Jokes from your OFFICE.
Insider2
Posts: 14,452 ✭✭✭✭✭
Professional graders are normal cut-ups. Over the years some funny things have happened. If you've heard some better than these, please post them. 
Coins are sent into the grading rooms in separate boxes. One time a grader took an empty box and put a very large dead grasshopper in it. The box was placed on the grader's cart with other submissions. Later that day we had a huge vocal confirmation that the box was opened.
A "spot removal" is a place on a coin where someone attempted to remove something (usually corrosion or a spot/stain) from a coin's surface. It is assigned when it was improperly done usually leaving some scratches behind. One time, I left the remark "Spot Removal" in the comment section of my grading screen for the reason I detailed the coin. Later, the finalizer pulled me aside and showed me that the next grader had typed: "But It's still there" in his comments. LOL,
At one grading service, a grader had to walk through a narrow space between the carts to leave the room. Each time he left the room, we pushed the carts a little closer to make the space even narrower. It went unnoticed (even when he had to turn sideways to get through)! Finally, it became too small for him to pass and we all were howling at our joke.
One finalizer had a very valuable "key" Barber quarter that he insisted we all see. The coin was carefully passed around until one joker took a clad quarter from his pocket and threw it into the side of the metal desk. "Clang, Oops!" That's a great way to give a finalizer a heart attack. Not funny - but it was.
Comments
I was WONDERING how you guys survived grading all those state quarters....
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
We let the secretaries do those. That way we don't burn out our eyes.
Who does the Monster Boxes of Silver Eagles?
An ICG grader walks into a bar with a duck on his shoulder. The bartender says, "sorry, we don't serve pigs in here". Skip says, "that's a duck not a pig". The bartender says, "I was talking to the duck"!
Thank you for sharing, I am fairly new to the forum but I did not know you graded professionally, very interesting! I did learn quickly you are one of the leading experts on here as you have corrected my incorrect evaluations and reminded myself of the old adage "Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt"
I appreciate your insights into the back room of the grading biz, funny stuff!
all the best.
-Jeff
all around collector of many fine things
RE: "Jokes from the Grading Room."
Ahhhh.....Such as EF/AU coins in MS-61 holders? Grade inflation? MS-66 coins with deep gouges? What other 'jokes' come out the the modern "grading room;" or did the grasshopper assign grades?
The secretaries.
My YouTube Channel
ICG graders don't frequent bars. Their duck accompanies them to the Tampa massage parlor.
@GRANDAM asked; "Who does the Monster Boxes of Silver Eagles?"
The guys on the modern tier. Many start their TPGS careers in that position. When the SE and moderns first come out, it's all hands on deck at the smaller services.
Agree. In additional to being a professional grader, Insider2 is also a professional authenticator and I'm glad he actively participates here. It's great that he's willing to take the time to share his knowledge and expertise with us. He's certainly a real asset to this coin forum.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
How true, I open my mouth all the time and foolish things come out.
I like humor and it is an important part of the human condition. Peace Roy
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That's a good one, but a good grader should have known it was a joke by the difference in the sound of a silver quarter VS clad. Of course, I doubt (hope) the graders aren't doing "drop" test all the time to develop such an ear.
You see a few jokes in almost every major, or minor, auction! But I'm not sure that's what you mean....
I have a feeling that ANY office with a constant and unrelenting pace is prone to someone going "off the rails" every once in awhile.
We did something similar to a coworker....except it was his entire office! We were in a big room with dividers laying out the perimeter of the offices. We just kept moving his one divider closer and closer to the wall, a few inches a day. A week later, we came into the office to find he had increased his office by a good 4 feet in retaliation. (We had to call a truce at that point).
You may have to expand to "office humor" since few of us will have "Grading Humor" stories.....
In my business of "Naval Munitions Analysis", we evaluate miss distances achieved during tests as a way of grading performance. The miss distances are usually measured in feet, with a defined acceptable number of feet for success. On one particular day, there was a "wider than acceptable" miss that the analyst worked much of the day on....until he finally wiggled and finagled the data in order to get a result of 5,280 feet.
(Still a classic in our own little world).
The official Naval Message with the evaluation went out with the opening line, "Failure. Missed by a mile".
I worked for a company that had offices all over the world. Things had to move frequently, and there were tags that could be stuck on stuff and it magically moved to whatever plant, state or nation indicated.
