went down to my bosses trailer, and he chews me a new a*s. Couldn't blame him. I'd run up a five hundred dollar phone bill, wasted several hundred hours on the internet (But with all this, I'd managed to keep up on the work) So I'm doing the last few lines of my work, and he comes over, and says "Hey, what are you doing?? Those are the wrong numbers to be putting in!!!!" So, I look, and this is what I'd been doing for the last ten months, and had turned in loads of work to another affiliate and he never once checked my work!!! I was able to put on a decent poker face, and I said "Ohhh, gosh, you're totally right - I just wasn't paying attention these last few minutes.....sorry about that! So I finished up as quickly as possible, and with a parting word from my boss, he said "You know, I could've had you transferred to another department after this job, but your job performance totally sucks, so I didn't. Good luck, and have a nice life." I might've come back with a smart reply, but thought the better, since this whole project had cost them 2 million $, and I'd screwed up the whole thing.
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