Stupidity to rival Karl Pilkington
Whilst working at this place www.b3ta.com/questions/councilcunts/post85750/ I got a call to come to one of the offices of the trading standards guys as something 'odd' was happening.

When I got to their office, there were about eight guys all crowded around one of the terminals (this was back when most people at the council had just a screen and keyboard linked into the mainframe).
Anyway, when they saw me they showed me what was happening.
The guy at the desk had the keyboard on the right hand side of the desk, he would type something and it would appear on the screen.
Then he picked the keyboard up, moved it to the left hand side of the desk and typed some more. This time nothing appeared on the screen. When he moved it back to the right, it carried on working again.
They showed me this a couple of more times, whilst trying to point out that this is why they didn't trust computers as they were crappy, magical things that lived evil, evil lives.
I hated to point out to them that it wasn't magic and that the keyboard didn't have to be in just once place on the desk for it to work.
The answer was quite simple. These old terminals (vt420 if there are any old nerds out there who are interested) had a 'hold' key at the top right of the keyboard. I have no idea why they had them, but if you pressed it then you couldn't type till you'd 'released it' by pressing again.
What this guy was doing was picking up the keyboard by the corner (with hands the size of dinner plates) and was accidently pressing the button each time he lifted it. He was switching it on and off everytime he moved the damn thing, but couldn't even tell he was pressing the buttons.
I had to prove it to them as they thought I was lying, but I didn't really mind as it's now another story on a big list of how stupid council workers can be.
(EvilMeister, Tue 31 Jul 2007, 13:40, Reply)