Originally Posted by Trakhak

You've got to have some stories from your career. Here's one from a guy I met back in the mid-'70's, when we briefly played in a band together.

His day job was working as a machinist for Sikorsky Aircraft. The company had a NASA contract to manufacture, among other items, the metal components for astronauts' space suits. He was assigned to machine an aluminum gasket for the helmet/space suit interface.

It took him two weeks to machine the gasket within NASA's specs. When he'd finished, he alerted his boss, who scheduled a visit from a NASA QC inspector. The inspector mic'd the gasket and then said, "Not good enough. Do it again."

So he sat around reading naughty magazines and otherwise passing the time for two weeks and then told his boss to bring the QC guy around again. The NASA QC guy showed up and did the same inspection on (unbeknownst to him) the same gasket. This time he approved it and took it away with him.

Did that really happen? All I know is that I didn't see any reason to doubt the story at the time, but I was a dumb 25-year-old then, ready to believe any plausible story as long as it was a good one. Your standards must be far higher.