Recently I mentioned a left-handed shovel. Of course there is no such thing as a left- or right-handed shovel. Some tools are built, or are configurable, to be used with either the left or right hand, but a lot like hammers and shovels are not. I think it’s always been popular, in construction jobs especially, to send the new guy off to get a left (or right) handed hammer or shovel or something like that. It’s all part of the initiation to the job. A lot of people don’t fall for it, but an amazing number do. Of course, the construction industry isn’t the only one that uses these kinds of practical jokes. There are certain initiation rites in just about all offices, workplaces and professions.
One place that I worked for a while was located next door to a teletype repair shop. In case you’re so young that you don’t know what a teletype is — it’s a machine that’s kind of like an automatic typewriter and was just about universally used in communications until the early 1970’s. Anyhow, these machines use a roll of paper to print out the messages. The rolls where packed 6 or 12 to a box and to keep the ends from getting crushed so they wouldn’t fit into the machines, there was a little round metal disk inserted on each side. When a new roll of paper was inserted, the littles disks were just tossed in the waste basket.
So almost anytime a “new guy” came into our shop, it wasn’t long before he was sent next door to get a couple of LRMDs. Of course when he showed up in the teletype shop, everyone rolled their eyes and depending on how busy they were (and possibly how gullible the new guy was) would give him a long story about how they had run out and send him on a wild goose chase, or have him look in the back room, or question him as to what size he needed or — well, you get the idea.
LRMDs were the Little Round Metal Disks that were always discarded with each new roll of paper… sometimes the victim figured it out, sometimes he finally just had to be told that he’d been “had.” I suppose most workplaces still operate pretty much the same way, but probably have much more sophisticated ways of initiation.
I guess we’ve all had times that we searched for LRMDs… it’s probably not important whether we found them or not, it’s important that we learned from the experience….
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