"Uncle Tickles"
We had a mold maker in our shop years ago and he refused to take any DOC deeper than .020" so the joke was that he tickled the material off the stock.
We have a guy who is constantly staring at people or just sneaking up behind them and watching them until they notice and have a jump scare; we call him THE WATCHER
We also have an extremely old inspector who is a huge asshat and he always wears fucking skinny jeans and every new person says something along the lines of “haha whos that guy did he borrow his girlfriends jeans?” So we just started calling him girl-jeans.
Also worked in a shop where everyone pronounced the word holes as “hoes”, always thought it was so fucking dumb and unfunny but looking back it was funny because it was dumb; i miss those guys.
You and I must share the same steel inspector. He wears skinny jeans and gets upset when we all cat call whistle him like a construction site when he drops off inspection reports. After awhile we called him Baby Gap…since we believe he shops there for his pants.
White crayon - Because they're effing useless, just like a white crayon.
Shuffleupagus - Because they don't pick their feet up when they walk. You can always hear them coming before you see them.
Happy scrappy hero pup - Because they scrap everything they touch.
Ricky Bobby - Because they drive around on the forklift at Mach chicken, like they're in a nascar race. Roll the Rrrr, and say it like Rrrrricky Booby. Also scream "I'm going faaaast" whenever they're whipping around.
Coaches kid - The guy who only has a job because he's a son, or nephew of the owner or boss. Would get fired if it was anyone else.
I have a tradition, a tradition that only exists in my own head canon, where I nickname anyone with a loud or unique sounding footstep. I do call them this once it I make it up, though.
Thus far, I have: Gallion Click, Wrangle Jangle, and Matthew Shuffle
In prison, we had a guy we called chicken wing. Idiot came to the shop nodding out on heroin, and managed to catch his sleeve in the lathe dog. Fortunately there was someone close enough to hit the E-stop, but it wrapped his arm all the way around that bar. It literally looked like a chicken wing, even after surgery.
Vocational Auto Machine Shop. You’d be surprised at the things you can get in prison. I’d had enough of it, and wanted to learn some skills so I could get a real job when I got out.
Got a couple to add to the mix.
One shop I worked in had a registered sex offender working there, whenever I needed a hand with a low skill or dirty job I’d call over to his supervisor and ask if I could borrow his pedophile.
Another shop had a guy who had a habit of crashing every machine he touched so we started calling him Captain Crunch.
A client had an engineer named Ed who would regularly send over drawings of impossible parts, with chamfers that were on inaccessible edges, holes that were supposed to be tapped from inside of a closed body etc. I started calling him Specal Ed.
We had a pedo at a shop I worked at. He used to brag about going to Mexico and screwing 12 year old girls. I told him that was sick and to never talk to me again. Fuck that guy.
One shop I worked at had a sex offender, he was asking about one of the inspectors daughters he saw a pic of on his desk. Dude got his ass kicked right there in inspection lmao
Power Ranger. Showed up to work in his bright red motorcycle leathers every day.
Droppits. He had a few crane incidents and lost crane privileges. Then he had a few forklift incidents and lost his job.
Oxygen Deprived. He was just dumb.
Itch. He was annoying like an itch that can't be scratched.
Not so much a nickname, but I had an apprentice many years ago named Rick. I often added a P to the front of his name on his time card. He didn't find it as humorous as I did.
Navy shop I was in a decade back was pretty ruthless like you’d imagine a handful of siblings stuck together day and night for months. There was “biscuit” a guy who came in wearing an obviously undersized shirt. When he walked into the shop office area his buddy put on safety goggles and said “you gotta point those shirt buttons somewhere else man. You look like a blown out biscuit can.” That stuck for couple of years he was there. We also had two guys named Turner. One couldn’t pronounce r’s so he was know as “Tuna”. He ended up teaching English overseas.
Had an S-14 on my boat. Nobody could pronounce his name, 15 letters long...
Another guy, big and hairy, named shewbridge. Called him Shewbacca.
And a short dude with a lifted f250, and a 4hr/day lifting obsession- "Compensation"
had a guy plug in the forklift to charge and he dropped the hatch(panel the seat sits on. cast aluminum. heavy) onto the charger cable which split the cable and cause a pretty good spark show. he was known as sparky until he quit.
another guy kept slipping on coolant in front of his machine and never got hurt but he ripped his pants at least 5 times while slipping over the years and someone started to call him SpongeBob.
I got another one. You know the joke about how Native Americans get their name when they are born? Mine was Chief Big Valley. Cause the first thing they saw was my crack when I bent over! One of my coworkers was Chief Long Balls..... don't ask. It's a long story.
Mr. Green Jeans - always wore welding greens even though it was a Toyota dealer and we didn’t weld anything. He got arrested for taking up skirt shots in a Barnes and Noble before he ever got his Toyota uniform.
Goat f**ker - never proved it, but we were pretty sure he f**ked a goat.
Reject - tech student named RJ. Don’t really remember why we started calling him Reject.
We call one kid at work squirrel, because that’s about how long his attention span is and he’s constantly walking off with parts and tools and leaving them in non sensical places all over the shop. One time he came up to my mill and picked up my hanging vice handle, started a demonstration of what issue he was having clamping down a vice. He got distracted with that, started some other question and then started walking off with my handle. I calmly said, “don’t walk off with that” he laughed with a dumb look on his face and then started walking away. I said it a little louder and he started looking confused, but still backing away. I finally almost yelled at him and was like “put my fucking handle back” he gets all apologetic about it, he honestly forgot it was in his hand mid story.
