“And that’s how I invented Headstart.”
Heh. This reminded me of something that happened regularly at a previous job I had. We gave out stress balls shaped like computer mice with the company logo on them to our customers. I kept one on my desk in case any customers came to my office.
I lost track of how many times my co-workers would try to use my computer and then scream about my mouse not working. And then realize they were using the stress ball instead. 
I’m a dingbat.
When in college i too parked my car in Drive and it didn’t start. My father drove 2 hours on a Sat to fix it. He wasn’t amused.
My husband had to leave work and drive 45 minutes to unlock my car for me where I worked… Not only did i leave the keys in the ignition, but the car was still running and I hadn’t even noticed!.. Noisy parking garage.
I dragged him off to buy me a new SUV the month before my lease was to run out. I forgot to bring the papers. No big deal. I could drop off the leased vehicle next week. He and the dealer asked me several times, are you sure it’s over in Aug? Yes. Whelp, got home with new car and found out the lease on my old one went through Aug of the NEXT year!
We had 3 car payments for 13 months. OUCH.
Once while flying from Newark back to Houston I had a quick 30 minute stopover in DC. Same plane though. I’m not a frequent traveller. Airport was packed, I was a little late, so I checked my bag at the gate in Newark. While tagging, they asked me “destination?” I said “DC”. An hour latter, mid flight, it hit me she meant final destination. They were going to offload my bag in DC! Instead of asing for help, I was in a silent panic. There was a map of the DC airport terminals in the magazine holder so I studied my route carefully. Tried to be the first off the plane and ran like a fool carrying all my carryon stuff to the baggage claim conveyors, found my bag, ran back to the plane and checked it at the gate again, this time for Houston. Was sweating buckets and panting like a madwoman, but I actually made it. I’m sure I made the people sitting next to me wonder.
Reminds me of a couple of years ago, I flew to Rome via a connection in Washington DC. Once in Rome, I stood at a baggage carousel for a Chicago flight for 25 minutes waiting for my bag to come out before realizing that, though I flew out of Chicago, I came in on a flight from DC so I should probably check the baggage carousel for that flight.
The year after, I flew direct to Dublin from Chicago. This time, I stood in front of a carousel for a completely different flight from Chicago for about 15 minutes before I figured it out.
Apparently, my brain doesn’t work the first hour or so I’m in a new country.
I did the “leave a manual transmission in neutral and forget the parking brake” thing at work once. My car rolled backwards in the parking lot. Fortunately it completely missed all other cars and stopped on a flat spot. But I felt like a doofus.
One time in college, I drove out to my girlfriend’s house in the boondocks in my parents’ car. They had a long winding dirt driveway. Well, a storm had blown through and knocked down a tree across the driveway, so I couldn’t drive up to the house, but stopped in the driveway. Stayed there late, got ready to leave ~ 2 am, started backing out of the driveway, and put the back driver’s wheel in a ditch. Oh yeah, the driveway had a curve at the entrance that I forgot about and didn’t see in the dark. I had to walk back in, get my girlfriend, dig out an axe, chop the tree out of the way, use her car to pull the car out of the ditch. In the middle of the night. So her dad wouldn’t come home and find me there when she wasn’t supposed to have me over.
But the doozy that could have had lasting consequences but I got LUCKY…
Back in childhood, my brother, sister, and I were at an aunt and uncle’s farm visiting. Parents ran us out of the house to go play outside. It was winter in Oklahoma. We go strolling across the pasture, over a hill, half a mile? Anway, we find a horse pond, a depression with water in the bottom but iced over solid. We think, hey wouln’t it be fun to play on the ice like we see on TV? Well, we’re not idiots, so we decide to test the ice first. We pick up the biggest tree limb we can find and throw it out on the ice, it bounces off. Great. Send the smallest out first. Sister starts walking across the ice. Okay, I start out about 10 feet behind her. We’re on the ice, brother’s on the shore, we start to see tiny cracking and sense the ice splooshing along the shore. Um, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.
