I was a communications systems programmer...working for a megabank in my youth. Made a "performamce/tuning" change in one of our many front end processors ($750k device)....you know, one of those "no impact, transparent" changes :(. Walmart had a 4 Billion $ deposit that was delayed for a few hours to the Federal Reserve....when a minute can equal millions out of "someone's pocket", when tens of billions are transferred daily. I found the cause (me :)) a few weeks later....I think the US taxpayers paid for that one as the Fed "ate" the loss of interest income. I owned up to it....

Nobody's batting average is 1.000 however as I was told...if you NEVER screw up...you're not doing anything :).

btw...I hit enough grand slams over my career that more than compensated for the occasional strike out....

Fred - UR a nice guy to let the customer help out. Glad it worked out OK:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1500813525.jpg

My very first job was washing dishes at a diner at 15. Loved it, especially the hot waitresses. One of the cooks was sick so they were shorthanded and asked me to make the blueberry muffins, how tough can that be with a huge recipe card to read from.

Well, when you use 4 cups of salt in place of sugar, muffins aren't so great. Came out of my paycheck IIRC.

All from my blue collar days. In my professional life I either am that good or have a very short memory.;)

Tried to shove a piece of scrap CPVC pipe into a dumpster, it sprang out and popped me in the forehead. ER glued me back together, still remember how badly that hurt.

Using a worm drive circular saw to cut 2x on a sawhorse, the blade guard stuck and the still spinning blade caught my jeans and pulled the blade into my upper thigh. Lots of bandages fixed it, should have gotten stitches.

Jacking to level a mobile home and the jacking support sank into the mud, and the entire house came sideways. Fortunately the frame hit before the siding so there was no real damage done, but getting it back up was interesting.

First job out of the Army was driving trucks for a plastic pipe manufacturer. We made the black waste, white schedule 40 and 80 and gray conduit. I used to deliver to Calif, Az and Nevada.

I moved up to a vacuum truck hauling plastic pellets from Bakersfield to Sun Valley 2 trips a day. I'd go to BF and load up either white, black or gray and haul it to SV and load in the silo.One day I was running white pellets when on the second load the foreman informed that trip was changed to black. I loaded the black pellets, drove to SV and subsequently hooked the hose to the silo and started blowing the pellets out. After a few minutes I realized I had hooked up to the white silo. Shut it down and changed to the proper silo.

Well, needless to say, the next afternoon the schedule 40 pipe fittings started coming out looking like 101 Dalmatians. We ended up hauling 3 truckloads back to BF to be ground up into gray pellets. I came this close to being fired.

My 'fun' story:

As a young engineer I made a 'math error' while sizing a very expensive transformer sub-station for a customer. The transformers could have been much smaller than what I had estimated. I realized my error long after the station was built...but it was likely several hundred thousand dollars down the drain.

I rationalized the error knowing the customer was expanding the factory and would eventually use all the capacity...and there was no point telling them, the 'damage' was done.

Low and behold just before all of our equipment was set to be installed and connected to the sub-station the customer decided to relocate to Michigan. They NEVER used the sub-station, they sold the plant off just before my error could be discovered.

My bad business story:

Allowed an employee to become a minority shareholder in order to retain him. The final cost was about one hundred times the value. It cost me millions. He was an untrustworthy *******. Still is. On the upside the dick got nothing from me, he just left a trail of destruction and lies. May he rot in hell.

This one wasn't my fault, but was the biggest screwup I was involved in.

I got a call from an end-user (a very unusual thing, being the application developer and third-level support) asking if something was working correctly. It wasn't. I called the person back, left a message, sent an e-mail, and after a few days closed the ticket.

It looks one of the systems that feeds us information made a change and instead of passing us "35" had started passing us "035". I sent a note to my business analyst and forgot about it for a few weeks.

2 weeks later my business analyst calls me frantically and asks when I can fix it. I talk to my boss who is skeptical and she asks what the business impact is. I do some research and find out that this error--"035" instead of "35", is costing my company $1 million each month, and has been going on for about 6 weeks.

Suddenly, processes that usually take weeks took minutes. With the business impact in hand ($1 million a month!), gatekeepers became gate openers. I coded, tested, and issued the fix to our production systems in 3 days--as compared to maybe 3-6 months to do something similar under normal circumstances.

