My biggest howler.

[s44678]

Inspired by the stupid things done thread, and then something just reminded me of this story, I thought I would share it.

I (begrudgingly) ended up on the organising committee for my final year exhibition at Uni. Me and 2 other guys were tasked with producing the booklet to compliment the Product Design exhibition. 'OK' I thought, at least I have some control over how it looks, some of the other years had excellent work let down by a poor booklet.

There were 60 odd students, and each were to have their own page with photo, contact details, design philosophy and images of their final project. So quite a bit of work to do. I had done the template, and the plan for was for each of us to go away and use this template to do 20 pages each.

Predictably, we left it until about 4 days before it had to go to print to compile this thing. So late one night I was showing the other guys how to use InDesign to populate this template, and I picked out one of the students at random to demonstrate with. For some reason I kind of did a half-arsed demonstration, and instead of putting her correct contact details in, I did the name, number then because I couldn't be arsed to look up her email address and website , I just put www.cockjockey.com email nob@cockjockey.com. "Haha aren't I funny guys, I messed about on this one just to demonstrate to you, but you get the gist right?" " Yeah yeah", they said, "we get it", so we went our separate ways to get on with compiling it.

(Can you guess where this is going)

Anyway cut to the day of the event and this half-pallet full of brochures turns up at uni. We had a quick check, looks alright so we start distributing them around the exhibition hall, foyer, reception etc ready for the show opening that evening.

I'd been home to change, and was driving back to uni for the big opening ceremony, and I get a call off one of the other lads. He's in the Dean's office with this bird off the course, she's in tears and the Dean wants to see all of us immediately. "Oh fuck, I know what's happened". Sure enough he'd forgot to correct her details on the demonstration page I'd done, and we'd printed £3,000 worth of brochures (500 in total) with this girls contact details as 'nob@cockjockey.com' and website as www.cockjockey.com. Oh Shit.

To make things worse we pretty much hated this bird anyway and she knew it, she was always sucking up to the head of the course and getting good grades even though her work was shit. She span this massive story that we'd done this on purpose because we hated her, to wreck her exhibition, and make her look like a twat to all the parents, people from industry, prospective employers etc. (plausible, but not true). The Dean was almost purple with rage and about 5 minutes from chucking us off the course and destroying 4 years of work. "Oh fuck this has got pretty serious." Not having a booklet wasn't an option. Everyone had chipped in £50 for the printing and would be proper pissed with us if there was no brochure to promote their hard work.

Basically we pleaded our case that it was a mistake and we managed to cut a deal where we had to go round and collect every single one of the brochures, paint over the 'oversticker' the offending pages with the correct details. If one slipped through the net, we we're gonna get booted off the course. Needless to say that was the most stressful 3 hours of my life having to go round and take these brochures out of people's hands, bags, and off tables etc. then sit in the basement computer room sticking little stickers into brochures while everyone else was getting pissed upstairs at the free bar and generally showing off their work and waving their willies about to prospective employers.

We got away with it in the end, even though we only stickered 480 (so 20 are out in there ether) but it was nearly a howler of epic proportions.




Please share your stories where something happened that you didn't intend, but it did, and nearly cost you dearly.

[T1z3R]

i guess you had to be there
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duck my sick!

[Fawbish]

That sounds fuckin ace

Not particularly something I've done. I had a day off sick, as I couldnt keep my arse from spouting the liquid death. Came in day after pilled up on Immodium, filled in my sick form.

Secretary (nice girl, but a bit dim) picks up my form and nicely tells me she'll take it up for me. Cool, ses I, much appreciated.

So, as she walks out, she turns around at the door, and (in an open plan office with everyone I work with sat within 20 feet of us) shouts to me, perfectly innocently, and very loudly, "Ace, you can actually spell diarrhoea!"

I was just like, Abuh. Cheers, Love.
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"Oh....it looks like Average Joe's is forfeiting the match!" - "Yeah, its a risky strategy but lets see if it pays off for 'em Cotton."

[Feasty]

[Im-a-Ridah]

LOL Bournemouth uni?

[Bendy]

Skluff, that is exactly the type of thing I'd do.

We once launched a major new music website - city investment, press ads, the whole shebang. If you wanted to buy anything, you had to go to the Megastoat page.

Quite how I got 'store' to be 'stoat' I'll never know.

[The Shaggy D.A.]

