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This is a question Expensive Mistakes

coopsweb asks "What's the most expensive mistake you've ever made? Should I mention a certain employee who caused 4 hours worth of delays in Central London and got his company fined £500k?"

No points for stories about the time you had a few and thought it'd be a good idea to wrap your car around a bollard. Or replies consisting of "my wife".

(, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 11:26)
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TV company high jinks.
Back in the heady days of 1999, a certain media company (whose name is synonymous with British, and broadcasting), were having problems with their access control systems, so that a lot of people could not get into a certain office block in Shepherds Bush (which may be called White City, I could not possibly comment.) Anyhow, track it down to faulty Master and Slave control PCs for the access system, so arrange for 2 brand new top of the range Compaqs to be delivered. Spent the best part of a week transferring databases, software, and users, and checking all the access points work- after all, you don't want to piss off Anne Robinson, do you? Finally finished late hours friday night/ saturday morning, and after a few beers, wend my merry way home ( south coast), and got lift off off colleague.
Cue sunday morning, major panic- all the doors are unlocked, plus side gates, and anyone can get in the car park, Boss screaming "what the hell have you been doing with the system, we will be in so much shit" etc, etc. So I hotfoot it back up there, via Taxi (car is in London already, and this is a rush), and on arrival, call Tech Support head honcho, who is not best happy, he gets on a plane from Manchester to London, and is picked up via Taxi as well.
Check everything, and the head honcho looks at the history of whats been going on, and declares theres a virus on the system. Impossible, its not on the network, theres no modem, they are just peer-to-peer. Nope, theres signs here of it, he declares. So we check in the security guards room, where the slave is, and there we find it in history: Cunt.jpg, Fuck.jpg, etc etc. They had been viewing porn on cds, and had managed to transfer a virus into the system. It cost a couple of grand in our labour (we strung it out!), and about 4 of the guards their jobs.
Sorry about length, and I wish I had Legless' gift for storytelling!
(, Sun 28 Oct 2007, 18:19, 2 replies)
If this is true...
then I really feel sorry for you :(.

Although, I was surprised... Why wasn't there a "hello.jpg" from a certain website, synonymous to "goat-z" ? They deserved it.
(, Sun 28 Oct 2007, 22:00, closed)
Sorry?
No need, I strung it out and made a massive amount of money for myself & the contractor I worked for. The only expensive part was for said company, and the loss of wages to the guards. As for the goatse, this is a real story, not something from the movies- sorry to disappoint you.
(, Mon 29 Oct 2007, 0:03, closed)

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