bottom get

( $$ ✅, Thu 26 May 2016, 15:04, Reply)

laster

( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Thu 26 May 2016, 12:29, Reply)

last

( The Doveston haunted by the memory of his own amnesia, Wed 25 May 2016, 12:25, 1 reply)

I've always been fairly observant...
It was my first day in my Summer job at a local advertising company. The boss was showing me around the different rooms and introducing me to the staff. He walked me through the designers' pen, by the secretary's desk and into the account managers' area.

"Here we are preparing for a big sales pitch for the Northern School of XYZ. We're taking all these mock ups of posters, brochures etc over to them today for a presentation." he said, and we moved on to the next part of the building.

Perhaps if, at that moment, I had mentioned that on every single piece of advertising they'd used "Nortern" rather than Northern then the might have delayed the meeting, redone all the materials and won the contract.

But it was my first day. So I kept my mouth shut. And they didn't.

Bloody Hell! It's my 10th b3ta birthday!
( e.m.m.y. foxtrot uniform charlie kilo india tango, Mon 23 May 2016, 9:27, Reply)

splorp like totally noshed off ilovemy5dollarhorse and mcdoof laughed so hard that Tizer came out his nose! Mental!

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Sun 22 May 2016, 23:14, Reply)

Cheers

( $$ ✅, Sun 22 May 2016, 18:15, 1 reply)

I'm supposed to set a question of the week,
and produce a weekly newsletter.
Various comical and unlikely events have prevented me from doing so. People have stopped caring.
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Sun 22 May 2016, 15:04, 8 replies)

Literal street furniture
I used to work three jobs at the same time. No really, that's how I paid for university over the summer. While exhausting these weren't the type of roles to over tax the grey matter. For instance painting crappy student lets with milk thin emulsions paint is easy to let the brain run on auto-pilot.

Splashing paint around merrily, my boss reminded me that a full set of bedroom suites was being delivered ready for the new tenants who were moving in after the weekend. I was to sign for the delivery.

So when I dropped by the office to drop off the keys I happily signed for a delivery from a man in a huge van then went home satisfied with a job well done. Since I had to finish the evening in a call centre I switched my phone off.

What had escaped my notice was the difference between billing and shipping address. I had cheerfully signed off on a delivery and left for home when I was meant to direct the van to the house that I had been working in. Instead the man in a van had unloaded seven full sets of king size bed/mattress/wardrobe combinations onto the busy high street outside the letting agents office. Like the worlds most pikey ikea showroom.

Given that I had switched my phone off and the delivery driver was halfway down the M62 and accelerating, reaching the final resting place was down to the suited pseudo-estate agent sales team. None of whom had room for even the smallest article of furniture in their car. Given that the house in question was only a quarter of a mile from the head office it could of been worse.

This sort of glass-half-full thinking was lost on the people who had to carry seven king-size mattresses the whole distance in the baking July heat fighting off errant dogs and school kids.

I was not offered more shifts.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Sat 21 May 2016, 20:33, 2 replies)

Something that goes over a thousand lines and which none of you will bother to read.
Star Wars.
( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Sat 21 May 2016, 13:08, 3 replies)

Frank the Funkey Monkey
Many many years and incarnations ago, when I first arrived on your world through the omnivoox, I had a series of jobs, some of which you have read about on here, my luvvlie sweetiesz.

One of these jobs was as Production Manager at a toy factory.

No – worry not – this is not a tale of Nestenes and Autons (though I have plenty of stories to tell about those plastic-loving motherfuckers).

The factory in question produced a range of dolls, toys and figurines that were highly popular at the time. You might remember Tudge the Teddy Bear and his TV adverts: ‘Nudge the teddy! Fudge the teddy! Hudge the teddy! TUDGE THE TEDDY BEAR!’ Or perhaps Cocoa Bon Bibble (‘She Love To Dribble!’) who was a negroid baby doll that was our biggest seller. Or maybe our figurine of Baron Harkonnen from the Dune novels – that really hovered! (Batteries not included). Or perhaps our Frendley Robot Crew, who got us into deep shit, because several children died after swallowing their detachable fists. And who can forget Angel Parayde, our signature gorgeous dolly, so glamorous, so trendy, with her dead staring eyes, hidden lethal spike, and flammable miniskirt? (I bet you lot wish I wore one of those!!!)

But it is none of these of which I wish to speak. Oh no. I wish to discuss...

Frank the Funkey Monkey.