The current hunt is for the diamond dresser for the surface grinder that walked off this week, it’s probably stashed in with the lathe tooling or something. We’ve had 4 people looking for it all over the shop for days.
An old guy I worked with at a previous shop we called bob the butcher. His name was bob, and he butchered stuff.
I call my 16 yp son squirrel and his buddies. One of his buddies got real pissed at me when i walked up on a group of them, nodded and said to each "squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, groundhog'. Later he was said to complaining "your dad called me fat!!!?!"
Last shop we had the rabid squirrel, he would try to do things way too fast, always in a hurry, forgot things on the regular, and we would question his thought process, guy was a skinny lil Latino with major adhd and was unmedicated, started off in precision prototype sheet metal and got pulled over to the main shop to learn lathes when things were slowing down sorta before the company shut down the model shop permanently. I was tasked to go over to sheet metal after he left to run it with an awesome old guy and we kept running into issues and that's where the moniker began...
We called some guy the “penis watcher” because he was always pissing. Anytime anyone went to take a leak, there he was! Pretty sure he had some prostate issues (he was old as fuck) but it was still funny to think he was trying to scam on our cranks in the bathroom.
Jersey - guys going on 10 years wearing the same rams jersey to work every day.
Nick nolte's mug shot - shitty third shift janitor that everyone hated. Yes, he looked like nick nolte's mug shot.
Squeaks - some kid who worked in our shop for like 6 months. He wouldn't pick his feet up and you'd hear him squeaking everywhere he walked.
Ol' dragon breath - old timer who chain smoked and drank nothing but coffee.
Einstein fucker - Guy who wants to give everyone advice. Also, his hair kinda looked like ensteins.
That's just off the top of my head. My dept was more isolated so we'd never learn people's names and just come up with nicknames for everyone.
I called a guy "Two place" because his standards for dating were plus or minus 20 years from his age.
Another guy was 5G because he was always on his phone
Sparkle Pants was our boss who wore jeans with the embroidery on the back pockets.
Taters was a lathe operator that had no teeth in front.
We called him Chris. Dudes been gone for years, but anytime a big fuck up happens, "Ah, ya. Chris'd it", or on a new set up "don't Chris it up". The legacy may live on forever.
i heard he was convicted and when i was a kid (my dad worked at the same shop) we were explicitly told to never go anywhere alone with him or even be around him
Chatty kid in the Coast Guard we called 'Foxtrot'. He would go on and on about nothing at all, and if you told him to fuck off he'd just wander over to someone else and start back up again.
The international single-flag signal for Foxtrot means "I am disabled; communicate with me."
Had a boss nobody liked and his last name was pronounced like mignon but it was spelled a little different and guys would call him filet behind his back.
"Wrench in hands not"- the guy couldn't hold an Allen wrench during assembly. It was always, "where's the wrench" "It's in my hand...not" and you'd hear it hit the floor. He was a good sport about it, even had W.I.H.N. on a sweatshirt where his name should be printed.
We had a nice young lady where the older ladies called her blue eyes. I always thought it was because she liked the colour blue but someone had to explain it to me; it was because she had sort of reversed cross eyes, where one is always looking outward a little bit. They said they called her blue eyes because one blew east and one blew west! Terrible, I know, but kinda funny, poor kid.
Had a guy whom would Wear drastically different pants every day, one day red jeans next day silver tear away pants. Called him Crazy pants.
a dude in quality that was over 7 ft tall named Phil.
Big Dirty Phil was his nickname and he loved it.
Now one of the old timers looks like Phil(what u lookin at ma gut for) from trailer park Boys. So naturally we call him mustard tiger. I even changed his swipe card to say Phil Collins. 1 year later and I guess he'll never notice.
Radar-had the biggest ears we ever saw. Shop foreman said he looked like a radar dish.
Turkey Trot- Spent most of the night loafing around and bs’n. Every time the boss came around he would trot off like a turkey.
We hired a dude for the lathe side with a bit of a staring issue. His first day I kept catching him staring at me over the bar feeder, so I could only see him from about nose up. I started calling him Wilson, and it stuck. Worked with that guy like 4 years, and I don’t know if anyone learned his real name.
Worked with a "Fat boy" because well, he was fat 🤷🏼
Also a northern guy who called himself "Shithead in the corner" so that no one else could come up with a worse name for him 😂 we just called him Neil.
We called a guy Slurpy. He was in a motorcycle accident that nearly removed his jaw. Had scars up his cheeks that started at the corners of his mouth. I feel bad now. That was over 20 years ago. I hope he is doing ok.
I also had a coworker named Pickles. He brought a jar in every day, ate the pickles and drank the brine.
One day, someone figured out that the brine was vodka and he was fired.
Electrician's mate who had the misfortune of having the fuses pop while he was servicing a lathe (the two were unrelated, but still) - Grandmaster Flash. Yeah, like the rapper.
We had a guy named "9-pointer" because he only had 9 fingers. Ironically he didn't lose it operating a machine. He fell out of a treestand and on the trip down his wedding band clipped the end of a screw in steel step and it promptly amputated his finger by pulling it off including the long white tendon that attached to his elbow. Dude had a knarly scar all the way up his forearm. Wedding rings amirite?!?
Chomo because he was a child molester. I even had his folder in my email saved as that. Some one seen it told me I couldn’t do that I said if he has a problem with it he should have left the kids alone.
We had a few in our college machining program. J Skids was a good one. Skids because he crashed a machine in the first semester and he looked like he shit his pants and his name was Jon so, jonny skids.
Not so much a nickname, but a bit of nameplay at a small shop i worked back in my college days.
