this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2026

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294

What is your biggest non-destructive "oh shit" moment you had at work? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by mkhopper@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 9 points 21 hours ago

I was asked to provide technical on-site support at an event, because I knew the underlying server system under the software that project management had found to run this customer event.

They had also hired a bunch of laptops with wifi and a router for this, which was rather expensive back then (you could have bought a small car for that rent fee alone!), so a lot was hanging on this to be a success.

Of course, I knew about nothing what this job was about until I sat in the car with the project manager on our way to the first event. My reaction was: But that software cannot do what you just told me! Oh shit, indeed.

When we arrived in the evening before the first event, the server, wifi, and one of the laptops was set up before anything else, and I went to work writing a rudimetary software from scratch that would do what the customer wanted, and finally hit the bed around sunrise.

The event was a big success in all venues on the trip. The customer was extremely happy with the acceptence of the setup by the audience and the results they got.