While working at a very large ISP on a Thursday night we had an emergency situation come up. Suddenly, with in the space of a minute, our user graphs dropped by about 25 percent. This happened during peak usage and a drop like that could cost the company hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in revenue. Everyone in the Network Operations Center(NOC) started going nuts. E-mails were sent to the VP’s of the company, developers were paged, conference calls were started and the backbone providers were called.
I had the job of alerting the call centers among other things. I called and let them know we had an issue and asked for information. I wanted to know what the users were seeing and what effect it had on the call centers. I then got on 3 conference calls.(A phone at each ear and another call on speaker). After about 10 minutes every station in the NOC, including mine, was reporting that everything was up and running just fine. No one could figure out the reason for the huge user drop. So we went on hunting.
About 5 mintues later I got a call from Markie. I worked with Markie for a while and he was the guy that let the call centers know we had an issue. He was also the guy who gathered the info I requested from the call centers. Anyway, I dropped one phone and picked up another. When I answered Markie said to me “I think I know what is going on”. I replied “Ok, what the f*** is it?”. Markie replied…
Wait for it…
“Well, the last episode of Seinfeld started at 8.”
I laughed and said “No shit? Damned, we are going to look like idiots” Markie laughed as well and hung up.
I then stood up and told everyone in the NOC that I knew what was happening. I explained about Seinfeld and the NOC supervisor told us to keep looking even though we knew what caused the problem.
Promptly at 9:00, when the last episode of Seinfeld ended, our user graphs popped right back up to normal. Problem solved.
I hated Seinfeld before this little incident but it just gave me cause to hate the show more.
Does anyone else have more strange work place emergencies?
I used to work in a pharmaceutical company and one day one of the chemists was working on a rather volatile reaction for one of the compounds we were supposed to be testing that week. He went a little too fast and got a little too enthusiastic. We were in the next lab over when we heard the explosions and the sound of glass breaking. We all ran over and saw the smoke and one of the other people in the lab was holding the chemist guy’s neck which was bleeding quite profusely from something that had impaled him in the explosion. An ambulence came and took him away but thank God he was alright.
That was about the scariest day at work we ever had…
I work at a research hospital. I came into the building one day, turned the corner towards my lab, and there was 15 feet of hallway covered in 4 feet high bubbly foam! No one could figure out what it was and we didn’t know if it was toxic - the biohazard guys showed up with some fancy suits on and took care of it.
It turns out the tech in my lab used a little too much Alconox (basically powdered soap) and dumped a bunch down the drain, where it foamed up overnight. I promised to keep it a secret.
A long time ago I worked security for my rent at an ampartment complex in one of the worst neighborhoods in fort worth. I get home and there is a huge crowd waiting in the parking lot. I get off my bike and someone runs up to me and says that this guy is trying to kick down his ex wifes door down. I start to walk that way, and notice the fire marshal standing beside me(fire marshals in this area are armed, and look like cops. They guy has a huge butcher knife looks over and sees the two of us with guns, and desides to run. Our complex, and the complex down the street had similar names. the cops went to the wrong one. The guy with the knife ran to that complex to get away from me and the fire marshal. Right into the cops.
My current job, we come into work one day to a massive crisis. A huge number (couple of thousand at least) of the computers out there crashed. They either wouldnt boot, or the desktop disapeared, and was replaced with a brand new desktop. Upon investigation, it was found that in each of these machines the desktop folder or the system folder were renamed to John. A new virus. We got Macafee on the horn, they were anxious for a specemin, but were reporting that nobody else had reported this one(not to suprising, due to the size of our site, we often discover new stuff before anyone else), but it could be an interal job. All our techs were out fixing machines, looking for evidence of what caused it, etc.
Turns out, they had just deployed a new logon script for a group of engineers. The last line in script was a coment line that was supossed to read(IIRC, I never got to look at the script in question)
REM c: John blah blah
It in fact read
REN c: John blah blah blah
Which, depending on where the script had left off, RENamed the system folder or the desktop to john(the author of the script in question)
The worst ever was when we were helping a customer load his car. He had brought bungies to tie the item down, but when he & I went to hook them on, the bungy broke and the metal hook part flew off, broke his glasses, and tore into his eye (not just his eye, but his eyeball)! :eek:
I immediately put on surgical gloves and put cold compresses on it while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Then his wife announces, “He’s a free bleeder!” So, I (of course) assume he a hemophiliac and almost lose it.
