Are you sure you want to send that?
Pearoast, and not strictly on-topic as it's about pagers, not phones. I couldn't give a monkey's...

Not long after starting work I ended up on the IT desktop support team, which involved looking after the trading floor for the bank. It took me a while, but I gained the trust and respect of the fickle teams I supported by keeping my promises, fixing important things quickly and having a sense of humour. Unfortunately, my reputation was almost destroyed by one click of the mouse.

When I started out-of-hours support, I received a pager. Contained in the box was the device itself and a printed sheet with two similar phone numbers on it. I thought it would be prudent to test it so I logged in to Vodafone's website, entered my name --big mistake-- then sent a test message to myself with a cheery reminder ("Don't forget Andy's birthday!"). There was no 'Are you sure?' message, no warnings whatsoever, it just sent it. I was impressed by the fluidity of it all…

…until about five seconds later, when I heard beeping behind me. Then to the left, then to my right, forwards, in the distance... phones started going off all around me. It was like the final scene of Lawnmower Man, when all the phones in the world start ringing simultaneously. "Who's Andy?" asked a colleague. Oh crap. As I was based on the trading floor, I had a dealerboard phone with 40 lines. They started lighting up quickly, then my boss raised his furrowed brow over my screen, grinned nervously and whispered "chart cat, do you realise what you just did?"

I'd paged the fucking disaster management distribution list, which included the entire management team for the bank, the board of directors, head traders, front, middle and back office and the IT department. Worldwide. Around 3,000 VIPs in total.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the morning and afternoon was spent fielding phone calls from high-ranking, irate people who wanted to know who this Andy figure was and why I was abusing the alert system. One director in New York called me to complain that I'd woken him up for nothing, another in Singapore called to tell me how I'd ruined the expensive dinner he was enjoying with his wife. One chap sarcastically wished Andy all the best and offered to send him a ‘present’. I felt dreadful; my fledgling career looked like it was in ruins just because Vodafone didn’t distinguish distribution lists from personal numbers, or provide any kind of warning on its website. Then my mates got wind of the situation and began prank-calling me, which was exactly what I didn't need.

After hours of apologising and being made to feel very small indeed, interspersed with my friends conspiring to make me feel even worse, I'd had enough. I picked up the phone for what felt like the millionth time and on the other end was one of my mates, again, this time pretending to be the head of 'Global Data Centres'. He was masquerading with some ridiculous name and speaking in a ludicrous foreign accent. I decided to give him a piece of my mind using as many swear words as I could cram into the rant as possible.

Sadly for me, it really was our head of Global Data Centres. I frantically checked our group directory and lo' and behold, I was talking to the top IT manager for the company. I’d called him a stupid, feckless cunt and insisted he stop wasting my time. To his eternal credit, he took my disgraceful, provocative and seething gross misconduct unbelievably well and told me to be more careful in future, as other managers might not be so forgiving.

From that day forwards, I was known as 'Pager' until I switched roles (hooray for graduate training programmes!).
( chart cat has an itch, Mon 3 Aug 2009, 6:16, 7 replies)

At least you sent
such an innocuous message!
Imagine the reaction if you had called them all cunts!
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Mon 3 Aug 2009, 8:03, closed)

Funny you should say that
but 'cunt' was the first thing I typed into the web form, then I changed my mind. A good choice, I think.
( chart cat has an itch, Mon 3 Aug 2009, 8:10, closed)

Oh dear
Have a click for probably the most far reaching mobile mishap we've heard about so far.
(womanwhocanonlylivewithdogs, Mon 3 Aug 2009, 8:24, closed)

This...
...For the win!

*clicks*
(Psymon_Spark Jesus Saves! The rest of you take 4d6 damage, Mon 3 Aug 2009, 9:48, closed)

Far too easy from the sound of it.
You know some of them will have the name Andy though and had a birthday coming up. They were probably thankful to you for the surprisingly large amount of presents they received.
(LittleKitty, Tue 4 Aug 2009, 16:59, closed)

I shall console myself with this
Thanks :)
( chart cat has an itch, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 8:26, closed)

Brilliant, mate
Have an empathetic *click* from me - hitting 'Reply to All' rather than 'Reply' almost cost me my previous job.
( TheMagicDwarf is back like ballroom dancing, Wed 5 Aug 2009, 2:38, closed)