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It's the late 90s and I was working in IT for a small (200 employees) company.
One of my tasks was performing daily data backups, which ran for about four hours and started after everyone else had left for the day.
We had an intercom system in the building, where if you picked up your phone and dialed a specific extension, you could page someone, or make announcements so everyone could hear.

One night I was in the process of running Ethernet cable from switches on the second floor down to individual terminals on the first floor, so there was a lot walking around the building.

I like to have music when I'm working, but I didn't have an MP3 player at the time, so I thought... "I have music on my PC and no one is around. Why don't I just...", and I went around and cranked the volume knob on every ceiling intercom speaker in the whole building. Then I dialed into the intercom from the phone in my office, put the handset up as close as I could to my PC speakers, and boom, music throughout the building.

Cut to a few hours later, it's late, I'm tired, the backup is finished, so I close down the system, hit the lights, lock the doors, and go home.

The next day, I come in, not thinking about anything from the night before, and get to work. About 11:00am, the owner's secretary got on the intercom to page someone.... and blew everyone out of their seats. There was an almost collective, "What the fuck??!!" from everyone, and an "Ohhh, shiiit" from me, because of course I immediately knew what happened.

I ran around like a madman, turning the volume down on all of the speakers that I had forgotten the night before, while saying, "No idea... Yeah it's crazy... No no, it's fixed now..."

No one ever found out exactly why the volume was so loud that morning.

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[โ€“] kossa@feddit.org 39 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Worked in an ESA lab with cleanroom. My work had to do with plants, their composition etc.

Naturally I had to dry some plants before throwing them into the analyser, but my designated oven was occupied.

Fear not, I thought, there is another oven over there. I put my samples in and call it a day.

Come over the next day, kinda late, lab chief looks at me and is only like "ummm, you should head over to the offices and see big boss"...go over, boss guy very angry. Turns out, the other oven in the lab was reserved for ExoMars parts. Like, they disinfect the shit out of it for weeks, like, take it apart, haul every screw to the cleanroom, clean it, autoclave it, clean it again and repeat that a billion times over, certify it and clean it again. So I kinda destroyed the work of months, maybe I alone was responsible for one of the many launch delays (probably not, but I've never been told).

Arrogant young me in my first job basically just was like "maybe put a sign on it next time, lol", boss guy pauses and says "maybe you're right". So we reclean the shit out of the oven and put a sign on it. My "punishment" was to spend a lot of time in the clean room to clean some ExoMars parts. I thought "cool, stuff I had in my hands is going to land on Mars".

Fast forward some years, Russia invades Ukraine, the pipes I cleaned will never go to Mars ๐Ÿ˜ข.

You were absolutely right..... Two ovens in a room, 1 for plant use and 1 that needs to be super clean for a specific purpose? A sign would have been the bare minimum, that should have been part of your lab training too.