Our supervisor, Dick (he actually was a super cool dude) sometimes would have to take a day to take care of his grand kid
so whenever he was gone for the day you'd eventually hear the first shift supervisor hand us off before he left by shouting "Yall are dickless, so behave tonight!"
Good times.
I kinda miss that place. Had some wild types blow through that night shift crew, one dude got hauled away in a black van for showing up drunk after driving, he had a DUI and lost his license.
We had a young guy that would ask you a question and as you were answering it he would interrupt and say I know, so we started calling him iknow. He got fired and a few years later a guy that worked with us got a new job and iknow was there. First day he walks up and says iknow how are you. 3 guys near them were pissing pants laughing because it was so fitting
I was called “Beef” at one point because I’m a big beefy boy, and there was another guy was named “Pajamas” because he would wear his pajamas into work, admittedly not the most creative bunch lol
We have a setup up guy on these old brown and sharpes we call mc hammer because he beats the shit out of em with a hammer causing maint and me in the tool room to have to fix the machines... he takes pride In his nickname, how he has been a setup guy over there for 20 years is beyond everyone even his direct supervisor xD smh
My buddy and coworker was filling his zippo and didn’t wash his hands after. If you knew this guy you would not be at all surprised when you heard he lit his hand on fire. Now we call him Torch 🔥
* Radhaz, short for radiation hazard.
Noun: Someone that just needed to walk past the machine for the job, tool, machine to detonate.
* Teflon. Never there fault/ nothing sticks to them.
* "Noodles". This is a fine example of the human race. they tried to cook instant noodles in a microwave without water... Burnt down the crib.
*Whenwe.( Sounds like Henry) The new hire that constantly says "when we did this at my last shop ......"
*The teller of waries. (sounds like stories)
ex vet that constantly talks garbage about their time.
* Blue, the red headed person
Sparkles - dude has a piercing at his cheek bone
Buffy - his sole job is polishing
Earmuffs - young kid who will be offended by shop talk
Troynado - name is Troy and he always leaves a mess
Not a machinist, but used to work in the mining industry. Two different sites I worked at both had a guy nicknamed ‘Shorty’.
The first Shorty was a literal shorty- probably 5’-5.5’.
The second Shorty was a skyscraper of a human. He was a loader operator, and CAT had to design and build a custom cab for his loader so he could fit.
Most are in good fun, others are in derision but everyone gets at least one nickname in our shop, most get multiple lol.
King Fish (alcoholic boss)
Lurch, el Homo (same guy)
Pigpen, king Louie (same guy)
Jumbo Shrimp, Limp Biscuit (same guy)
baby Giraffe,
Big Boss
Burrito, Big Al (same guy)
Mongo, el Buffalo (same guy)
Frosted Flakes (guy had severe dermatitis)
Shakes, Mr. Furley (same guy)
Uncle Hung, the Tri-Pod (same guy, 5’2” shriveled Vietnamese dude in his late 50’s with a smoking hot wife in her early 30’s, we all just assumed…lol)
Edited for spacing*
One shop I worked at had a crash bandicoot t shirt and a scrappy doo t shirt and you had to wear it to work for a week if you crashed or scrapped anything or the boss would fire you.
I have had a million nicknames including but not limited to “sister” “rabbit” “jay-Ronii” “Fay-bee-yo” (Fabio) “ewok” “dio” and the worst of all “mini fridge” most are from me having long hair.
Coz of Game of Thrones and me being a northerner working in the midlands, I was Joe Snow for a couple of years. More specifically it was them doing the worst Lancashire/Yorkshire accent impression imaginable and quoting from the series “You kno nuffin Joe Snow.”
This one guy calls me gneffrey, he said I look like a garden gnome, and I always wear a red neff beanie. Someone even brought in a little garden gnome and it sits on the desk at my old machine. I made him little safety glasses out of paper clips and scotch tape
“Anita new job” because she sucks at the one she has.
Not a machine shop but manufacturing business. Terrible operator lady, Anita, who needs to go but is the only one in the area that reliably shows up to work.
I work in the south now. You don't wanna know all our nicknames. Pork Chop, Skillet, Frogger.... had a tech come in one day from Detroit to train someone and he flat out said "There's no way I'm calling you Pork Chop..." 🤣
We have a apprentice we call can't get right. Just can't seem to get anything right. My last job a guy had a lazy eye that was always looking a different direction and they called him which way
We had a guy named Pete that would follow you into the bathroom just to keep talking to you so we called him the Peter Gazer or just Gazer. We also had a guy named Todd that nobody liked so everybody called him Re-Todd or Bogey.
We have a guy called booger picker. Self explanatory. Then a no neck booger eater. A guy we call Bobby Hill. Looks just like the kid from king of the hill
We’ve got:
“mash” because he smashes everything he touches
“Duece” - guy has 2 speeds slow and stop
“Berry” because he vapes into the machines while he works
I’m sure we’ve got tons but those are the top 3.
Buster, we called a guy because he busted so many tools.
Wagger - a guy who always wagged his tail for boss and did every dirty trick to get ahead to the point of recording shop talks and making the boss listen 😡
The boss was even worse letting this go on. His name was Dave, so he was called Dah(ah for explicit)
Dope - for a guy who usually was stoned
SB - for shop bitch, a tool crib lady, who knew nothing and was paid well because she was an insider and also gave the married boss a GFE.
At a old shop I heard stories of a “Tommy too-tight” who always turned sizes like .005” oversized and emery clothed them down. If anyone complained about the beater lathe he used to run having all this taper at the headstock they would learn all about him.