Not necessarily a screw up but an accident for sure. The company that I was working for was using a Computer Automation LSI 2 for software development for the LSI 4 based systems that we had out in the field. The LSI 2 had 19 inch racks for its PC boards. We named it Bertha the Beotch because it was a rather temperamental machine. When it would start getting flaky, it was usually a bad connection from the main PC boards in the 19" rack to the mother board at the back. Instead of powering down and re-seating the boards I decided to rock the boards back and forth in the rack by applying pressure to one side to the other to "wipe" the board contacts between the contacts in the motherboard sockets. To get leverage I stuck my fingers in on either side of the rack and used my thumbs to alternate pressure on each side of the boards. There were cooling fans along one side of the rack and I stuck one of my middle fingers into a fan where the protector screen had been removed and never replaced when the fan was replaced. The blades had a lot of sharp flash along the edge which grabbed my finger and pulled it into the fan housing. Instinctively I jerked my finger back out. It was like hamburger meat with multiple cross hatched lacerations. After I was all stitched up I had to fill out all the requisite workman's compensation forms. Word spread through the office that Bertha had become a carnivore with a taste for human blood.

I was flying some forestry folks in a Huey around some of the most remote wilderness areas in the lower 48 when the weather started coming down. It had been forecast to come down later in the day but i felt we could get in and get out before it got too bad. I was wrong. One by one, our exit routes out of the back country were blocked which caused us to retreat back into the wilderness using up our precious fuel supply. We wound up parking the aircraft in the back country and bushwhacked 18 miles to a ranger station. I retrieved the aircraft 3 days later when the weather improved. Pretty embarrassing. The boss was not impressed.

Not my screw up.

Was consulting for CA and noticed an $0.04 irregularity in the pricing of their product online vs retail. Mentioned it to the stakeholders a few times since the irregularity was causing undo changes to the program I was building for them.

They wound up bringing my team and I into the business unit full time and the pricing remained an issue.

The product we were pushing was on a net to zero rebate. Basically there was a perpetual rebate for 100% of MSRP. Not a bad strategy to introduce a new product as you never see 100% redemption and it was a subscription that auto renewed every year so the first year was looked at as user acquisition cost.

The redemption rate turned out to be astronomically high, like in the 75% range, when normally you'd only see 12% tops on a program like this.

Renewals were in the toilet because people that liked the product and wanted to keep it just went and bought another copy and got the rebate again.

The way CA worked was once a year they would set WSRP for products and that's the price corporate finance / accounting used to keep the books.

For the next 3 quarters there was a discrepancy that the unit head would shrug off as drag in receivables.

During our QBR's when the discrepancy would come up I'd say "it's the $0.04" but was always dismissed but I'd make sure the person taking notes recorded it.

So end of year they are doing the final numbers and there is a huge commotion going on in finance.

I wander over and the Unit head is freaking out that we have a 7 figure hole in the numbers.

I look at him and ask "how many units did we sell online?"

He spits out the number

"ok, multiply that by $0.04"

He screams It's still not right

"hold on, I'm not done, multiply 3/4's of the units sold by $0.04 and add that to the first number"

He does the math in his head and it's pretty much dead on. He just stares at me not saying a word.

I look at him and say "We are selling the products for $xx.94 but finance has the book price as $xx.99. We are short $0.04 on 100% of units sold. That's not really a problem as it's really an accounting issue that's easily fixed. This is what makes it worse, our redemption rate is 75% so you've rebated 3/4's of our customers $0.04 MORE than they paid for it."

Silence, then rage, "Why the **** didn't you say something.?"

Been telling you this for a year, you kept insisting I was wrong, it's on record in the QBR notes.

I quit 2 weeks later.

CA, as in Computer Associates?

My employer just finished a 10-year program to rid us of all CA products. At this point, if CA buys a company and we use their software, it is our goal to have it gone before the acquisition takes place.

How many CEO's has CA had to to prison?

Yup, them.

Most f'd up place I've ever worked and you are right to not want to do business with them.

They'd been trying to recruit me for a while and I kept on turning them down until they said "name your price". I gave them a ridiculous number I thought would put an end to it once and for all but they agreed and I stupidly signed on.

One of the other things they did. On the Enterprise side.

They put in a new incentive program to motivate the enterprise sales guys.

These guys are selling packages that are in the Millions per install.

The way it worked was anyone on record in the CRM as having had contact with a customer who bought got their standard commission.

So the Sales guys, not being stupid, called every customer and even if they only spoke to the front desk it qualified as a legit sales call.

Every single Enterprise sales guy got full commission on every sale.

They paid out more in commissions that quarter than the total revenue they got from the sales.

They put an end to that program real quick.

I've got a bunch more.

How they are still in business is mind boggling.

Yep. Their SOP was to acquire a company, fire most of the staff, stop improving it, and quadruple (or more) the licensing fees. Suddenly we would be paying through the nose for something whose functionality was slowly degrading. Their business practices seemed to be premised on the idea (well, fact at most companies) that if it cost $2 million to replace their product they could charge $1.9 million for a one year license because most shops couldn't justify the extra $100,000 this year to save much more in two years. We flat old told them (on multiple occasions), pull that crap with us, and we will spend the money to show you the door. About 5 years ago, we were down to one CA product in house. We'd gotten rid of dozens. Their CEO had even said publicly it was his goal to sell us more stuff. Renewal time came, and the fees quintupled. We told them no, and spent the money to replace it. You'd think they would have wanted to keep their foot in the door...

Actually the firing of staff for acquired companies was a change that started after i left. Prior to that they used to keep everyone which made it near impossible to get anything done.

They'd bundle different acquired tech into suites which meant you had no less than 10 stakeholders in every meeting and each one had an opinion that conflicted with someone else.

Took weeks to get even the simplest thing done.

While I was there they were late on an enterprise suite.

Customers had ponied up ~$2.5 M for the suite and rather than miss the contracted ship date they decided to ship the documentation, which required a palette, along with a note telling them to read through it and when they were done we'd ship them their install discs customized for their installation.

Bought them an extra two weeks and the customized install was nothing more than disc 1 with the customers logo on the splash screen instructing them to insert disc 2.

Mowed grass when was a teen. Accidentally set a commercial property's lawn on fire gassing up a hot mower. Instead of calling the fire department ran and got some hose and kept it from spreading. Looked horrible for a couple of weeks.

Ended up being good as within 3 weeks it grew back greener and thicker than it was before.

I'm not going to document anything from the current job because frankly, I'd like to continue working there.

Many years ago I worked for a local computer store, before Best Buy and similar stores came along and ran them all out of business. We did a little bit of everything, including sometimes running network cable. I was adding a new run at an office and paying way more attention to the office girl than what I was doing, and while reaching to lift a ceiling tile I stuck my hand right into a running ceiling fan.

Late 70's I'm working in a home center , fun job and learned a lot about everything involved with a home . One day I see from behind a profile of a young lady that I was 100 % sure I knew her . I walked up behind her and pinched her on the butt :D Imagine my surprise , her surprise and more importantly her dads surprise at what had just happened :o
I must have apologized 10 times in 5 seconds because I didn't want her dad killing me right there on the sales floor ! I actually think she may have liked the attention because she told her dad it was OK and let it go . To this day I have never done another sneek attack ;)

Last week I left the pinch bolt off of a Cayenne steering column...

College summers I worked at a camp that alternated girls first then boys end of the season.

One summer I arrived and while getting set up we needed to put mattresses in some cabins. No problem, I grabbed a few from the pile in the basketball court. No idea why those were there, they must be good I figured.

Later during the cycle, I learned that the basketball court mattresses were there to be burned due to lice.

It only became an issue when the boys started getting lice.

Epic dumb a$$ move. I never told a soul.

Back when I was in my 20's I got a call on the radio that a large steam turbine was trying to jump off the foundation.
This turbine drove the most important compressor in the refinery, and losing it would result in a "reversal" and very bad things could happen.

As soon as I got the call, I yelled to my best friend, we got a problem in the FCC, let's go!
He asked what was up, I just said emergency, get in the truck! And he did.
This was my chance to SAVE THE DAY.
I mentioned that this was my best friend, we were really close. As in, people almost never saw one of us without the other, ever.

I ran up the two flights of stairs to the turbine deck and he followed me.
By the time I got to the far side of the deck I saw the large expansion joint under the turbine hammering back and forth.
I realized what was happening and started to yell "GET THE F*** OUT OF HERE" but never got the the words out.
The relief valve on the surface condenser lifted and puked thousands of gallons of super-heated water straight into the air above us.
Most of it flashed to steam as it came down but some of it stayed in liquid form as it rained down on us.
All I knew was that I was burning, i couldn't see, and I needed to get out of there.

I started running until I hit the handrail and cartwheeled over it and landed on the lube oil system skid two stories below.

We had our own fire brigade and paramedic teams (of which i was a member ironically) and they tended to me right away.
Amazingly i only had a few minor cuts, a cracked rib, and 2nd degree burns on part of my face, neck, and shoulders.

My friend did not get off the deck.
When they cut the nomex coveralls of him the skin on his back was white and running off him as if someone had spray-painted white paint way too thick.

He spent weeks in the burn ward.

The scars were covered by clothing and did not normally show but he had mental scars. he was never quite the same and ended up committing suicide about 5 years later.

There was a formal investigation and counseling, and what I eventually came to accept was that i led him into and unknown situation without properly sizing up the situation and analyzing the risk.

When I started running to get off the deck, I may have inadvertently knocked him down, contributing to his injuries. And i deal with that.
I still have a picture of him in the top drawer of my desk and I wish I could go back and do that day over.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1500910781.jpg


A dropped engine can be fixed.



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