We had to prepare a demo for a new customer of our mortgage software, so once the software was in place we skimmed some test data off one of our test boxes.

Apparently our directors were not amused to see mortgages being offered to Johnny Fartpants, Pierre Pompetrous and Hans Honkyhosen.
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Chances are quite high you are not in my Monkeysphere, and I don't care about you. Don't take it personally.
Currently : Royal Enfield 350 Meteor
Previously : CB100N > CB250RS > XJ900F > GT550 > GPZ750R/1000RX > AJS M16 > R100RT > Bullet 500 > CB500 > LS650P > Bullet Electra X & YBR125 > Bullet 350 "Superstar" & YBR125 Custom > Royal Enfield Classic 500 Despatch Limited Edition (28 of 200) & CB Two-Fifty Nighthawk > ER5

[Im-a-Ridah]

[FreshAL]

2 telnet windows open

one to the customers live system

one to the customers test system.

Need to delete everything on the test system and replace with a copy of what's on the live system to test the new version.

[s44678]

While I was working for Boots, their Christmas catalogue went out with that now infamous picture of Jamie Oliver with a french stick placed to look like his nob.

They spent like £1m re-printing that or something. Luckily I had nothing to do with that one

[MonkeyKnuckle]

You mean this picture?

https://z.about.com/d/urbanlegends/1/0/X/7/oliver_b.jpg
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MKGaming.com
2000 Honda CBR600F - Sold! 2003 Honda CBR600RR - Current!

[yen_powell]

I closed Globe Road in east London to install new traffic signals.

When I turned up on the Saturday to supervise the actual works there was a niggling doubt that I'd maybe forgotten to do something important, but what was it. I'd told the police, fire ambulance, mentioned it to the meals on wheels and dustcarts, leafletted all the surrounding houses.

Hearing some hooting 500 yards down the road, I turned to see a large red bus trying to do a 36 point turn, when it dawned on me what I'd forgotten to do.
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Blackmail is a nasty word........but not as nasty as phlegm!
XT1200Z and a DR350 in bits

[Kickstart]

Hi

Production change to some software. Put in some code that said:-

WHILE (ICNT ¬= 18)
DO;
SOMEARRAY(ICNT) = 123;
ICNT = ICNT + 1;
END;

Which was fine when ICNT started at less than 18 (ie, any logical sitiation, which turned out to only be 99.9% of the time). Pity the occasions when it didn't when the program ran screaming through memory writing 123 to the storage that equated to whatever array member ICNT would point to at that moment. Eventually it hit something large and immovable and brought down the production CICS system (random unrelated programs that hadn't been touched in years were falling over with "Program has been compiled with PL/1 F type compiler").

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[FreshAL]

The Oracle makes mistakes?

This disturbs my world view

[Im-a-Ridah]

[The Original Muzza]

AAAANIMAAAAL HOOUUUUUSEE!!!!
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Current Bikes: Husqvarna Svartpilen 401 (2020)
Former Bikes: Honda MSX125 (2014), BMW Funduro (1996), Honda VT500 (1983), Yamaha FZR250 (1989), Suzuki GZ125 Marauder(2005),:Triumph TT600 (2002) (stolen)
From then on, I and the bicycle feelings deeper.

[Kickstart]

[warped one]

Not my howler but did make me howl. (In pain)

The other week whilst working with a youngest and most idiot app, is was moving the earth from the bench we had been working at to the job we were working on (Staircase). To stop people from tripping over the cable I decided to put it underniether. Just so I didn't get buzzed I told the app to not tack the piece yet. And yes you quessed it, the drowsey tw@t goes and pulls the trigger, with one hand on the job one hand on the earth, roughly 250amps decided to lob me across the floor and into the bench.

Needless to say he was promptly taken outside and shit kicked across the forecourt, infront of the MD's aswel.

Another one was a few weeks after I started we were taking the gloss off some MDF so we could plate it. Instead of using the chemicles we were using belt sanders. And as you can quess one thing turned into another and we began racing them across the workshop. Well just getting to the doors where we were turning round and coming back in I fell off the back lobbing the sander straight into the bosses brand new merc Luckily before I had to explain the moronic labourer put the fork of the forktruck down the side and saved me from alot of shit and got himself sacked ha ha.

Cheers

Warped
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amnesia - Never in the history of usernames has one been more accurate. Warped indeed. You sir are a fecking oddball.