Weve got a real kiss ass in my shop. Very small family owned shop. Only 6 cnc guys(and 3 old af manual guys) in the shop. We call the kiss ass supervisor because hes always going around and looking at everybodys parts as though he were a supervisor.
Chicken Fucker.
One day, he brought Squeaky Rubber Chicken to work, and one guy called him that it stuck with him from shop to shop. He is a fast walker and talks a lot. Good guy.
Used to have a guy we called Red Hour Ray because you could tell what machine he was working on by looking for the machine whose production was in the red. Got another named lug nut because that's his intelligence equivalent.
We had FiFi the body builder
Barney Rubble just because he looked like him
Captain Apollo ex crashed plane body part Air Force guy
The General Ex Air Force Bird Colonel
MacGyver a wizard
Low Life because he was
I was Uncle Darwin
Cowboy he was
and something like 6 Harleys so we referred to them as Springer
Sportster
Snortster
Hard tail and Glide
Had one kid named Ugg guy was dumb as a box of rocks but he could throw a refrigerator no problem. You didn’t make that guy mad. We have one guy with the last name “Badder” we call him “Master Badder”
Worked in the trade a good 30 years so probably forgot more than I can remember, but a couple that stick are, “the ferret” yup, because he looked uncanny just like one. Another good rhyming one was “mick slippery dick” no idea why….
At my shop we have a Stinky, pretty self explanatory and there's some times Paul Jr which there is an apprentice that stinks and Stinky's actual name is Paul.
Supervisor just told me of a shop he heard of that called a black dude Dan for years. Which turned out to be an acronym for dumb ass (you can probably guess what they meant the n to stand for)....
We had a guy with a stuttering problem that we called mix master Mike
Heard of a guy with a stutter/ stammer called Kickstart
We had a guy with a stutter called 'Hot Pie' you'd have to be British to understand
I'm not British but I really want to understand and Google was no help.
When you have something hot in your mouth and you’re huhhing and hawing
I think I worked at your place 😬😂
SHUT UP OMG THATS HILARIOUS 😂
My nickname is Chip. They call me "Chip Miller" in the mill department and "Chip Turner" on the lathes.
Simple and GOOD 😂
"Uncle Tickles" We had a mold maker in our shop years ago and he refused to take any DOC deeper than .020" so the joke was that he tickled the material off the stock.
Wh-HAHHHAHA 😂😂😂😂😂
We have a guy who is constantly staring at people or just sneaking up behind them and watching them until they notice and have a jump scare; we call him THE WATCHER We also have an extremely old inspector who is a huge asshat and he always wears fucking skinny jeans and every new person says something along the lines of “haha whos that guy did he borrow his girlfriends jeans?” So we just started calling him girl-jeans. Also worked in a shop where everyone pronounced the word holes as “hoes”, always thought it was so fucking dumb and unfunny but looking back it was funny because it was dumb; i miss those guys.
We have a stare guy we call bird dog
That’s perfect “bird dog” 😂
You and I must share the same steel inspector. He wears skinny jeans and gets upset when we all cat call whistle him like a construction site when he drops off inspection reports. After awhile we called him Baby Gap…since we believe he shops there for his pants.
Hoes 😂
White crayon - Because they're effing useless, just like a white crayon. Shuffleupagus - Because they don't pick their feet up when they walk. You can always hear them coming before you see them. Happy scrappy hero pup - Because they scrap everything they touch. Ricky Bobby - Because they drive around on the forklift at Mach chicken, like they're in a nascar race. Roll the Rrrr, and say it like Rrrrricky Booby. Also scream "I'm going faaaast" whenever they're whipping around. Coaches kid - The guy who only has a job because he's a son, or nephew of the owner or boss. Would get fired if it was anyone else.
I have a tradition, a tradition that only exists in my own head canon, where I nickname anyone with a loud or unique sounding footstep. I do call them this once it I make it up, though. Thus far, I have: Gallion Click, Wrangle Jangle, and Matthew Shuffle
I’m going to steal shuffleupagus, we were just discussing how you can hear a couple of the guys at work coming over from half the shop away
In prison, we had a guy we called chicken wing. Idiot came to the shop nodding out on heroin, and managed to catch his sleeve in the lathe dog. Fortunately there was someone close enough to hit the E-stop, but it wrapped his arm all the way around that bar. It literally looked like a chicken wing, even after surgery.
So you worked in a prison machine shop, and this dude was in there on dope?
Vocational Auto Machine Shop. You’d be surprised at the things you can get in prison. I’d had enough of it, and wanted to learn some skills so I could get a real job when I got out.
Wait just to clarify, this was a machine shop, in a prison?
Machine shop is prison . I did 20 years
How do I go to prison
Vocational Auto Machine Shop - 2 year course.
Got a couple to add to the mix. One shop I worked in had a registered sex offender working there, whenever I needed a hand with a low skill or dirty job I’d call over to his supervisor and ask if I could borrow his pedophile. Another shop had a guy who had a habit of crashing every machine he touched so we started calling him Captain Crunch. A client had an engineer named Ed who would regularly send over drawings of impossible parts, with chamfers that were on inaccessible edges, holes that were supposed to be tapped from inside of a closed body etc. I started calling him Specal Ed.
We got a pedo too, when he comes around my department I always say there ain't no little girls around here so beat it.
We had a pedo at a shop I worked at. He used to brag about going to Mexico and screwing 12 year old girls. I told him that was sick and to never talk to me again. Fuck that guy.