Frank the Funkey Monkey was our new product line, a monkey dressed in hip-hop clothes whose limbs would jerk spasmodically in a frankly (see what I did there?) pathetic imitation of breakdancing when you clapped your hands within reception distance of the sensor embedded within its (highly flammable, naturally) innards.

In addition to this, Frank the Funkey Monkey would, when a button was pressed on his hip-hop tunic, utter at random one of the following phrases:

‘Hee hee! I’m a Happy Monkey! I just wanna have fun!’

‘Nyum nyum! I’m a Hungry Monkey! What’s for tea?’

‘Yaaawn! I’m a Sleepy Monkey! Time for bed!’

‘Ooh ooh! I’m a Funky Monkey! I just wanna dance!’

These lines were recorded by an actor who, unbeknownst to me, had been sacked from Coronation Street for alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual harassment, petty pilfering and loitering with intent to urinate on set. A bitter, twisted, spiteful individual, brimming with anger and desperate for revenge on the cruel, heartless world. (He later ‘bounced back’ and is now famous his major role in an acclaimed British TV drama, better not say which one!). Anyway, at the time of my story, this actor was a bitter, twisted, spiteful individual, brimming with anger and desperate for revenge on the cruel, heartless world. Oh, I’ve already said that – better delete it. Or perhaps not – it will make the story longer – and I know you all LOVE my loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong stories, don’t you, my twinkley liddle sweetiesze?!?! Ha ha!

Anyway.... This actor, who I’d best not LINE OF DUTY name, was contracted to record the lines for Frank the Funkey Monkey, which he duly did, in one take. He seemed professional and capable if a little surly, he didn’t look out of his head on crack and vodka. But then these people always are good at hiding their addictions, aren’t they? For all we know he’s back on the shit now. Unbeknownst to me, however, he had already recorded a tape (yes, it was that long ago) of phrases, which he surreptitiously substituted for the real tape before he left the office.

Luckily, I managed to spot the substitution and disaster was averted.

I wish!!!

I didn’t spot the substitution, and so Frank the Funkey Monkey came off the production line equipped with the following phrases:

‘RAAAGH! I’m an Angry Monkey! I hate you, you little shit! Mummy and Daddy hate you too! Die! Die! Die!’

‘Nyum nyum! I’m a Hungry Monkey! Don’t go to sleep tonight or I will EAT YOUUUUUUU!’

‘Yaaaawn! I’m a Sleepy Monkey! Come to bed with me, you little cunt, so I can finger your sweet little ass!’

‘Uuurgh Uuurgh! I’m a Spunky Monkey! I want to spray my semen all over your little face whilst your Daddy watches and wanks and the producer of Coronation Street is fisted to death, argh, the cunt, the CUNT, aaargh! I’m gonna kill the [muffled thumps] FUCKING, FUCKING, *FUCKING* CUNT! CUNT! AAAAAAAAAARGH!’

Needless to say, we had a few complaints, and I was taken in to the Managing Director’s office, and, as the Production Manager, the product was my responsibility, and I was sacked.

I didn’t mind, it was a shit job anyway. No, it wasn’t Adrian Dunbar, think again.

LAIGH8TERZZZ SWEETIESZE!!!

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
(Dr Skagra glorious glargzhem, Sat 21 May 2016, 10:56, 4 replies)

Worst Screw Up
Writing a COBOL program to send refund cheques. For some unexplicable reason I started the count at 1, incremented by 2, and checked if count=50.

It was never going to equal 50.

So I printed (but thank the fuck didn't send) 30,000 cheques to the same guy.

But it was in the 70's..... You really don't want to know how we had to code back then....


As an aside - what's happened to QOTW? Where are all the trolls? I only look at B3ta once in a blue moon and don't post due to the vitriol and crap I used to get from Badger and the Talk crowd. But, if they've gone, I might start posting again.

Been here in Oz for more than 10 years and have a lot of crazy shit I can write about..

And, as always...

