Ooops at work. (But not mine, so it's funnier. )

Earlier this week, it was determined that we needed another rolling rank to transport lighting bars with instruments permanently mounted to them for a touring show. THis was, of course, decided only a couple of days before the trucks needed to be loaded. So, next to my repair bench, our production department folks and the office manager started cutting up square steel tubing and welding them into shape. So far, so good, as the hard part, the end frames, we had kept the sheet of plywood with the cleats on it to hold the metal in rigid alignement for welding up at right angles and so on.
The sales department manager turns out to be the best welder who worked on it, and fixed up earllier, somewhat suspect welds. Then they stand up the two assembled end frames, weld in the four long pieces to make it into a cubic shape. Cross pieces and uprights welded in, and the clamps to hold the light bars are attached. This process, well, it took two full days of part time effort and late evenings to get it done in time.
Finally, it's done in the morning, ready to be loaded on the truck after lunch. Well, then they tried to put the light bars into the brackets. They don't fit. The whole thing is 5 and one half inches shorter than it should have been. Much scratching of heads ensues in a flurry of tape measurees and consultation with the cut sheets for the tubing.
Finally they twig to the error. The cut sheet said 7 1/2 long. The guy writing the sheet meant seven and one half feet long. The guy cutting the steel, read it to mean seven feet and one half inch long. Some good natured finger pointing ensues amongst the culprits, and the rest of the folks in the shop are amused.
They experiment, determine that it is not workable at it's length, and the metal has to be stretched. So a four pieces of angle iron are pulled out of the junk box, some electrical conduite turns out to be just the right diameter to fill the inside of the square tubing. The four short pieces are cut, conduit installed and tack welded on one side, and then several of us manuver the two halves of the thing back into alignement. and a more unnatural mating I hope never to see again. We put the tape measure and make it ther right length, the clamp on the angle iron. Repeat on the other three cuts and the patches get welded up. Then some wag cuts a stencil and stencils the fellows name who cut it too short onto it. Thus this rack will be known as the rack with the Gilson extensions forevermore, or until we decide to stop ribbing him about it.