Tremendous waste of time

[Ajax]

I've invested the better part of a week helping install an engine in a truck a friend has a month total working on. Last night we find, as we're trying to resolve a wiring issue and after getting the engine mounts, transmission, drive shaft and other assorted Good N' Plenty perfected that the engine is locked up and effectively a boat anchor, thus meaning the past month's work was a complete waste and everything needs to be undone so that another engine can be dropped in or the current one rebuilt and redone again when it's time to get the little bastard running.

That little story aside, anyone have any examples of daunting/tedious tasks that turned into a total waste of time?

[Adamas]

Does restocking a store aisle, only to find out after you finished that they gave you the WRONG FOOKING SETUP!!!! count?

[yiraheerai]

Yes, yes it does. The joys of retail

[MarkMoriquendi]

spending a month-and-a-half on a project, making process flow diagrams, business proposal specifications and networking (physical and logical) spider maps, only to be told the project is no longer going ahead due to funding. Oh i wanted to throw my burning documents at my boss's head.
AND none of that was in my job description. The assistant head-of-department delegated it to me because A/ he didn't want to do it, and B "you know more about the company and it's systems than I do"
Wanker

[Ajax]

We started loading up the boss' '65 Mustang drag car Friday afternoon, stayed an hour late getting everything set so we could go to a race yesterday only to have him pay us, close the shop and go home early yesterday. I wound up going to the strip anyway with a group of friends, but in three hours we only saw five races and the majority of the time the track was empty.

It was so fucking dead they tried holding a wet t-shirt contest on the starting line to keep people from leaving.

One girl participated.

All of us loaded up, drove across the county line to my neck of the woods and spent the rest of the night at a bar.

Not only did I waste three fucking hours sitting on the bleachers, smoking and waiting for something to happen, but I wasted $20 getting in the fucking gates while Lil' Red sat on the back of the flatbed in the shop.

Oh, and did I mention we've spent two goddamn months prepping it to take back out on the track, going so far as to stay until 10:00 one night putting new slicks on?

And, here's the best part. I wasn't paid a motherfucking dime for staying four hours late.

[MonCappy]

That sucks. Was the girl who participate in the contest attractive at least? It'd be a small bit compensation for the time wasted, but at least having a nice looking girl to look at is always something to be enjoyed.

[Ajax]

Reasonably. A bleach blonde exotic dancer, had a decent figure but not too much up top.