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 20 May 2016, 15:36, 19 replies)

Back in the days when elearning CD roms were still a thing, I sent some Authorware files to the CD printer to burn
However I missed the crucial subfolder in my zip, the thing that would actually make the whole thing work. It was due to go out to most 7-9 year old school kids in England. Our first print run was 100,000 CDs. None of them worked. I threw all the boxes of them in the skip.
This normally would have had major consequences for me, but at the time the place was totally dysfunctional. We were haemorrhaging money, the board were in open warfare with each other, and my boss was about to start his own company (while stealing a lot of IT equipment, as it turned out later). So nothing happened. Nobody asked me what happened to all the CDs. In a week or so I put in the same order, this time with the right files, and our accounts paid for it without any questions. A year later the place was taken over by Pearsons, an american multinational that retrenched most of the staff and gutted the company, but by then I'd moved onto my next disaster.
I might have not sent as many CDs to landfill as AOL, but I gave them a run for their money, dammit
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Fri 20 May 2016, 1:23, 3 replies)

Pearoast from back in the good 'ol days
i was once invited to some drinks with some of the senior folk from work. They decided to bring along some potential new clients too. All the drinks were paid for etc.

Anyway, one of the clients starts telling dirty jokes, everyone is laughing at them so he ups the anti - with each joke dirtier than the last.

There we were standing in a circle in our suits, about 8 of us. We were now up to the level of paraplegics being spaffed in the face, when i decide to tell a joke.

Every one hushed- even saying stuff like - "hey DAN has got a joke, shhh, lets hear it, it can't be dirtier than the last, no way"

so I begin.

MAn in a bar says to another man, "I can have any girl in here if I want"
"really ?" says the second man "hows that?"

"because im a rapist"

At that point there was noises of "oooohhh" and "ooooof" at that point everyone decided that they either needed the toilet, needed to make an urgent phone call, or get another pint.

I stood there as the circle dispanded with the look of WTF strewn across my face.

Wasnt invited on any more drinks nights.
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Thu 19 May 2016, 15:20, 13 replies)

Are you dancing?
I once attempted to do a sexually provocative dance.
I failed miserably.
I screwed up a twerk
(thefuckestuppest cheapened this, on, Thu 19 May 2016, 15:02, 1 reply)

Bathroom misunderstanding
I once worked in a small but expanding business in London. When the flat above the shop became available we took that over too. The bathroom became a unisex staff toilet and the bath was boarded over leaving only a gap for the slightly leaking taps.
One day one of the girls came out shrieking that someone had shit it the bath. Unbelievable. But everyone just knew who the likely culprit was. He was a new guy and the last person known to have been in there.
He was summonsed and despite his cries of innocence was ordered to clean it up or lose his job.
Under protest he made a start, only to find that it wasn't shit. It was one of the boss's fat Cuban cigars which had expanded with the wet from the weeping taps. Poor sod didn't get any apologies either.
(reinvented, Thu 19 May 2016, 8:56, 1 reply)

( $$ ✅, Wed 18 May 2016, 9:45, 1 reply)

Autobill


I once (a long time ago, before all the wonderful SAAS systems) set up a system to process credit cards and do auto-billing of subscribers to our web site. However, I messed up the scheduling, and instead of it running once a month, it ran once a minute. As it took a little while for the billing to actually take place, this meant that every single run decided the subscriber needed to renew and it would bill $29.99. Every minute For about 2 hours. Before we realized.

It took me, and a co-worker several hours of frantic work, manually crediting back all the money. Remarkably of the couple of hundred people affected, only one complained, and once we pointed out that it was already refunded, he let it go.
( gp_guineapig, Tue 17 May 2016, 22:05, Reply)

Not me but a friend
Rachelswipe will sympathise. My friend was a junior solicitor at a very large law firm in London. Junior solicitor was one cog in the wheel of a very large transaction involving the refinancing of an international hotel chain. The money involved was in the hundreds of millions. The transaction was due to complete and all was good so she just carried on doing her thing as instructed and completed the task that had been set by her superior (a slightly larger cog in that machine). She filed all the 403s for all the hotels in the UK part of the chain (of which there were dozens).

A 403 is the form you filed to release the mortgage a bank has over its corporate borrower's assets. That's fine if the transaction was going ahead because a new bank was stepping in. Problem was the deal had not gone ahead and my friend had just removed those hotels from that bank's list of assets - about a £500m pounds worth of security. Imagine your mortgage being written off in one fell swoop the multiply that by several thousand... I don't think the bank was very happy seeing its security disappear overnight.

Of course it all happened on a Friday night so there was a very anxious couple of days while every favour to be called in was called in and apparently a relevant judge was found on a beach in Cornwall on Sunday morning to give an emergency order to reinstate the mortgages.

Needless to say, it got my friend noticed by many of the more senior members of her firm... She kept he job though.

TL;DR overpaid overworked solicitor makes a mistake
(Gusofnavarone always makes a map of france from sarnies, Tue 17 May 2016, 18:06, 4 replies)

I was once trying to clear some space on a unix server
and found buried about 10 levels deep a copy of the entire home directory.

