Throwing Away Oscilloscopes

Since I built an army of test racks a few months ago I've been psychologically altered. Scrounging for pieces of equipment and supplies consumed so much of my time during that project that I have become a permanent super scrounge at work. Nobody has tasked me with building any more test stations but no matter where I am in the buildings here I'm constantly on the lookout for unwanted anythings, whether they be attenuator switch drivers, signal generators, oscilloscopes, pulse generators, noise filters, I mean almost anything. If I can't use a particular kind of instrument in my area someone else may have a need for it. So if I swipe a box and get it to a person who was desperate for it, I'm the cool guy. Plus I can trade for stuff with engineers as long as I have something they want.

Last week I was hot-footing it across the back lot between Building 3 and Building 2. As I was approaching the recycling center I spotted a whole mess of nice blue CRT vintage oscilloscopes stacked up on an old workbench. This happens all the time around here, employees don't want perfectly good gear for whatever reason so they haul it outside to let it rot in the open air. I don't see too many of those around anymore, generally 1970s era o-scopes like that only go up to 100Mhz which means they aren't exactly useful. Our new model oscilloscopes go up to 500Mhz and have tons of built in features. Anyway the old blue screen models are kinda cool looking and I wanted to salvage one to tinker with at my desk. Instead of grabbing an oscilloscope from the pile outside I decided to play it safe and ask my boss for permission to snag one.

I went to my supervisor's desk and mentioned I saw a pile of obsolete gear outside. I asked him, "Can I grab a 'scope to mess around with at my cubicle? They're being thrown out I think."
He looked up at me from his chair and said "No."
That wasn't the response I expected.
"Uh, how come? None of those pieces of gear are useful just sitting out there in the sun. What's the big deal?"
"Do you need an oscilloscope to do your job properly?"
I said no, I didn't need a scope to do my job. I wanted one to fool around with in my spare time.
My boss said, "Then you can't have one. Those boxes will probably be junked for a tax write off or sold as scrap. You would have to get permission from a department manager to salvage one of those units, and more than likely that ain't gonna happen."

I was bummed.

The next day a storm blew in from the coast, and it started to rain. It rained solid for the rest of the week. Every afternoon when I showed up at work I looked out the windows from Building 2 and saw all those perfectly usable pieces of gear getting ruined. Leaving electronics like that out in the elements for long periods of time doesn't do them any good. It was such a waste. Ham radio geezers would probably kill to get their hands on equipment like that. Local schools could have used them in their science programs, but the longer they sit outside the more wrecked they become. That's one of the most aggravating things about this company, the sheer scale of waste we generate. No other electronics company that I have worked for ruins and throws away as much useful equipment as we do on a daily basis.

Next time I'm not going to say anything and swipe the shit. Honesty doesn't always pay...