Drwtsn, your story reminds me of something similar.
I was in Electronics class. Me and a friend (whom I'm still good friends with) were assigned to take this coffee can full of electronic components and put them into the proper parts drawers. The parts drawers were not in numerical order, and we were having a hell of a time trying to figure out where everything was supposed to go. I came up with an idea, "Hey Myles, you see this part?" "Yeah?" "Well, it goes in THIS drawer!" and I stuck the part into a random drawer (for those of you who don't know, many electronic components look the same but have different part numbers). Myles says, "Hey! That's a great idea!". We were done that coffee can in about 20 minutes.
Six months later, the class gets in shit because the parts drawers are all messed up. "You know, EVERYBODY is going to have a shot at organizing the parts drawers!". That was never enforced.
Then there was the stupid shit we'd do. We'd spray contact cleaner on the floor and set it on fire. It was silicone based, and the teacher almost killed himself a couple of times.