A prank "misfired" on some guys, as they marked everything in their boss's office to go to Malaysia. Unfortunately, he was out of the office all day, and that night, his entire office was packed and shipped. Come Monday, it was just an empty room.
Either you are really really old or you just crawled out of a worm hole. There haven't been secretaries since the 1980's and even then they were "administrative assistants"
The last time I referred to a secretary as a secretary (years ago), she didn't speak to me for a week. I often told her hence that that was the most peaceful week ever!
Smitten with DBLCs.
we have had occasion to get customers who insist on wanting us to give them an opinion when they call. after so many "You'll have to come to the shop" replies our standard answer is "Maybe if you hold the coin closer to the phone" and then they finally get it.
You must be VERY new, because not a single day goes by that Insider2 does not remind us of this!
What a snarky post. Bite your tongue. I see you have accomplished a great deal in the short time (10 plus years) you have been a member here.
News Flash: I posted anonymously for over a year UNTIL a fellow authenticator left enough clues to my ID that I came out. The only differences between me and my peers is that I use a stereomicroscope to view virtually EVERY coin that crosses my desk and I don't think I'm God's gift to coin grading. There are possibly hundreds of folks (many dozen for sure) on CU that could walk into any TPGS and start grading immediately. You may be one of them. Many here could be finalizers. And many are better at it then me.
That may explain the MS/PF 69/70 moderns including ASEs.
One midnight shift, a Maintenance guy fell asleep in the office around 5 am. We set all of the clocks up to 7 am , then called out "time to go home". Mr. Sleepy immediately bolted to the locker room and changed clothes and headed to the time clock. There was not a dry eye in the house.
Years ago our CEO gave flowers to the office manager on "National Secretaries Day", you could have fried an egg on her forehead, she was so angry. Lol.
Sounds like one of those up-tight, liberals who give you a dirty look if you hold the door open for them!
Had a law enforcement guy in the shop. He told me about a guy who got pulled over for speeding. He asked if there was a good reason that could excuse him from getting a ticket. The offender said " well officer , my wife ran off with a deputy last year. I thought it was him trying to bring her back"
Now it confirmed how my Barber got his ding
Do you know why those women never look you in the eye? Because boobs don't have eyes.
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
Many years ago when I was an Apprentice Carpenter I learned the trade under my now dear friend Mike L.
Mike is a very good man, he loved to tell stories about the jobs he worked during his career.
One day during lunch he told me this story about a guy named Bill.
Bill was a real live A'ole, if you know what I mean, fighting with everyone on the job, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, everyone even his own co-workers.
This went on for weeks, even fought with Mike.
Well, guys on the job started to pay attention to Bill's habits, such as when did he go out to the port-o-pod. One day Bill went out and Bam, they knocked the port-o-pod over, best part they knocked it over on the door, Bill could not get out.
Mike laughed very hard when he told me this, he then said;
"Don't be an A'ole, sooner or later you gonna get got"
Words to live by...
POST NUBILA PHOEBUS / AFTER CLOUDS, SUN
Love for Music / Collector of Dreck
Our office at one time had a big fantasy football rivalry. One of the guys, whose team was called 'Hogs of War', was a big trash talker and practical joker. He decided to play one on our boss, who also had a fantasy football team.
Our boss drove an old 1990's-era Buick. Early one morning, Mr. Hogs of War listed the car for sale on Craigslist for $500 (REALLY cheap for that car), with our boss' phone number as the contact, using photos he'd taken of it the day before. He also said in the ad that he'd listed the car on multiple sites, and to say 'Hogs of War' when calling, so he would know which ad the call came from.
We all had an early morning meeting, and about 5 minutes in, our boss' phone started going crazy. A call would come in, and he'd silence it, and another would come in right after it. He knew it had to be Mr. Hogs of War who had done SOMETHING, and he finally got him to admit what he'd done (except for telling the callers to say 'Hogs of War'). He took the Craigslist ad down, and the calls slowed down enough that we were able to finish the meeting. At the end, our boss played us all of the voicemails that were left about the car. The look on his face was priceless, as VM after VM mentioned the rival fantasy football team. We couldn't stop laughing, and (fortunately) our boss was a good sport about it.
I think the worst one we did was fill out a form for a guy to receive more information on treatments for venereal disease and had it sent to his home address. Needless to say his wife was irate and he had to explain the prank.
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
As a young Civil Engineer I was temporarily working with a survey crew in the late 1960's. To save money they all brought sleeping bags and shared one motel room. As a joke one of the guys put some ladies underpants in the dirty clothes compartment of one of the other guys suitcases who happened to be married. To make a long story short, his wife eventually divorced him. Apparently, this was the final straw.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Replaced the cheese in their sandwich with napkins. Remarkably one guy ate the sandwich without noticing a thing. We had to tell him what he ate. His only reaction was "it tasted alright."
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
This happened a while back when you could smoke at work. One of my coworkers put a cigarette load in his supervisors cig. Later that day we had a meeting with one of the company exec's. As you might have guessed he just happened to pull out the correct cigarette. He lit it up and scared everyone in the room when it went off. Not wanting to waste a perfectly good cigarette he broke off the bad part and lit it up again. Little did he know there was another load halfway down. When it went off this time the supervisor turned bright red and hurried out cussing under his breath.
Was anyone fired for a prank? Some of these are
awful...awfully good. 
Never seen anyone get fired for a prank. The angriest I seen was the cleaning lady wanted in the men's room to clean and one of the guys set a pair of boots in the stall with a Tyvek suit and crawled out. Well she waited and waited and waited. Several hours later the plant manager verified it was a hoax.
The same guy a few months later thought it would be great to use the old Baby Ruth bar in the urinal and it caused a flurry of activity similar to the boots. The guy never got caught for the pranks but he did eventually get fired for drug use.
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
.. and for the rest of the story, tell us management then just decided it would be more economical to just send the boss to where all his things had gone than to foot the bill to bring them back?
I remember loads. The were a little bigger than a pencil lead and about a half inch long with one end pointed so they could be shoved into the end of a cigarette. I remember reading that exploding cigars were quite a popular joke in the late 1800's. I also read that some of the jokesters carried things to an extreme and people got their lower jaw blown off.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
I didn't mess with loads - too young. I poked holes into the cigarettes with pins and they would not draw right. I got a good beat down for it.
I had one customer at the shop I worked in at Laurel, Maryland, that would call and ask for a grade opinion on a Lincoln cent quite often. After many times of telling him that I couldn't say without seeing it, I just told him to get out his magnifying glass and see how many letters in Liberty he could see on Lincolns headband. That ended that. But then he'd get his son to call and ask if we had Prince Albert in a can (we were also a tobacco shop) and if you say yes he would cackle and say "better let him out before he suffocates" (he was a special kid so we always said yes and "oh my gosh I'd better get him out now"
Jesus they must have stuffed an M80 in the cigar.
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
Probably regular black powder was used.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
There was a very much disliked woman at my workplace. If it weren't for a strong Union she would have fired me many times over. Well somebody went into her office one weekend and stuffed her hollow curtain rods with ground salmon.
The smell was very very pervasive and no one could figure out just where the odor was emanating from. I looked on as they searched every inch of space, then they took all the ceiling tiles down. Nope. Nothing there either!
They never did figure it out, even though it was generally agreed that it smelled the worst over by the windows.
In 1991 I worked for a large company which had an internal e-mail system accessed from terminals.
A woman logged into her account, sent an email, and forgot to log out.
Some wag sent a broadcast email to the entire company - "Oops, I forgot to logout".
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Speaking of smells, I heard this story when I was at Georgetown U. years ago.
Seems there was a VERY unpopular dean, a priest who lived on campus. He was gone for a couple of weeks one time for some reason. The first day the guy was gone, some students took an old horse up the stairs, broke into his room, shot the horse and left (this was before [and perhaps the cause of] PETA).
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
Any idea the name of the priest? When were you at Georgetown when you heard the story?.
Why? You missing a horse????
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
@Insider2 I didn't mess with loads - too young. I poked holes into the cigarettes with pins and they would not draw right. I got a good beat down for it.
Probably how Cigarette Lights were invented(holes in the filters)
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
I was there in the mid-60s, but the story was a legend by that time. I don't recall when the incident occurred, and I don't think I ever heard the name of the dean.
You weren't one of the guys with the horse, were you??
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
Did it happen in 1962 and was the Deans name Wormer? I remember warning Bluto, Flounder, and D Day not to do it!
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown