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View Full Version : Ever feel just plain dumb sometimes?



Kev Williams
12-10-2016, 8:14 PM
I feel pretty stupid, but as a disclaimer it's not entirely my fault...:D

I've had my garage shop full of wine glasses for 3 weeks. This is my third time running these in the past 2 years. First batch was 150-something. Last batch was 160 or so. This time when I got the call, he told me he was going to bring me 300. Great!

So he and a helper shows up, "we brought you 50 cases!" And we load up the garage.

Been running them on & off for 2 weeks now, and I keep thinking they're taking a long time to finish up!

So the guy calls yesterday and asks how they're coming- Well, I have about 38 cases done I think, so we have about -- and then I start trying to multiply 38x12 in my head, and ..... good hell that's more than 450...??

didn't even dawn on me until then that he brought cases of TWELVE this time instead of cases of six...

Uhh, so no wonder these 300 glasses are taking so long! http://www.engraver1.com/gifs/thinking.gif

...feel like a bonehead...

Bert Kemp
12-10-2016, 8:54 PM
most of the time

Scott Marquez
12-10-2016, 9:15 PM
It's only a bonehead mistake if you gave him case pricing. ��

Kev Williams
12-10-2016, 10:30 PM
thankfully, I'm charging by the glass-- :)

Gary Hair
12-11-2016, 1:00 AM
It would be a shorter list to give you the times I felt smart...

Mike Null
12-11-2016, 8:30 AM
I'm with Gary.

Dave Sheldrake
12-11-2016, 9:35 AM
+2, I've done some monumentally dumb things over the years for sure.

Ronald Blue
12-11-2016, 11:15 AM
All the time. Well maybe just the awake hours. Then I get on SMC and see what other's can do and I just wonder why didn't I think of that then I refer to my first comment. All is well....

Doug Griffith
12-11-2016, 11:16 AM
I tell myself it's an education

Lee DeRaud
12-11-2016, 11:39 AM
It's only a bonehead mistake if you gave him case pricing. ��Yup. Am I the only one who thinks the dummy here is the guy who bought and hand-delivered twice as many glasses as required?

Now if you had gone out and paid for them with your money, that would be dumb.

Dave Sheldrake
12-11-2016, 12:10 PM
I think my worst was cutting 24,000 pieces from 3mm stainless then finding out the dxf drawing I had been sent wasn't scaled and the actual parts were supposed to be 8x smaller.

Ken Fitzgerald
12-11-2016, 1:17 PM
I think my worst was cutting 24,000 pieces from 3mm stainless then finding out the dxf drawing I had been sent wasn't scaled and the actual parts were supposed to be 8x smaller.

Ouch!!!!!!!!!!!

Tony Lenkic
12-11-2016, 1:20 PM
Ouch, Dave. Hope no one lost their job over that one.

Long ago I received file from customer and dimensions called for 24 x 16. Only thing they forgot to mention is it was metric. Guess what, I did them 24" x 16".

Erik Goetheer
12-11-2016, 4:01 PM
I'm still waiting for my first engraver, and I'm sure that I will make such 'dumb' mistakes also one day! :rolleyes:

Merritt Conner
12-11-2016, 5:06 PM
The way I look at it, If you make a mistake and catch it, it is not a mistake, it is a lesson learned. Some one else catches it, then it is a mistake and shame on you. And believe me, I have learned lots.... :rolleyes:

Kev Williams
12-11-2016, 7:06 PM
After taking what I thought were the correct steps to engrave "C02 TIMER" on a couple of customer panels, when I was done what was actually engraved was "C02 TIMER".
-- I'm still trying to figure out if it was my doing, or if Corel's 'autocorrect' did it. Regardless, I should've checked first!

And yesterday I had "Kellie Jo" in big Segoe Script letters on paper in front of me that a guy wanted on a wood box. Right in front of me, inch and a half high, bold & black. I type it in, change the font, looks good. I put on the blue tape, did a test run, all centered, looks good. I change the settings for a full burn, walk over to the machine and hit the start button... and then immediately hit the pause button...

...because of the Co2 incident, and because I was about to rain fire on someone's one-off home-made box, I thought I'd better check just in case...

And there on the screen, right in front of me, in big black Segoe Script letters, was "Kelli Jo" ...

I came THIS close..... ;)

Glen Monaghan
12-11-2016, 9:19 PM
The way I look at it, If you make a mistake and catch it, it is not a mistake, it is a lesson learned.
It'sonlyalessonlearnedifyoudon'tmakethesamemistake again...

Tim Bateson
12-12-2016, 9:35 AM
I have you all beat! I once engraved the wrong woman's name into a custom design engagement ring box. It was an Aladdin themed wooden box. Luckily his wood working guy was able to sand & re-finish the box again . Got it right the 2nd time... at no charge of-course.

Neville Stewart
12-13-2016, 6:57 AM
"Ever just feel dumb sometimes?"
Only afterwards, prior to that I feel quite proud of myself for coming up with a solution that in hindsight couldn't have ever worked :-)

Jacob John
12-13-2016, 8:42 AM
My wife misspelled a common word on a 20 piece engraving project. Made it through 3 quality control points and even the customer didn't notice it until they had it for a few weeks. It's amazing how around 6 people, including the customer, didn't catch it until right before it was to be delivered to its final destination.

Dave Gates
12-13-2016, 11:11 AM
I typed "Engineer" wrong on an etching order for these huge sport mugs(like 40 oz). I was about 80 pieces into the few hundred when we noticed the mistake. all the glasses were already masked and ready to etch. Customer was proofed and approved it. That was not a fun week.

Dave Sheldrake
12-13-2016, 12:19 PM
I think "No Engraving Required" engraved on a trophy has to be a winner DOH !

oh and not forgetting a drawing of an Advent callender model done for a mate that only had 16 doors

Kev Williams
12-13-2016, 5:32 PM
Back in the early '80's when the old C2000 was making my life easy, I don't know HOW many times I engraved "Auxillary" on plastic labels and aluminum panels. Funny thing was, not until about 8 years ago did someone tell me I spelled it wrong. Until then I honestly didn't know it should be Auxiliary...

Earlier this year one of my promo-marketing customers showed me one of his mistakes- He had 20,000 tiny charms made in China with "2106" on them. And he okayed the proof...

Merritt Conner
12-13-2016, 8:04 PM
Earlier this year one of my promo-marketing customers showed me one of his mistakes- He had 20,000 tiny charms made in China with "2106" on them. And he okayed the proof... You could spin that as not a mistake, just a shrewd long term (90 year) investment. Sorry, I head to go there...

Makrel Johnson
12-14-2016, 10:30 AM
Kev - I've done this so many times it's made me paranoid.

I'm starting to make customers provide names and text electronically so I can copy & paste. I don't have Corel auto-correct, but if they misspell and I catch it, I'm the hero - if not, i guess they got what they asked for...



After taking what I thought were the correct steps to engrave "C02 TIMER" on a couple of customer panels, when I was done what was actually engraved was "C02 TIMER".
-- I'm still trying to figure out if it was my doing, or if Corel's 'autocorrect' did it. Regardless, I should've checked first!

And yesterday I had "Kellie Jo" in big Segoe Script letters on paper in front of me that a guy wanted on a wood box. Right in front of me, inch and a half high, bold & black. I type it in, change the font, looks good. I put on the blue tape, did a test run, all centered, looks good. I change the settings for a full burn, walk over to the machine and hit the start button... and then immediately hit the pause button...

...because of the Co2 incident, and because I was about to rain fire on someone's one-off home-made box, I thought I'd better check just in case...

And there on the screen, right in front of me, in big black Segoe Script letters, was "Kelli Jo" ...

I came THIS close..... ;)

Jiten Patel
12-14-2016, 10:43 AM
Yup been there - had a client with over 500 invitations - Gold mirror - which was about 60-70 sheets of 1000x600 gold mirror and we ran the wrong proof as she made a final last minute change. That one hurt - 90 hours of machine time an material costs.

Joseph Shawa
12-15-2016, 6:34 PM
How did you spell it?

Kev Williams
12-24-2016, 11:39 AM
Geez, it sure didn't take long to add another one to this list http://www.engraver1.com/gifs/banghead.gif

--for the past few days I've had a guy calling me about can he get a bunch of harmonica's engraved. Yesterday was several calls, to tell me they haven't come in yet but was hoping for later, and was there still time to run them for Xmas. Last phone call was last night about 9:30, said he'd just picked up the harmonicas, apologized for the late call (9pm is middle of the afternoon for us ;)), and that either he or his wife would be dropping the harmonicas off first thing in the morning.

I have several people showing up this morning, mostly for pickups. The doorbell rings, I answer it-

the first thing I noticed was a lady holding a bag of stuff.

Guess what the first word out of my mouth was?

-the second thing I noticed was her grimacing-- and a young granddaughter in tow...

Oh

Crap.

I felt-feel- like a total nimrod. I'm always very careful when calling people to say "your ORDER is ready" rather than something dumb like "your HARMONICA is ready" in case the wrong person answers the phone. This time I totally blew it.

The only plus was the granddaughter doesn't know what a harmonica is. If only I was that smart ;)

Happy Holidays!

Jacob John
12-24-2016, 12:51 PM
It'sonlyalessonlearnedifyoudon'tmakethesamemistake again...

Don't want to sidetrack the thread, but anyone know why the above happens on this forum? It's happened to me several times and I have to open another chrome window for it to stop.

Bill George
12-24-2016, 1:12 PM
Don't want to sidetrack the thread, but anyone know why the above happens on this forum? It's happened to me several times and I have to open another chrome window for it to stop.

Ithappenstomewhen replying but If I use Advanced it all goes away. Using Chrome and I believe this is the only Forum it screws up on.

David Somers
12-24-2016, 2:50 PM
Jacob, I get it too randomly. Oddly enough, if I type a word or two (without the spaces obviously) and then backspace over it to the beginning of the first line the problem goes away without having to open another browser instance or opening advanced. I also use Chrome on Win10. It also happens randomly in PM as well.

Dave

Merritt Conner
12-24-2016, 2:59 PM
I am right there with you on that one Kev. I for one force my self to use the word "Project" now for everything. Sounds cold but you never know who sees the EMs, texts, messages, etc. BTW, I am feeling the last minute Christmas rush also, had to crank up the shop heat to hasten the drying of various stained/sealed "projects". Have a Merry Christmas.

Gary Hair
12-24-2016, 5:13 PM
Don't want to sidetrack the thread, but anyone know why the above happens on this forum? It's happened to me several times and I have to open another chrome window for it to stop.

It does it to me as well, but if you click on the a/a icon in the top left of the text entry box it will work again. The other odd thing it does for me, on my iPad at least, is that pressing any of the arrow keys sends me to the bottom of the page. Must be some odd thing with Chrome and the forum software. And this is the ONLY place it happens.

Bert Kemp
12-24-2016, 6:02 PM
What happen to me sometimes is when I hit the enter key to start an new line the cursor will go up and back instead of down and back, drives me nuts.