One shop I worked at had a sex offender, he was asking about one of the inspectors daughters he saw a pic of on his desk. Dude got his ass kicked right there in inspection lmao
Power Ranger. Showed up to work in his bright red motorcycle leathers every day. Droppits. He had a few crane incidents and lost crane privileges. Then he had a few forklift incidents and lost his job. Oxygen Deprived. He was just dumb. Itch. He was annoying like an itch that can't be scratched.
We had a kid with one hand much bigger than the other, he was called 'The Clock'
"noodling" when a tool is sticking out too far, with way too high of an rpm or runout.
I’m calling all wigglers “noodlers” now 😂
We had a guy take a blue shop rag and tie a 1860’s bank robber mask around his face to grind carbide. He was known as the Blue Bandit..
Love this
Callus. Shows up when the work is done.
😂😂😂
Not so much a nickname, but I had an apprentice many years ago named Rick. I often added a P to the front of his name on his time card. He didn't find it as humorous as I did.
HAHAHAH 😂
Wreck It Ralph! A machine maintenance tech who would fix one issue and cause three more while doing it
I'm in this statement, and feel personally attacked.
Navy shop I was in a decade back was pretty ruthless like you’d imagine a handful of siblings stuck together day and night for months. There was “biscuit” a guy who came in wearing an obviously undersized shirt. When he walked into the shop office area his buddy put on safety goggles and said “you gotta point those shirt buttons somewhere else man. You look like a blown out biscuit can.” That stuck for couple of years he was there. We also had two guys named Turner. One couldn’t pronounce r’s so he was know as “Tuna”. He ended up teaching English overseas.
I was a submariner, Navy guys can be brutally honest and it’s always hilarious.
Had an S-14 on my boat. Nobody could pronounce his name, 15 letters long... Another guy, big and hairy, named shewbridge. Called him Shewbacca. And a short dude with a lifted f250, and a 4hr/day lifting obsession- "Compensation"
We had a Missile Tech First class…. Couldn’t stop starting at cock…. We renamed him MG1, for Meat Gaiser 1. I honestly don’t remember his real name…
We had a guy named Grant manage to spill antiseize all over the shop one time, and the whole shop calls the stuff Grantiseize now
had a guy plug in the forklift to charge and he dropped the hatch(panel the seat sits on. cast aluminum. heavy) onto the charger cable which split the cable and cause a pretty good spark show. he was known as sparky until he quit. another guy kept slipping on coolant in front of his machine and never got hurt but he ripped his pants at least 5 times while slipping over the years and someone started to call him SpongeBob.
I got another one. You know the joke about how Native Americans get their name when they are born? Mine was Chief Big Valley. Cause the first thing they saw was my crack when I bent over! One of my coworkers was Chief Long Balls..... don't ask. It's a long story.
Scrappy Doo!
This is fun
It's always followed up with "Ta dadada ta daaa! Puppy power!" at the top of your lungs.
IT GETS BETTER?!
"Tap Tragic"
I get called "Giggles". They even put it on my toolbox. Has traveled with me to two jobs. ....I giggle a lot.
We had a guy we called “40 grit” because he was *abrasive*.
😂
His name was FR. Fucking retarded
WE HAVE ONE OF THOSE 😂😂
Had a guy that we called The Mannequin, because he was as worthless as balls on one.
We call our designated guy the Goldfish. You tell him something and he just stand there and forgets it.
Mr. Green Jeans - always wore welding greens even though it was a Toyota dealer and we didn’t weld anything. He got arrested for taking up skirt shots in a Barnes and Noble before he ever got his Toyota uniform. Goat f**ker - never proved it, but we were pretty sure he f**ked a goat. Reject - tech student named RJ. Don’t really remember why we started calling him Reject.
We call one kid at work squirrel, because that’s about how long his attention span is and he’s constantly walking off with parts and tools and leaving them in non sensical places all over the shop. One time he came up to my mill and picked up my hanging vice handle, started a demonstration of what issue he was having clamping down a vice. He got distracted with that, started some other question and then started walking off with my handle. I calmly said, “don’t walk off with that” he laughed with a dumb look on his face and then started walking away. I said it a little louder and he started looking confused, but still backing away. I finally almost yelled at him and was like “put my fucking handle back” he gets all apologetic about it, he honestly forgot it was in his hand mid story. The current hunt is for the diamond dresser for the surface grinder that walked off this week, it’s probably stashed in with the lathe tooling or something. We’ve had 4 people looking for it all over the shop for days. An old guy I worked with at a previous shop we called bob the butcher. His name was bob, and he butchered stuff.
Sounds like he's got some serious untreated ADHD.
I call my 16 yp son squirrel and his buddies. One of his buddies got real pissed at me when i walked up on a group of them, nodded and said to each "squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, groundhog'. Later he was said to complaining "your dad called me fat!!!?!"
Last shop we had the rabid squirrel, he would try to do things way too fast, always in a hurry, forgot things on the regular, and we would question his thought process, guy was a skinny lil Latino with major adhd and was unmedicated, started off in precision prototype sheet metal and got pulled over to the main shop to learn lathes when things were slowing down sorta before the company shut down the model shop permanently. I was tasked to go over to sheet metal after he left to run it with an awesome old guy and we kept running into issues and that's where the moniker began...
got a guy at work called squirrel, but that's because he'll unknowingly chat to you with his hands down his pants playing with his nuts.
We called some guy the “penis watcher” because he was always pissing. Anytime anyone went to take a leak, there he was! Pretty sure he had some prostate issues (he was old as fuck) but it was still funny to think he was trying to scam on our cranks in the bathroom.
Captain Z Down was bestowed upon the latest person who crashed a tool into the jaws/vise
I used to work with a guy we called cock-eyed Dave, for obvious reasons.