He was really hurt, but ended up being okay over time. It was horrible.
I had a summer job during college on an Army base doing programming (Basic, LOL) in a building where they did work developing antigens/antidotes to nerve agents and other nasty things. Of course they had to have those nerve agents around to test if the stuff they were developing worked. Anyway, on the walls around the building were the standard red fire alarm “pull” boxes and then, right next to them, green gas alarm “pull” boxes.
One day this weird bell starts ringing in the building - not the fire alarm, not the bell to announce the arrival of the “roach coach”… no one knew really what the bell was for, so I stowly started saving and closing my programs and thinking about leaving the area where I was working. Poeple were just sort of moseying out the building when the word spread that it was the gas alarm. Needless to say, we moved a little faster after that.
Shortly thereafter, the Army cops with their M-16s (?) arrived to make sure we stood back far enough from the building while they checked things out (guys in hazmat suits, etc.).
Turns out that a maintenance guy changing light bulbs in one of the labs had chest pains and someone thought it might be exposure so pulled the alarm.
A couple weeks later the same alarm bell rang again and you can bet I didn’t bother to “save” before getting out of there. (Another false alarm). Two (false) alarms in one summer when my boss who had been there for like 15 years had never heard even one!
When I think about it now - nerve agents, no drills, M-16s, etc. :eek:
The things one does for a summer job in a bad economy!
This story isn’t quite as impressive as the others.
At my last job, we had problems with the plumbing in the nearby bathroom when it rained a lot in a short period of time. Seems downtown Chicago’s systems can’t handle all that rain.
So it’s one of those very rainy mornings and the rain had been coming down all night, and I walk in to see water creeping out from under the suite’s door. I worked in a pediatric cardiology office at the time, and it was a day when we had clinic, so there was some work to be done early already, without this extra complication. I come in and see at least an inch of water in spots.
My first thought is - the computers and other equipment. We had so little money in the department that I knew if anything got damaged, we were out of luck for a while. So (stupidly, I know) I ran around pulling power bars out of the puddles (or worse). And yes, I did get one shock, nothing more than a scare out of it though. I got all of the electrical equipment off the floor, put any paperwork that had been in jeopardy out of danger, and hoped that the water wouldn’t come up to the level where our file storage started, because I wasn’t going to move all of those files.
I was also answering the phone during this time, because we were a busy division and had a lot of important calls to deal with.
Maintenance had been called, and a couple hours after I had been there and was working - yes, I waded around in what was by then a couple inches of water, ruining my leather shoes - I got a call from them. The water was considered “contaminated”. In other words, not just rain runoff that couldn’t be contained. I paged the doctors to let them know what was up and that I was leaving, forwarded the phone calls to the main departmental office, and went home to bleach my feet, ewww…
Last job I had was in a highly classified environment. We had to swipe our badges and enter PINs to get in and out of the building and our offices, plus there were motion sensors and combination locks on the office doors for when no one was in the office. In such a situation, one would expect the employees to be very aware of alarms and emergency procedures. One would expect…
This particular morning, one man in our office tossed a pack of PopTarts in the microwave to warm them up. He accidentally set it for 3 minutes vice 30 seconds. About 2 1/2 minutes later, the smoke alarms all went off. Bill ran to the microwave, pulled open the door, and pulled out his tarts. He immediately dropped them on the floor, where they melted the cheap nylon carpet. Our office area reeked of burnt PopTart wrapper and melted carpeting. We threw open the office door (making sure one of us was within sight of it at all times) and called security to tell them it really wasn’t an emergency.
Meanwhile, no one from the building left. Few even looked out in the hall to see if there really was a problem. Needless to say, the Security Officer was not pleased, nor was the base Fire Marshall.
We had to put out plates of vinegar to deodorize the space. And, of course, we never let Bill use the microwave unsupervised. He retired a few months later.
I worked for a furniture store in the Chicago area (waaaay back in the early 70s) and a couple purchased a big bedroom set. The bed and mattress were in stock, but they had to wait for the dresser. So, they took the bed and mattress home. Weeks pass. Months pass. Dresser still hasn’t come in. So they come into the store and ask to see the manager. My little lady manager comes out and explains the delay to them and they’ve had it. So they say they want to cancel the order. She tells them they can’t return the mattress because they’ve been sleeping on it. The guy hauled off and hit my little boss! I had to call the cops and he was taken away in handcuffs.
Don’t have any great stories like you guys, but my first job out of college was doing employment counseling/job placement for new immigrants fromt he former Soviet Union.
