# How To Screw Up Royally **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 16, 2010, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973 "2010-09-16T15:15:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![cards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@cards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cards)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/21 "2010-09-16T20:21:39Z")
> [@Hal\_Briston](#): > > > [@cards](#): > > > > OK, I missed the hunting flies one. Got a link? > > Hmm. Seems I post on here a fair amount regarding my screwups. Ah well…[here ya go](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=426750). **Hal** please keep posting screwups. ---
**Author:** ![otternell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecc23a/32.png) [@otternell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/otternell)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/22 "2010-09-16T21:41:38Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > Ooh, I’m always afraid of doing that (or calling someone names after I hang up the phone, but it’s not quite disconnected yet). I’ve learned not to trust the “mute” button on a phone. Oooh yeah - I got in big big trouble for saying “asshole” before the phone was truly hung up. Ooops. But I was young and stupid, now I am not quite as much of either. ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/23 "2010-09-16T21:54:21Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > You can see where this is going, right? I’ll bite, since no one else is… um, no. Maybe I’m being dense today… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Devil_s_Grandmother)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/24 "2010-09-16T22:14:38Z")
I think the first clue is “My Irreplaceable Table”. It’s like wearing a red shirt on the command deck of the Enterprise. May as well name it “MyTableI’mGoingToDeleteWithATinyTypo”. ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/25 "2010-09-16T22:34:57Z")
Ah… gracias. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/26 "2010-09-16T22:41:15Z")
I’d say the constant inbreeding through marriage with cousins would pretty much do it. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/27 "2010-09-16T22:43:14Z")
> [@Astroboy14](#): > > > [@tdn](#): > > > > You can see where this is going, right? > > I’ll bite, since no one else is… um, no. Maybe I’m being dense today… He forgot to get rid of the line that did the DROP TABLE, so when he went and ran the script, he deleted the entire table and all of the data in it. ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/28 "2010-09-16T23:01:14Z")
[Obligatory xkcd link](http://xkcd.com/327/) ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/29 "2010-09-16T23:27:31Z")
Oh, for the good old days when people screwed up directly instead of letting machines screw things up. ---
**Author:** ![Hal\_Briston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9a28c/32.png) [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/30 "2010-09-17T00:32:55Z")
> [@cards](#): > > **Hal** please keep posting screwups. There’s still a couple of [oldies](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7419904#post7419904) but [goodies](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=260815) out there. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/31 "2010-09-17T02:01:12Z")
> [@Rysto](#): > > > [@Astroboy14](#): > > > > I’ll bite, since no one else is… um, no. Maybe I’m being dense today… > > He forgot to get rid of the line that did the DROP TABLE, so when he went and ran the script, he deleted the entire table and all of the data in it. Oh - that sounds like the kind of thing that an “undo” button isn’t going to fix. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/32 "2010-09-17T03:11:29Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > If Hal worked for one of our email hosting clients, and Hal called the IT guy to ask about the missing emails, the IT guy would have emailed us and said “A **bunch of our users** are missing emails can you reboot the server?” > > “Uh no we’re not going to reboot the busy mail server in the middle of the day for you. Can you give us an example of a user who is not getting email?” > > “One user is Hal. Can you reboot the server?” > > “Ok can you give us his email address and the email address of someone who is sending him emails that he is not receiving?” > > “Hal is not getting emails from [user@domain.com](mailto:user@domain.com)” > > “Ok well we searched all the logs and found 3 instances of Hal getting email from [user@domain.com](mailto:user@domain.com) so everything is fine according to our system. There must be something wrong on your end.” > > “A **bunch of users** are missing emails. Can you reboot the server?” > > “No. We checked the logs, there is something wrong on your end. Here’s excerpts from the logs with examples of all the successful sends.” > > “Can you reboot the server?” > > “We rebooted the server.” > > “Thanks! Turns out that Hal had a setting in Outlook that deleted emails from that address.” > > This would be an all-day affair. > > Thanks for not reporting this to the email host, Hal. They appreciate it. Oh, how I wish this were a joke post…unfortunately, I live this on a regular basis… ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/33 "2010-09-17T13:00:48Z")
> [@Hal\_Briston](#): > > > [@cards](#): > > > > **Hal** please keep posting screwups. > > There’s still a couple of [oldies](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7419904#post7419904) but [goodies](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=260815) out there. I sometimes picture you as a male Lucy Ricardo, hatching zany schemes and encountering mundane situations that you somehow manage to turn into major problems. You know that episode where she handcuffs herself to Ricky as a joke without checking to make sure she has the keys for the handcuffs first? I can totally imagine you doing something like that. ---