So I typed rm -rf home/*

Well, I meant to. I actually typed rm -rf /home/*

Which deleted the entire home directory and brought the production server down. Oops.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Tue 17 May 2016, 17:56, 13 replies)

A long time ago, back when I was a newly qualified engineer, I was given quite a big project to work on - well, not wanting to blow my own trumpet here but it was MASSIVE - I could hardly believe my luck. I thought I did a pretty impressive job, and so did everybody else until they discovered a small design flaw...you just wouldn't BELIEVE the unlikely chain of events that led to it being discovered, but when it was, oh boy, it all blew up in my face. And everyone else's. Took me a pretty long time to live that one down, I can tell you! Fortunately time is a great healer and after many years I was given the chance to undertake a similar project. Well virtually the same project really but just a bit bigger. Sadly, old lazybones here thought, "aha, I'll just scale up my old designs, make sure I sort out that *slight* design flaw..." Unfortunately - and I still don't know how it happened - yes, you guessed it, I forgot to take that pesky flaw out...suffice it to say I am back in the dog-house again :-(
( vladimir, Tue 17 May 2016, 17:39, 2 replies)

i've only been working since may 7th
and the closest i've made to a mistake was putting jam and marmalade in the wrong fridge.
still, plenty of time to fuck up, eh?
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Tue 17 May 2016, 15:50, 4 replies)

ran a training security exercise at old trafford
scored an unexpected own goal
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 17 May 2016, 14:43, Reply)

"Shhhhh". She pressed her finger to my lips as she reached under the desk for my rapidly engorging.. oh wait you said screwing UP at work.

( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Tue 17 May 2016, 14:09, 1 reply)

20 years ago, I was a young computer programmer working on an antiquated IBM Mainframe
I was working on a 'leading edge' project that was trying to pass PC-based transactions to the mainframe for processing and then back again.

Whilst testing one afternoon, we discovered that one of my programs was continually failing. No big surprise in itself, but these repeated failures rapildy fill an audit log file, which in turn brought down the entire company mainframe.

The whole company, some 500 or so employees, were left twiddling their thumbs for the rest of the day. Lost productivity was probably in the order of 10s of 1000s of £.

An IBM engineer was called, who was adamant that something as bog-standard as a program failure would NEVER make an entire mainframe crash. Oh how wrong he was. He ended up taking my program away with him 'for further investigation'.

Incredibly, I didn't get so much as a mild bollocking. They were more annoyed with IBM than me.

tl;dr - Zzzzzzzz boring IT stuff.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Tue 17 May 2016, 14:02, 1 reply)

Overestimated my own coding skillz
Managed to last 3 months before the boss finally realised I was shit.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 17 May 2016, 13:18, 3 replies)

Incoming
I'm starting work at a place that makes defibrillators. This QOTW will probably be open long enough for me to have a tale of tragedy, idiocy and electricity.
( ferret -> twitter.com/syfyautocorrect <-, Tue 17 May 2016, 13:07, 1 reply)

Fuck, works not going well today. I think I screwed up here. Better just check to see if theres a new QTOW to cheer me up
.
..
...


Well shit.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Tue 17 May 2016, 12:07, 6 replies)

many years ago, i had a holiday job as a letting agent in manchester
we had one development over in Liverpool (which encompassed maybe 400 out of a total of 4,000 tenants, but I was in court chasing arrears in Liverpool more often than Manchester; scousers seem to think things like paying rent don't apply to them). I was over in Liverpool county court in the morning for a hearing, then had to go on a flat inspection in the afternoon.

I left the car door open for a moment as I had to pick something up. miraculously, nobody nicked the car, so I drove back to Manchester, 90's music blaring, happily singing away. arrived back in Didsbury, turned off the engine - only to hear a plaintive: MIAAAAOOOOWWW.

looked around. couldn't see anything. went to get out of the car. MIAAAAOOOOOOOW. couldn't see anything.

eventually I found a large ginger scouse cat in the back of the car. it had crammed itself on the floor behind my seat and I had brought all the way to Manchester and not noticed. gaaaaaah.

I had to take it back to Liverpool and then drive back again, by which point I was 2 hours late and the boss was furious.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 17 May 2016, 10:57, 5 replies)

Hitting F5 on b3ta all week instead of doing some work.

( Pig Bodine., Tue 17 May 2016, 9:21, 3 replies)