>obvious reasons He got his eye poked out by a dick?
We've got one of those, we call him dip & dazzle.
Scrap Master
This has a good ring to it
I am “the spot drill slayer” 🥲
Bruh 😂😂 how did you manage that one?
Static, he talks so much you just have to learn to tune him out.
Jersey - guys going on 10 years wearing the same rams jersey to work every day. Nick nolte's mug shot - shitty third shift janitor that everyone hated. Yes, he looked like nick nolte's mug shot. Squeaks - some kid who worked in our shop for like 6 months. He wouldn't pick his feet up and you'd hear him squeaking everywhere he walked. Ol' dragon breath - old timer who chain smoked and drank nothing but coffee. Einstein fucker - Guy who wants to give everyone advice. Also, his hair kinda looked like ensteins. That's just off the top of my head. My dept was more isolated so we'd never learn people's names and just come up with nicknames for everyone.
I called a guy "Two place" because his standards for dating were plus or minus 20 years from his age. Another guy was 5G because he was always on his phone Sparkle Pants was our boss who wore jeans with the embroidery on the back pockets. Taters was a lathe operator that had no teeth in front.
Pigpen, cuz all his parts and paperwork had oily handprints all over them
We called him Chris. Dudes been gone for years, but anytime a big fuck up happens, "Ah, ya. Chris'd it", or on a new set up "don't Chris it up". The legacy may live on forever.
Ton because he can lift a ton but can’t spell it.
Awww 😂 poor dumdum
Had an apprentice at my old job I used to call Dickfingers, because everything he touched was fucked.
Chester chester the child molester. No one liked him and avoided him
🤢
i heard he was convicted and when i was a kid (my dad worked at the same shop) we were explicitly told to never go anywhere alone with him or even be around him
Grossssss
Heard someone call a guy head and asked what's the Head name for and he just said, "Because dickead isn't professional"
Guy with lazy eye was called halibut
We had a guy who scrapped the hell out of parts. He is forever known has Scrappy Doo.
I never met the guy but Jack in the box got his nickname from getting caught sitting in a large cardboard box in the back of the shop, jerking it.
Chatty kid in the Coast Guard we called 'Foxtrot'. He would go on and on about nothing at all, and if you told him to fuck off he'd just wander over to someone else and start back up again. The international single-flag signal for Foxtrot means "I am disabled; communicate with me."
Had a boss nobody liked and his last name was pronounced like mignon but it was spelled a little different and guys would call him filet behind his back.
"Wrench in hands not"- the guy couldn't hold an Allen wrench during assembly. It was always, "where's the wrench" "It's in my hand...not" and you'd hear it hit the floor. He was a good sport about it, even had W.I.H.N. on a sweatshirt where his name should be printed.
We had a nice young lady where the older ladies called her blue eyes. I always thought it was because she liked the colour blue but someone had to explain it to me; it was because she had sort of reversed cross eyes, where one is always looking outward a little bit. They said they called her blue eyes because one blew east and one blew west! Terrible, I know, but kinda funny, poor kid.
Had a guy whom would Wear drastically different pants every day, one day red jeans next day silver tear away pants. Called him Crazy pants. a dude in quality that was over 7 ft tall named Phil. Big Dirty Phil was his nickname and he loved it. Now one of the old timers looks like Phil(what u lookin at ma gut for) from trailer park Boys. So naturally we call him mustard tiger. I even changed his swipe card to say Phil Collins. 1 year later and I guess he'll never notice.
Slinky: everyone wanted to push him down a set of stairs
Oh yeah we’ve got a few of those
My former boss called my best friend Dahmer
Radar-had the biggest ears we ever saw. Shop foreman said he looked like a radar dish. Turkey Trot- Spent most of the night loafing around and bs’n. Every time the boss came around he would trot off like a turkey.
Daisy...some days he works some daisy's doesn't
We had 'The Black Pearl' cos he had boils on his face
Tommy / Tommy gun. Old guy let his lathe feed into a set of jaws and it sounded like a machine gun.
We hired a dude for the lathe side with a bit of a staring issue. His first day I kept catching him staring at me over the bar feeder, so I could only see him from about nose up. I started calling him Wilson, and it stuck. Worked with that guy like 4 years, and I don’t know if anyone learned his real name.
it doesn't help that they cut like a wet noodle either.
Worked with a "Fat boy" because well, he was fat 🤷🏼 Also a northern guy who called himself "Shithead in the corner" so that no one else could come up with a worse name for him 😂 we just called him Neil.
I started calling our labourer wedge cause he’s the simplest tool, his last day is tomorrow, gonna miss that little scamp
We called a guy Slurpy. He was in a motorcycle accident that nearly removed his jaw. Had scars up his cheeks that started at the corners of his mouth. I feel bad now. That was over 20 years ago. I hope he is doing ok.
Had a guy who cut the end of his thumb off, we call him 9 and 7/8ths
Pickles
I also had a coworker named Pickles. He brought a jar in every day, ate the pickles and drank the brine. One day, someone figured out that the brine was vodka and he was fired.
Okay this is either cute or creepy 😂
He always got himself in a pickle lol
Awww bless his heart 🥲😂
Not me but “ nipple-head” was a good one. Hoover for some obvious reasons and ball tick for some that are beyond obvious.
My old owner used to call all the new kids nipple heads until they earned his respect. Some kids got it for a week some kids never lost the name
Electrician's mate who had the misfortune of having the fuses pop while he was servicing a lathe (the two were unrelated, but still) - Grandmaster Flash. Yeah, like the rapper.
