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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/PerfectlyCromulentAc on 2025-06-25 07:58:52+00:00.

A fools errand, you may be aware of if you’ve worked in certain industries. Basically, new guy gets sent to purchase an impossible item, ie a left handed screwdriver, tartan paint etc, or an impossible task, check the mileage on a bicycle etc.

Quite common in the military, I didn’t really like it though as it’s not the sort of place you can always have a joke with them, you could know 100% they were joking, but you’d still play along with the impossible task because it felt like you had to.

I spent some time on this big overseas base, and I wasn’t exactly a newbie when I was there but still very young.

There was an NCO just above me who was a bit of a dick with stuff like this. I was heading somewhere and he asked me to go and sign off a small bit of equipment.

This was a fools errand. But the joke item is so specific to what we were doing at that certain time that it is very hard to explain why it would be a joke. So for this post I’m just going to say he asked me to get a ‘glass hammer’.

As I said this was a huge complex, you needed a vehicle to get anywhere. So I went to the stores and asked them, I wasn’t ashamed, as I said the joke was so specific to us that other units probably wouldn’t have even got it.

Then to the mechanics, then to the kitchen, then to Comms guys, then to HQ etc

I spent the whole day driving around the base, searching for this mystery item, having coffees and cigarettes, having a laugh with people in other units. Seeing areas I would usually not have an excuse to go.

He and the boys laughed at me when I got. They had spent the day in the cold working, I had spent the day cruising around having fun.