In a previous role, each night the backup at one of our branch offices was initiated by the receptionist. She did not enjoy the job and one night she displayed her true disdain for the task.

Instead of putting the tape in correctly, she inserted the tape in reverse. The engineer that answered the support call worked out that based on the pock marks on the tape cartridge she had used her high heel in order to hammer the tape into place. As you can appreciate the tape drive could not be repaired under warranty.

I forget exactly how long ago it was now but it was back in about 95 I was working for a IT Solutions.

IT was the latest thing companies were making all kinds on things that would work on your computer.

Being in IT was truly leading/cutting edge.

So although it was a little surprising to receive a call from a user complaining that their foot pedal wasn't working, it wasn't all that strange as we had just finished hearing about a brand new serial port steering wheel with pedals that would work with the original Need For Speed.

So myself and a work colleague at the time wanting to see this new foot pedal technology first hand never mind fix the problem, went out to see the client.

After arriving we were shown to the office of the user in having the problem.

He was green screen data capturer that was given a brand new Win95 PC and thought the cursor was controlled by placing the mouse on floor and moving it around with your foot.

His excuse was why on earth would you put something called a MOUSE on your desk and hold it in your hand.

I was only 15 at the time (1997) and the place i was working at was a local supermaket store which was a job then back when i was in school. i was heavily into computers and just learning c+ and other ms linux opps, the store check out system was a clear hit before any coles or Woolworth stores had ever imagined but.. the story goes on.. the operating system was the dinosaur at the time running a dos 3.30 with a interface that was ahead of time then but as the server, that was a mistake!!! the check out systems used to run 386 2mb ram and a 20mb hard drive (wha!?!?!?!) it was reliable but the software running was overwhelmed on overload, with a barcode system running over a 1400bps .014kb of a twisted wire which ran up in the celing to the back office. the boss got to know me as a teck guy and know all... so he asked me to figure why at the end of a day or when purchasing an item the computers were slowing down and freezing the checkout systems (mind you he would do the purchasing when it was peak time in the afternoon) i did not know at yet of the system until he asked me... so i went to investigate... mind you i was a kinda nerd then and the girls were a total distraction :D but i found out that the network was based on a 1983 modem switch network and three check out systems were using the single .014kb system. when the staff were serving customers with scanning the items the data was being sent to the back office every hit, the boss the other hand was doing purchases via a dail up modem (the ones where you place a speaker (sender) to the reciever and a mic (reciever) and that was chugging on the same network but a little faster (1.2kb) i told him to wait either before or afterday so it would not collide with overloading the system. it worked the next day... the next thing was even funnier but that might be another storey..... :) thanks for reading!!!!@@@@

Our servers got covered in coffee one evening whilst our IT manager was doing the daily back up - he tripped and tipped his whole mug onto the servers which then caused a fire and we lost crucial financial and customer information. The damage cost us $1.2 million. Drinks of any sort have now been banned from the IT room and our IT Manager was made to wear a hat shaped like a coffee cup for a week..

I have seen many claims for warranty on parts and computers that weren't. I've had a customer who tried to convert a SATA Hard drive to connect to an IDE data cable by removing the plastic above the connecting pins.
His complaint was that the drive did not have pins to connect to the cable.
The best claim that wasn't came about a few years before this when a customer rang and complained that their new monitor was not working. Since it had been picked up a few days before I was very concerned. I asked him to bring it to the shop for possible warranty replacement. When we got to see the monitor it had a small hole in the upper left corner and the screen was crazed with cracks. The hole about 8mm across.
When asked about the hole the customer replied that it must have happened during the drive by shooting they had had the other night EH!
He was not happy when i informed him that bullet holes where not covered by the manufactures warranty

Back in 1999, when I was a young network admin suffering from severe arrogance and harbouring resentment against the biggest dummies alive (corporate computer users), I had the mind-numbing task of updating a complete system in preparation for Armageddon (Y2K).

Just about everyone's 486 PC was hanging and freezing every day. I may have caused that problem myself by upgrading everybody to Windows 98 only the previous week, but let's keep that to ourselves shall we? This was quite quickly alleviated by installing an armload of HSF's and a few litres of thermal grease to the overheating CPUs. Easy.

The next task was remedying a severe lack of disk space. Although we did eventually order in and install a small truckload of HUGE 2GB (yes, two gigabytes....I know, you probably get more than that caught under your fingernails after a day at the office) drives for everyone (and they were far, far larger than was required at the time), I still had to ensure that the 320Mb disks were nice and tidy.

This is where my story actually begins!

I conducted this task especially diligently and thoroughly, with the client's best interested at heart. So much for that...

I returned to our head office one day and typed up my time sheet with a sigh of relief and a grin on my face.

Not 5 minutes later, I had my boss, Tony M., towering over me with a very upset look on his face. Tony M. is no less than 7 feet tall and even taller when you're sitting down.

"What the *&^%$ have you been up to over at [enraged customer site]? They're telling me you've deleted hundreds of important documents and set them back who-knows-how-far!"

Huh? Are you serious? Me? How?

(Tony M. gets back on the phone to customer and confirms the bad news)

No.... not possible. Where'd they keep all these allegedly important files? I asked.

"Here, I'll put them on speakerphone so we can discuss this together..." says Tony M.

"So, [customer], tell us again how Ben lost all these files. Where exactly were you keeping them?" We asked, whilst the rest of our I.T. team listened intently.

Here it comes:

"Well, we thought it would be logical to store those things in..." - wait for it - "...the RECYCLE BIN" !

OMGWTFBBQ. We all couldn't help laughing out loud and promptly hung up the phone.

As a young entreprenerial go-getter, I established my first computer networking business in 1995. Out to impress, I would attend all my business meetings and call-outs in a suit and tie.

One morning, I was contacted by a client with an emergency. The main server was unable to boot and the client was unable to process orders.

Clever person that I am, I had set them up with a RAID solution that meant that all their data was backed up on a second drive. So I went out to site, rebuilt the OS and switched to the backup drive and they were back in business.

Before closing the chassis of the server, I removed the faulty drive and asked the boss to get a few people to test the system.

The users were back up and running with no data loss.

The Boss was over the moon, lauding my every move and my incredible confidence and ability at such a young age.

The Boss left the "server room" and asked his staff to start processing orders. I screwed the lid back onto the chassis thinking of the fat cheque I was going to get for the emergency call out.. smile from ear to ear.

That smile immediately disappeared as I turned to grab my tools. I froze, choking as I realized I had screwed my tie into the chassis and as I turned it went taut, bringing the server crashing from the middle of the "rack" a good four feet to the concrete floor.

The boss walked in.. my guess is to tell me that the server was down - only to find me bucked over the destroyed chassis being choked by it.. unable to remove my tie or extract it from the chassis.

I folded the company after that.. it cost me much more than I made on the emergency call. True Story.

We had a part timer who despite telling us she had "lots of experience" with data tape backup had never held one in her hand, or when she did she held it backwards...