I experienced this by accident on my work computer. At the high school where I was teaching. While my students were taking a test in the room.
Fortunately the volume wasn’t at a high level at that moment and the screen was facing away from the class. I never did figure out how it happened.
You’d be surprised.
A bunch of us actually had a system where we would make a chat room during class. If you got called on during the lecture, and hadn’t been paying attention, someone would type in the answer, so that you could respond appropriately.
It was nearly foolproof, with the exception being when a friend was called on during Criminal Law, and didn’t know the answer. I was furiously typing in the answer when the professor (a notorious hard-ass) said, “Well, perhaps Calatin can respond.”
I was so busy typing that I didn’t hear him mention my name, and when I finished my (detailed) response, I looked up at him, to see him staring back at me. I had no idea he’d moved on to me, and it ended up being a (seemingly forever) stare-down.
“Well, I guess Calatin isn’t here today,” responding to my blank face in not knowing he expected me to talk, and when I looked back into the group chat, I had a slew of messages ranging from “Answer him!” to “This is hilarious!”
Once I realized what happened, I became a gunner that day, volunteering an answer at any opportunity.
But that is the point. I work at 9-1-1. Unless it is happening in my office I’m not going to see it. Never. I do not need the graphic imagery to understand. I’ve heard shit that is quite enough without needing to see it.
I saw that too. It really fucking disturbed me, and I think about it from time to time.
Did he have a history of this kind of thing? If not, maybe this was an early sign of dementia.
I might be stepping out of my depth here, but maybe it’s so that it can desensitize workers in such a way that for example, if the 911 callers on the line start describing to you in great detail what is happening, or even if the background noise suddenly becomes very clear, then I guess it could cause a normal person to stop what they are doing and just listen in shock for 20-30 seconds without doing anything, but if you’ve already heard it and seen it before, then the chances of that happening are minimized, so even if the scenario of what is happening “on the other side” is leaked out very clearly and vividly over to the 911 operator, they are still able to respond perfectly calmly or something. I mean, I would assume that the trainers would have some reason, since they are the professionals, so they should know what they are doing.
When I was going through medic school in the late 70’s, the instructor was a combat doc and had slideshows we had to watch to become “familiar and desensitized” to trauma. It was brutal, those moments between each slide when you never knew what was going to pop up next. I will say it worked pretty well, I still, all these years later, have the ability to go completely clinical when I see trauma or gore.
I don’t know. I didn’t know him that well. He was an older guy, so it’s possible I suppose. For obvious reasons I didn’t inquire any further; on the contrary I just pretended I didn’t know anything which I’m pretty sure is what I was supposed to do when viewing materials that were none of my business and normally something I’m not supposed to see.
Back when I met my wife she had an old, dead, laptop that she was holding onto because it had photos on it she was hoping to recover one day. I pulled the hard drive and connected it to a USB adapter and did a search for all images on the drive.
Apparently her ex had a thing for impressively sized dildos and his ass. She decided not to keep those.
If that’s the worst thing you’ve accidentally seen, then you’re doing alright.
Did she know this when they were married?
We were shown rather graphic photos at times when I was in pharmacy school. Depending on the environment, the chances that we would actually see things like this were variable, but the professors pointed out that we needed to see these things so we would know that they exist and what they look like.
The two I remember most were:
A man with a syphilitic gumma that had eaten a hole through his nasal septum, through which had been inserted one of those things they use at the dentist to clean your teeth (my response was “What the…”)
An anencephalic baby with two noses, anterior and posterior views. :eek: The baby not only had no brain, it also had no spinal column. 
We could tell it was a very old picture.
In the fall of 1993, I was taking a class where the professor had the opportunity to ask us, “How many of you have heard of the Internet?” Not everyone had.
My dad is a retired firefighter, and while he never talked about what he saw at work to us, I know none of this would have shocked him.
While it is not possible to prepare for every eventuality, I can confidently say that 9-1-1 operators have heard a lot. There are recordings played in training. And some are spine chilling. Sure, a training regimen that builds up to some really bad ones may help ease a new hire into it. But there simply is no need to see. It is not what we do. And I say this as one of the trainers.
So a training update on unintended acceleration of cars does not need to show me a picture of a victim’s head after they lost control of the vehicle and hit a bridge abutment. That is just gore porn, and not needed to address the training issue.
And that is one of the milder topics.
Maybe the worst case of my accidentally seeing information came before email was common.
I was working for a Japanese distributor and a European company started to quietly set up their own branch office, hiring the general sales manager for that division of our company.
I came into work early one morning to find their latest plans in the fax machine.
That made for an interesting day at work.
nm: not good enough
I work with several psychologists who specialize in patients with intellectual disabilities, and many of those folks have genetic conditions that are the cause of their ID. A disturbing number of photo searches for people with these conditions for their PowerPoints throw up images of aborted fetuses and dead harlequin babies, which is odd because Harlequin-type ichthyosis, if survived, isn’t associated with ID but normal intelligence.
A related anecdote: my wife retired from a paramedic at FDNY a few years ago. A year or so prior to retiring, one of FDNY’s shitty gurneys malfunctioned and basically degloved her thumb. She sent me a text message with a pic attachment: “Hi honey, at the ER, hurt my thumb.” I opened the pic and almost fainted :eek::eek::eek: First responders can forget that us normal civilians are a good bit more squeamish about things like the inside of a thumb being on the outside.
Probably the picture of the topless teenage (13 or so) girl on a file sharing site. Reported said picture to the site’s host right quick.
I frequent a fair number of conservative political websites. I’ve seen some ugly, vile, racist crap- sometimes accidentally, but sometimes shared by people who assumed I’d approve or find it funny.
Probably some dog torture stuff (skinning of live dogs, that kind of thing) that somebody posted on Facebook and landed on my feed.