So sister and I turn around and make for the side as quickly as we can. I’m about 5 ft out when the ice breaks, and I go plunging in up to my knees. Brother lunges out, gives me a push toward the bank, then steps in further to grab my sister. They’re soaked up their chests as she fell in face first. We drag out on the bank, freezing cold weather and soaking wet. Great. So we start trudging toward the house. And we’re miserable, and my sister wants to give up and sit down and let us go get help, and my brother is dragging her along and absolutely won’t let us stop.
We made it back to the house, parents were running an errand in town, our adult cousin gets us to strip down and wrap up warm and sit by the fire and get hot cocoa. Then the parents come home.
Dad had to walk out of the room when he was told to keep from killing us. Um, yeah.
Moral of the story - do not go on frozen ponds/streams in Oklahoma! Oklahoma is not up north like Michigan. Don’t do things just because you see them on TV.
I worked in a drugstore. It was a busy Saturday, and suddenly none of the phones were working. I had all the employees communicating via their cellphones, because we couldn’t page, or make in-store calls, either. Doctors offices had no way to call in prescriptions, customers were coming in all pissed off… It lasted a few hours until I could get a tech from the phone co. to make an emergency weekend visit. He plugged the(giant, could NOT be missed) main plug for the phone equipment back into the wall. So that’s what I had tripped over earlier in the day!
:smack:
The thing is, this story ended just a few hours after I had read all your posts, and since I can’t possibly share this in real life, I thank the OP for this opportunity…
(Handsome, smart, but not mechanical) hubby ran over a small stick with the snow blower a few weeks ago and it died. Both of us tried to start it several times, swearing at it, sneaking up on it, and hoping for a miracle, but nothin’.
We have been staring at it like WTF ever since, with no idea what to do to make it start. He talks to someone who says it’s probably gotta get picked up and taken for service, meaning a $100+ investment, and somebody taking advantage of our dumbassery.
As a last chance shot before calling the service guy, I checked in with an engineer at work, who has worn manymany hats and has never met a machine he couldn’t fix. One of his final suggestions was “see if the key got knocked loose.”
Dammit Dammit Dammit! The KEY? Oh, THAT KEY!
I was gonna pay some guy mucho dinero AND give him my real name and address so he could tell this story to all his friends.
What key, in case I ever get a snowblower?
I showed up early for an interview once.
An entire DAY early.
Well, that’s enthusiasm!
Years ago I had to rent a car for a few days while mine was being repaired. I had to drive my daughter to school the next morning, so I tossed her backpack in the back seat from the front and off we went. She was in the front passenger seat.
Arriving at the school, I leaned in to get the backpack but could not reach it. I tilted the driver’s seat forward but it would not go far. I slid the entire seat as far forward as allowed, but still I had to twist and squeeze myself into a pretty tight space to retrieve the pack. It was actually painful. I silently cursed at the engineers who designed such an impractical piece of shit and swore I would never buy a GM product.
I walked her up to the school, then as I returned and approached the vehicle I realized that I had rented a four door.
mmm
The night before my Constitutional Law final, there was an ice storm. So I go out to my car, and it’s all iced over, including the truck. So, setting my wheelie bag containing my laptop to the side, I start the car and the defrosters and I scrape and chip the ice off the side windows. I do a nice careful job as I don’t want to get in any accidents on the way to the exam that’s worth 100% of my grade. Satisfied, I get in the car… and drive away without the laptop. I realize this when I arrive at school 45 minutes later, find a parking spot, go around to the trunk and find it empty.
Even though I was really early, there was no chance of going back for it, as traffic in the other direction was stopped. As I’m staring incredulously into the trunk, and starting to seriously freak out about having to handwrite my exam essays, a friend happens by, talks me down, and loans me a couple of pens and pencils.
I did fine on the exam and my husband found my wheelie bag, still containing laptop, right where I left it. So, in the end, no harm no foul.
stupid piece of cheap plastic that does absolutely nothing but slide in and out. Just a last chance safety mechanism, like a treadmill key, for people with kids I guess. Since we don’t have those, and assembled the thing a year and a half ago, the key went in and was forgotten. Until it got shaken out 1/4".
And since when would we normally care, in the last week of March, about a snowblower? This “spring” is bogus.
My friend and I visited Crete a few summers ago. We had to spend the night at the airport in Athens before catching a flight to Crete the next morning, so we weren’t really at our best.
As we drove our hire car from the airport to our hotel, my friend (who was driving) kept complaining that the car seemed like it didn’t want to go. She had her foot on the gas and the car was still trundling along. At one point I thought I saw smoke coming from the rear tires. It wasn’t until half an hour later that we discovered . . .
The emergency brake had been up the WHOLE TIME we’d been driving.
The car got us to where we had to go, but the next day started flashing red lights at us on the dashboard. It was fucked up good. We had to cough up a few hundred euros for that one.
Funny postscript: a few months later I was going through our photos and found a short video clip I’d recorded in the car when we first got to Crete. In the video you can hear me babbling on and you can see my friend driving along with a smile - and you can ALSO see a red light blinking madly on the dashboard - the car’s silent cry for help as we speed along our merry way.
I arrived at the airport 24 hours late for a flight once.
To be fair, it wasn’t really my fault - the airline changed the schedule after i booked and never notified me.
I think it was Mitch Hedburg that said it shouldn’t be called an emergency brake, but rather an “emergency make the car smell funny lever”.
Sounds like a re-test is in order. (I’ve been a member since 1979.)
When I was an aircraft mechanic, I would often ride my bicycle on the flightline. The belly on one aircraft would be about a foot higher if it was nearly empty of fuel. I could get real low and ride under the aircraft. That was fun.
However one day I misjudged how much fuel an aircraft had onboard. My ass got wedged between the belly of the aircraft and the bike seat! I could not move forward, backwards, or sideways. I was stuck. And it was somewhat painful.
I yelled at some coworkers who ran over to laugh at me. They even got on the radio to call others over to laugh at me. After about 10 minutes they finally pulled me out from under the aircraft.
Similarly, my dad once totaled his car when he rear-ended someone while driving on his way to pick me up from the airport … the day before I was scheduled to fly in.
Back in high school, I was over at a friend’s house after school when his parents invited me to stay over for dinner. They were having steak, and knowing I was coming over, they’d bought extra. I called my parents and they said OK.
The food comes out and it’s cooked rare/tender enough, but for some reason I’m having a difficult time cutting the steak. The knife was not serrated, and I had to really saw and saw to cut the meat. “Man,” I thought to myself, “these are the bluntest steak knives I’ve ever used.” Nobody else at the table seemed to have this problem, though. My friend’s dad glanced over a few times at me, looking slightly bemused, but didn’t say anything like “oh, you got the dull one, here’s a different one”, and I didn’t feel it would be right to raise the issue myself.
When I was about 3/4 of the way done with my steak, I put my knife down to get some side dish or to refill my drink or something… And when I resumed eating, realized that the steak knife, although not serrated, still had a blade side and a blunt side. And guess which side I’d been sawing away with.
Neither my friend nor his dad have ever mentioned this (and my friend would totally give me crap about it if he had the chance), so this is a secret d’oh I’ve carried with me all these years 
Growing up, my parents never actually ran the dishwashing machine that was in our kitchen; we used it as a drying rack conveniently set inside a cabinet (something I’ve since read as one of the telltale signs of being Chinese :)). So when I moved into my first apartment that had a dishwasher in it, being both lazy and gadget-loving, I just had to try it out.
The instructions inside the door just said to “fill up to the line with dishwashing detergent”. All I had on hand was Palmolive. I figured it was the same thing. I knew there were both powdered and liquid dishwasher detergents from TV commercials, but it never crossed my mind that “liquid dishwasher detergent” was really any different from “liquid dishwashing soap”.
So I loaded my dishes and utensils into the dishwasher, filled the soap compartment up to the line with Palmolive, closed it, turned it on, and settled into the corner to read a book. After 10 minutes or so, I heard the sound of running water, as if a hose were running right onto the tiled floor area by the sink. I looked over to see sudsy water seething out of the corners and top of the dishwasher’s door.
I ran over, turned it off and opened the door. A cascade of water drenched my calves, and a wall of suds basically exploded out about 5 feet into the room (this was a one-room studio apartment). I was covered with bubbles.
And every single person I’ve told this to said, “Oh, like in that Brady Bunch episode!” 'Cause we’re that old 