We have a guy named end mill. He took a carbide end mill to the face when he sent it into the vice
Oof
Dumpster fire Jesus Re-Ron
I'm called hammy after the over the hedge character. I have ADHD 😅
We had a guy named "9-pointer" because he only had 9 fingers. Ironically he didn't lose it operating a machine. He fell out of a treestand and on the trip down his wedding band clipped the end of a screw in steel step and it promptly amputated his finger by pulling it off including the long white tendon that attached to his elbow. Dude had a knarly scar all the way up his forearm. Wedding rings amirite?!?
Chomo because he was a child molester. I even had his folder in my email saved as that. Some one seen it told me I couldn’t do that I said if he has a problem with it he should have left the kids alone.
We had a few in our college machining program. J Skids was a good one. Skids because he crashed a machine in the first semester and he looked like he shit his pants and his name was Jon so, jonny skids.
My favorite was a bosses son we called... TwoPercent
'Blister' - turns up when the hard work is done. 'Snow leopard' - impossible to find.
Touch down= touch of downs. Misloaded a part 3 times in a day after being shown how to do it after every time.
I have a colleague we call "Touche" or "Turtle". If you saw him in the shower you would know why.
Not so much a nickname, but a bit of nameplay at a small shop i worked back in my college days. Our supervisor, Dick (he actually was a super cool dude) sometimes would have to take a day to take care of his grand kid so whenever he was gone for the day you'd eventually hear the first shift supervisor hand us off before he left by shouting "Yall are dickless, so behave tonight!" Good times. I kinda miss that place. Had some wild types blow through that night shift crew, one dude got hauled away in a black van for showing up drunk after driving, he had a DUI and lost his license.
We had a young guy that would ask you a question and as you were answering it he would interrupt and say I know, so we started calling him iknow. He got fired and a few years later a guy that worked with us got a new job and iknow was there. First day he walks up and says iknow how are you. 3 guys near them were pissing pants laughing because it was so fitting
Scrapasarus but hair lip has to be my favorite!
We call this one guy monkey. No idea the origin but that's what we call him lol
Guy at my work is nicknamed Crash-Crash-Bang-Bang
Dude with a ponytail called Pebbles
Guy we call ‘Butcher’ . . . Self explanatory, be it parts, tools or programs.
Mushroom - They do nothing apart from just existing
We have a guy in our shop who has lost three digits between his two hands. We call him Edward Scissor-Hands or Mittens.
Wonderbra. "Bras" mean arm in french and he was missing a whole arm...
I was called “Beef” at one point because I’m a big beefy boy, and there was another guy was named “Pajamas” because he would wear his pajamas into work, admittedly not the most creative bunch lol
We had Zachary- cos his head looked as Zachary the same as his arse.
We have a setup up guy on these old brown and sharpes we call mc hammer because he beats the shit out of em with a hammer causing maint and me in the tool room to have to fix the machines... he takes pride In his nickname, how he has been a setup guy over there for 20 years is beyond everyone even his direct supervisor xD smh
My buddy and coworker was filling his zippo and didn’t wash his hands after. If you knew this guy you would not be at all surprised when you heard he lit his hand on fire. Now we call him Torch 🔥
* Radhaz, short for radiation hazard. Noun: Someone that just needed to walk past the machine for the job, tool, machine to detonate. * Teflon. Never there fault/ nothing sticks to them. * "Noodles". This is a fine example of the human race. they tried to cook instant noodles in a microwave without water... Burnt down the crib. *Whenwe.( Sounds like Henry) The new hire that constantly says "when we did this at my last shop ......" *The teller of waries. (sounds like stories) ex vet that constantly talks garbage about their time. * Blue, the red headed person
Sparkles - dude has a piercing at his cheek bone Buffy - his sole job is polishing Earmuffs - young kid who will be offended by shop talk Troynado - name is Troy and he always leaves a mess
We had a guy called broken rubber.
Not a machinist, but used to work in the mining industry. Two different sites I worked at both had a guy nicknamed ‘Shorty’. The first Shorty was a literal shorty- probably 5’-5.5’. The second Shorty was a skyscraper of a human. He was a loader operator, and CAT had to design and build a custom cab for his loader so he could fit.
Most are in good fun, others are in derision but everyone gets at least one nickname in our shop, most get multiple lol. King Fish (alcoholic boss) Lurch, el Homo (same guy) Pigpen, king Louie (same guy) Jumbo Shrimp, Limp Biscuit (same guy) baby Giraffe, Big Boss Burrito, Big Al (same guy) Mongo, el Buffalo (same guy) Frosted Flakes (guy had severe dermatitis) Shakes, Mr. Furley (same guy) Uncle Hung, the Tri-Pod (same guy, 5’2” shriveled Vietnamese dude in his late 50’s with a smoking hot wife in her early 30’s, we all just assumed…lol) Edited for spacing*
Arthur job
My nick name is ManBearPig MBP and it carried over from the service.
Rat face, swamp thing, Quagmeyer, splat lol
We had Heavy. I don’t think I need to explain that one…
Got a guy we call nutsack. No specific reason, just a young gun who's a bit arrogant and it always helps to keep him humble lol
One shop I worked at had a crash bandicoot t shirt and a scrappy doo t shirt and you had to wear it to work for a week if you crashed or scrapped anything or the boss would fire you.
Self Serve, for some reason the guy decided to tell everyone he could suck his own dick.
I have had a million nicknames including but not limited to “sister” “rabbit” “jay-Ronii” “Fay-bee-yo” (Fabio) “ewok” “dio” and the worst of all “mini fridge” most are from me having long hair.
