Our most picky and insane customer had a tape jukebox that was prone to hanging - attached to a computer called "longs".
I called in to ask the operator to "power cycle longs" when I meant to say "power cycle the tape jukebox on longs". When my login session stopped responding, I realized with horror what I'd said to the operator. When the machine rebooted, the boot process asked the operator to explain the boot. I told her to explain that I'd told her to do it by my mistake, and that she'd done exactly what I'd asked her to do. I waited for the sh*tstorm the next day. It never came. It took me a few days to realize that it was never going to come. Another time I'd accidentally distributed an experimental terminfo for the terminal most commonly used by "elite" programmers in the building. I wrote an apology email saying in part: "It is not my policy, nor the policy of the computer center to make mistakes, but from time to time I make them. My apologies for my mistake and its impact on you". So for years afterwards, people would remind me that it was not my policy to make mistakes... ;-) On 05/29/2014 09:55 AM, Moose Finklestein wrote: > Oh, yes, we've all been there. Typed 'reboot' in the wrong window. > Done 'newfs' on the wrong dev. Told someone, "Go press the alarm > button" only to watch in horror as they push the EPO. Oh, yeah. > > The best part of this tale, I think, is that the company's attitude of > "Well, the person screwed up and knows it; we don't see any need to > beat them further than they're beating themself." It's a refreshing > and intelligent change from the typical "Of course we fired the person > who did this!" that comes with a public disaster. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ -- Alan Robertson <[email protected]> - @OSSAlanR "Openness is the foundation and preservative of friendship... Let me claim from you at all times your undisguised opinions." - William Wilberforce
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