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This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Wilson" who once worked as the boss of a welding shop attached to an engineering consultancy.

Wilson set the scene by telling us this story came from the early 1980s, when AutoCAD was replacing drawing boards.

"We had a new structural engineer who those of us in the shop quickly identified as an idiot with a degree," Wilson wrote.

One day, said idiot decided that the computers used to run AutoCAD needed to be cleaned and that the welding shop was the place to do the job.

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[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 37 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Last Wilson heard, he was employed by a large US-based aircraft company.

Uh oh. Does it begin with B?

[-] hanke@feddit.nu 17 points 5 days ago
[-] 30p87@feddit.org 12 points 4 days ago
[-] crandlecan@mander.xyz 2 points 7 hours ago

Brewing you mean?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the idiot with a degree, then I read stories like this and I thank my lucky stars I'm at least not that kind of stupid.

[-] TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

Management caused data loss by not mandating backups.

[-] mrnobody@reddthat.com 9 points 5 days ago

That's hilarious. Definitely worked with a few like that!

[-] Goun@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 days ago

He wasn't stupid, he knew exactly what he was doing.

[-] crandlecan@mander.xyz 6 points 5 days ago

If only we knew what!! 💔

[-] anachronist@midwest.social 3 points 4 days ago

"It's at 90 PSI and is 80 percent air, 15 percent water, and 5 percent oil,"

Something's seriously wrong with the air system then, and it will contaminate all their work and compromise the welds. Water is a particularly pernicious contaminant in welding because it causes hydrogen in the weld that will make it brittle and crack.

Welding shops have to be CLEAN. There are some welding processes that can work ok with dirty metal (SMAW with some electrode types) but these only work on mild steel, and these processes really aren't used in a shop or production setup, more for field work.

[-] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 2 points 4 days ago

Fire does get rid of bugs

this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
63 points (98.5% liked)

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