I worked night shift in a metal fabrication shop about 11 years ago.
Two bastions of humanity figured out that they could light an oxyfuel torch and adjust it to a neutral flame, snuff the flame out of a glove or something, and then use the torch to fill a plastic sandwich bag with a perfect mixture of oxygen and acetylene. They would then place this bag somewhere and light it on fire, which made a lot of noise. They had great fun until they tried it with a small office-sized trash bag. The word of the day is brisance. It made a tremendous bang which cracked some glass in the shop, but of course our two heroes were caught in the blast amd burned, because a sandwich bag made a loud pop, but a trash bag was more of a bomb. They lit the trash bag like they did the little bags, by holding a lighter to the plastic.
We had another shop in the chain I worked for fire everyone for doing that when I was a mechanic. There were no injuries but the neighboring businesses called 911 because they thought there was a bomb.
I was at an xmas party one year where the workshop boys did this with an upturned 44 gallon drum. It was the loudest bang I’ve ever heard. I thought we were under some sort of attack.
They expected the drum to launch a little but what actually ended up happening was the upturned metal bottom blew off and launched a LOT punching a hole in the workshop roof. It’s a miracle that nobody was hurt (their hearing probably was). Somehow they didn’t get fired.
I was invited to a rural party for new years, I’m pretty sure it was 2003-2004. I drank entirely too much, and saw some friends crushing beer cans, and was inspired. I found an old 55-gallon steel drum, put a bunch of water in it, and rolled it into the bonfire. Once steam was shooting out, I put the bungs back on it and rolled it into the pond. After a few minutes, there was a metallic “bang” and the drum was folded in on itself.
The guy who invited me to the party told everyone for years that I used my head to crush a steel drum.
Our third shift is all maintenance, no production, do they do their preventative stuff and nothing really happens. 1st comes in to a well lubricated factory, promptly fucks everything up and passes their problems on to second.
Here’s one I know a few of you will be familiar with: 1st breaks a machine and can’t run product leaving it for night. Night fixes the machine and runs the orders but has to re-break the machine before 1st comes in or risk getting fired for fixing it and being productive.
The thing I hated most on night shift was, if something was screwed up on day shift and was still an issue when I came in, they would pass it off; but, if something was screwed up at the end of my shift, I had to stay until it was resolved, sometimes for hours.
That’s literally every place with more than 1 shift or department, it’s easy to blame coworkers instead of management for running an understaffed and undertrained op
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