**Author:** ![arseNal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@arseNal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/arseNal)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/34 "2010-09-17T14:14:22Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > If Hal worked for one of our email hosting clients, and Hal called the IT guy to ask about the missing emails, the IT guy would have emailed us and said “A **bunch of our users** are missing emails can you reboot the server?” I’ve read and heard many, many helpdesk horror stories over the years, and I’ve gotten a chuckle or two out of them, but this is the first one that’s ever made me want to try to reach out across time and space to try to throttle someone. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/35 "2010-09-17T14:40:10Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > > [@Rysto](#): > > > > He forgot to get rid of the line that did the DROP TABLE, so when he went and ran the script, he deleted the entire table and all of the data in it. > > Oh - that sounds like the kind of thing that an “undo” button isn’t going to fix. Correct. No undo button in SQL, nor is there a dialog box that confirms if you really want to delete that data. Just the click on the “run” button or a press of the F5 key and faster than you can say “oh shit!”, several years of very important data have vanished. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/36 "2010-09-17T18:01:42Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > > [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > > > Oh - that sounds like the kind of thing that an “undo” button isn’t going to fix. > > Correct. No undo button in SQL, nor is there a dialog box that confirms if you really want to delete that data. Just the click on the “run” button or a press of the F5 key and faster than you can say “oh shit!”, several years of very important data have vanished. I actually had a DBA who ended his very short career as my assistant by having two windows open, one looking at the production database and one looking at the temporary copy on the development server that he was experimenting with. Any guesses as to which window he typed the “rm -rf \*” (that is, delete everything with no appeal!) command into? Thank god for tape backups. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/37 "2010-09-17T18:11:26Z")
I worked with one lady and she was going to send a cover letter and her resume from work. Instead of sending it to the person she sent it to “global.” This “global” meant anyone with an email address in that company got the resume 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/38 "2010-09-17T18:40:17Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > I actually had a DBA who ended his very short career as my assistant by having two windows open, one looking at the production database and one looking at the temporary copy on the development server that he was experimenting with. > > Any guesses as to which window he typed the “rm -rf \*” (that is, delete everything with no appeal!) command into? > > Thank god for tape backups. The thing is, systems like that make it incredibly easy to accidently delete stuff. I am now incredibly careful with anything that starts with “DROP” or “DELETE.” I’ll usually comment out those words so I have to specifically highlight the statement in order to run it. ---
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/39 "2010-09-17T22:02:48Z")
When fairly new to a job, my brother-in-law was formatting some diskette so he could back up some files. Rather than “Format E:”, he managed to type “Format C:”, to be met with the message “Press any key to continue”. Instead of turning the computer off, he pressed \, but apparently the \ counts towards ANY KEY. After formatting his hard drive, he got to spend the next several days recreating everything that was on the hard drive. This would have been before networked computers and overnight backups. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973/40 "2010-09-17T22:42:42Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > I wanted to create a table called MyIrreplaceableTable\_copy, so I made a script for MyIrreplaceableTable that looked like this: > > DROP TABLE MyIrreplaceableTable > GO > CREATE TABLE MyIrreplaceableTable( > SuperImportantField1 int, > SuperImportantField2 int, > SuperImportantField3 int, > SuperImportantField4 int) > > All I had to do was get rid of the first line and add “\_copy” to the third line. > > You can see where this is going, right? Ooooooh yeah. Years ago, I was the data conversion person for a major system implementation. I had this script that would nuke-from-orbit all but reference data from the target database - used a LOT when I was running and troubleshooting the conversion scripts prior to go-live. Add to this: a new-to-Oracle DBA trainee with admin rights and a sense of curiosity. I stood there and watched her - while logged into PRODUCTION… as ADMIN… hit ctrl-V. It turns out, she had - for reasons known only to her - been looking at that now-outdated script… and for reasons known only to her, selected and copied the entire contents of the script. So before my horrified eyes, I saw: TRUNCATE TABLE irreplaceable1; TRUNCATE TABLE irreplaceable2; DELETE FROM irreplaceable3; etc. I screamed “STOP” and she managed to interrupt it before EVERYTHING was gone… but, well, you can’t just do a rollback when you do a truncate-table command. I was wordless with shock. The more-experienced DBA, who happened to be in the room also, was stunningly blase about it - said he should be able to retrieve it from the log tables. Still… I suspect he had a rough night of it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-screw-up-royally/553973.md?page=3)