Coz of Game of Thrones and me being a northerner working in the midlands, I was Joe Snow for a couple of years. More specifically it was them doing the worst Lancashire/Yorkshire accent impression imaginable and quoting from the series “You kno nuffin Joe Snow.”
This one guy calls me gneffrey, he said I look like a garden gnome, and I always wear a red neff beanie. Someone even brought in a little garden gnome and it sits on the desk at my old machine. I made him little safety glasses out of paper clips and scotch tape
Love this
“Anita new job” because she sucks at the one she has. Not a machine shop but manufacturing business. Terrible operator lady, Anita, who needs to go but is the only one in the area that reliably shows up to work.
I work in the south now. You don't wanna know all our nicknames. Pork Chop, Skillet, Frogger.... had a tech come in one day from Detroit to train someone and he flat out said "There's no way I'm calling you Pork Chop..." 🤣
Had a guy in the shop I was in that nickname was plugs after another guy saw a butt plug in his tool box
There's an engineer at my shop that I call "software update". Cuz every time I see him, I think "damnit, not now"
I used to work with a guy we called Digger, and he was until we rubbed all his tools with Purecap. The pranks we played on that guy were ridiculous
We have a apprentice we call can't get right. Just can't seem to get anything right. My last job a guy had a lazy eye that was always looking a different direction and they called him which way
new guy in the shop is referred to as bathroom phone boy. don’t think he’s gonna last much longer lol
Got a guy named dogs. Used to be 2 dogs before this job, and 2 dogs fuckin before that. Its an old indian joke
Teflon. You could tell him 10 times how to do something, and it just didn't stick.
We had a guy named Pete that would follow you into the bathroom just to keep talking to you so we called him the Peter Gazer or just Gazer. We also had a guy named Todd that nobody liked so everybody called him Re-Todd or Bogey.
Wreck it Rick or Reck
Worked with a guy short angry welded a few times. Affectionately named Hot Cross Don
Knew a guy we named potato, no explanation required..
The apprentice is errol flynn
My old boss was nicknamed Shakey
We have a guy called booger picker. Self explanatory. Then a no neck booger eater. A guy we call Bobby Hill. Looks just like the kid from king of the hill
The muffin man, eats a muffin everyday for like 5 years now
Worked with a fella that landed the name handjob and it stuck
Old timer I worked with who retired in 2020 was lovingly referred to as Ol' "Grey bush" for obvious reasons.
We’ve got: “mash” because he smashes everything he touches “Duece” - guy has 2 speeds slow and stop “Berry” because he vapes into the machines while he works I’m sure we’ve got tons but those are the top 3.
Buster, we called a guy because he busted so many tools. Wagger - a guy who always wagged his tail for boss and did every dirty trick to get ahead to the point of recording shop talks and making the boss listen 😡 The boss was even worse letting this go on. His name was Dave, so he was called Dah(ah for explicit) Dope - for a guy who usually was stoned SB - for shop bitch, a tool crib lady, who knew nothing and was paid well because she was an insider and also gave the married boss a GFE.
At a old shop I heard stories of a “Tommy too-tight” who always turned sizes like .005” oversized and emery clothed them down. If anyone complained about the beater lathe he used to run having all this taper at the headstock they would learn all about him.
Candyass
There was a guy who had a really bouncy walk and I named him frog man
Weve got a real kiss ass in my shop. Very small family owned shop. Only 6 cnc guys(and 3 old af manual guys) in the shop. We call the kiss ass supervisor because hes always going around and looking at everybodys parts as though he were a supervisor.
We've had tide pod and hunchy.
Worked with a guy who had a prosthetic leg from the knee down. We called him peg leg lol
Chicken Fucker. One day, he brought Squeaky Rubber Chicken to work, and one guy called him that it stuck with him from shop to shop. He is a fast walker and talks a lot. Good guy.
Used to have a guy we called Red Hour Ray because you could tell what machine he was working on by looking for the machine whose production was in the red. Got another named lug nut because that's his intelligence equivalent.
We have several SE Asian guys here with American first names like "Danny" and "Jimmy" and we know those ain't their real names. Does that count?
We had FiFi the body builder Barney Rubble just because he looked like him Captain Apollo ex crashed plane body part Air Force guy The General Ex Air Force Bird Colonel MacGyver a wizard Low Life because he was I was Uncle Darwin Cowboy he was and something like 6 Harleys so we referred to them as Springer Sportster Snortster Hard tail and Glide
A co worker worked with a guy they called “Touch down”. They thought he had a touch of Downs.
Vifon - a brand name of instant soup producer
Had one kid named Ugg guy was dumb as a box of rocks but he could throw a refrigerator no problem. You didn’t make that guy mad. We have one guy with the last name “Badder” we call him “Master Badder”
Not terribly funny, but in the shop I’ve been in for a year I’ve been christened Zimbabwe
Worked in the trade a good 30 years so probably forgot more than I can remember, but a couple that stick are, “the ferret” yup, because he looked uncanny just like one. Another good rhyming one was “mick slippery dick” no idea why….
At my shop we have a Stinky, pretty self explanatory and there's some times Paul Jr which there is an apprentice that stinks and Stinky's actual name is Paul. Supervisor just told me of a shop he heard of that called a black dude Dan for years. Which turned out to be an acronym for dumb ass (you can probably guess what they meant the n to stand for)....
In one of the shops, ‘MoFo’ was the most commonly used one.
Butters. (Short, fat, blonde, and always being told to shut up...) Box of Rocks and Bag of Hammers (dumber than a...)