One of the papers I had to sign during my first week was an acknowledgement that I knew about the agency’s policy for cleanup and disposal of bodily fluids. I hate to think about how that information would ever have been useful for my job.
Well, this isn’t work, this is school…
But anyway. A friend of mine, named Becca, had given herself the job of lighting the Bunsen burner (we were in the lab, doing Chemistry) and had a lit spill in her hand. I don’t know what she thought she was doing, but the spill burnt right down and burned her hand.
And I quote: “Aaaaaargh!”
I jumped, and dropped the beaker in my hand, which happened to be full of concentrated hydrochloric acid. It smashed on the bench in front of me, and to make things worse, I had a syringe filled with acid in my other hand, and also in shock, I depressed the plunger without thinking about it.
In the meantime, Becca’s spill had dropped onto a rolled up tissue on the bench, which of course caught fire, and after a moment the flames started licking across the bench towards the acid I’d spilled. We both aimed for the tap, only to find that when I accidentally emptied that syringe, the acid flew through the air in a straight line and into another friend’s ear.
The three of us all hit the sink at about the same time. Yeah, we’re in trouble…
My mom used to work with a bunch of men who had one of those little basketball hoops attached to their office door. When they were taking breaks or were on lunch, or whatever, they used to mess around and shoot baskets.
One guy was showing off a bit and went up for a “dunk”. His wedding ring got caught on a piece of metal on the door and it ripped his finger off!!! :eek:
They called an ambulance, of course, and he had to have it sewn back on. Blech!
In 1993 I was the “house mom” (a female manager who is stationed in the dressing room) of a topless bar in a big NC city. One night one of our more athletic dancers managed to badly tear some muscles down the side of her ribcage while onstage sliding down the pole. She had to be taken into the dressing room and kept very, very still until the ambulance came. She was in major agony but very stoic the whole time and even had us call her mother to come over, as she had been very upfront with her family about her line of work. I never saw a person in so much pain until…(Warning, gory scene to follow)
2000, when I was working the entrance gates to a local music festival along with two security guys and a concertgoer staggered up to us from the parking lot with a nasty injury. You know those garden wall decorations, usually lion’s heads, where they have a stream of water constantly flowing from their mouths? Well, that’s what this guy looked like, only it was blood instead of water. He had literally gotten his teeth kicked in so that his upper gums were flapping when he tried to talk. My oh-so-helpful security guys just sorta stared at the poor fellow, so I swung into action; got someone to run for our medic, called 911, comforted the victim, sent security after the attacker (who was too messed up on whatever it was he’d been taking to get very far) and directed the crowd of gawkers that had gathered to clear the area and take in the real show going on at the main stage. All at about the same time - whew! Heard later that the guy was ok after some dental surgery.
Could tell you more stories - hey, with strippers and Rock-n-Roll the only thing you can expect is the unexpected (and an occasional ambulance) - but those are the two that stand out the most.
While working as a stage crew member for an international music festival, I had to cut Sarah Chang’s dress off with my swiss army knife in the middle of a performance.
Well, backstage and during intermission. I did have a small crowd of people around me, including her music teacher, who enjoined me to “cut faster, cut faster.”
I used to work in a print shop, and was running a 2-color press one day. I saw where a sheet of paper had flown up under the back rollers. I didn’t want to turn off the machine to get it out, so I grabbed the end of it. All the sudden my fingers got pulled into the press rollers while the machine was still running.
I was howling in pain and dancing around with my hand stuck in the machine while my coworker called public safety. They got there in less than a minute it seemed like. They started taking apart the machine, and by this time I had finally calmed down enough to tell them “UHHHHH … unscrew this bolt…AHHHHH…now the other one…GODAAMMMIT OWWWWW…ok lift there…”
They finally pulled the rollers apart enough for me to pull my fingers out. The EMT showed up and looked at my fingers, but nothing was broken. He put a splint on my middle finger just in case, and that was that.
I had a contract for this one large downtown department store some years back. I was on the 6th floor going to coffee, it was about 10:30 in the morning when there was quite a raucous commotion. At the heart of this was a fellow wringing his hands and shouting for help at the front of the men’s bathroom…
An old derelict-type fellow had gone into the bathroom and sat down for his morning constitutional…and died. :eek: I saw them wheel him out on the gurney. Apparantly he was lying on the floor of the stall with his pants around his ankles…talk about an undignified way to go out.
:eek: