A while back
I used to work for a large investment bank. My team looked after data feeds from the front office, where all the high paid barrow boys work, and back office, where people actually work. As the IT support people were elsewhere in the building, it wasn't always possible to contact them by phone, so we had implemented an instant messaging system that would hit them with a console message wherever they were. It was dead handy, but, as with all "dead handy" things, it got abused.

The rot set in with collating the bets for the office betting pool every other morning without it being obvious what was going on, went on to "organising trips to the strip clubs on Whitechapel Road", and slowly degraded into something that was taking up a lot of time. It was the "text-based fantasy spice girl mud wrestling" that got us into trouble. Unbeknownst to us, the office grass (who disapproved seriously of the betting pool) was logging everything, and the aforementioned TBFSGMW was, as he saw it, his chance of glory. Especially the bit Jim added where "the girl from HR with the big tits" joined in and the whole thing turned into a rather fun text-based fantasy lesbian romp. He duly logged the lot and turned it over to, of course, the girl from HR with the big tits.

Somehow we didn't eventually get fired - the girl from HR obviously had a sense of humour and had expunged the more gory bits before passing it upstream to management - although it was a close run thing and the meeting to discuss what sanctions should be applied was, shall we say, "stony" (although, once it was over, the boss indicated he knew the logs had been sanitised, and that he found the whole thing rather amusing). The chat server had to go, obviously, which was a shame.

The office grass suddenly found himself excluded from daily life, and within a week he asked for, and was granted, a transfer to another team. He handed in his resignation within a month; everyone in the building knew what had happened (and although several were slightly miffed not to have been invited onto our "private" chats, his new teammates were pretty much all disgusted that he had dobbed us in) so he took his pariah status with him.

And the girl from HR with the big tits started coming to the pub with us. But not the strip joints on the Whitechapel Road. She was definitely fun, but Jim got the lesbian bit wrong.
(m.auron, Fri 6 Sep 2013, 18:54, 4 replies)

reminds me of this
There is a curious sea story about Pig Bodine, which Winsome had heard from Pig himself. Winsome was aware that Pig wanted to make a career someday of playing male leads in pornographic movies. He'd get this evil smile on his face, as if he were viewing or possibly committing reel on reel of depravities. The bilges of the radio shack of U.S.S. Scaffold - Pig's ship - were jammed solid with Pig's lending library, amassed during the ship's Mediterranean travels and rented out to the crew at 10 cents per book. The collection was foul enough to make Pig Bodine a byword of decadence throughout the squadron. But no one suspected that Pig might have creative as well as custodial talents.

One night Task Force 60, made up of two carriers, some other heavies and a circular screen of twelve destroyers, including the Scaffold, was steaming a few hundred miles east of Gibraltar. It was maybe two in the morning, visibility unlimited, stars blooming fat and sultry over a tar-colored Mediterranean. No closing contacts on the radars, everybody on after steering watch asleep, forward lookouts telling themselves sea stories to keep awake. That sort of night. All at once every teletype machine in the task force started clanging away, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Five bells, or FLASH, initial contact with enemy forces. It being '55 and more or less peacetime, captains were routed out of bed, general quarters called, dispersal plans executed. Nobody knew what was happening. By the time the teletypes started up again the formation was scattered out over a few hundred square miles of ocean and most radio shacks were crowded to capacity. The machines started to type.

"Message follows." Teletype operators, com officers leaned forward tense, thinking of Russian torpedoes, evil and barracudalike.

"Flash." Yes, yes, they thought: five bells, Flash. Go ahead.

Pause. Finally the keys started clattering again.

"THE GREEN DOOR. One night Dolores, Veronica, Justine, Sharon, Cindy Lou, Geraldine and Irving decided to hold an orgy . . ." Followed, on four and a half feet of teletype paper, the functional implications of their decision, told from Irving's point of view.

For some reason Pig never got caught. Possibly because half the Scaffold's radio gang, also the communications officer, an Annapolis graduate named Knoop, were in on it and had locked the door to Radio as soon as GQ was called.

It caught on as a sort of fad. The next night, precedence Operational Immediate, came A DOG STORY, involving a St. Bernard named Fido and two WAVES. Pig was on watch when it came over and admitted to his henchman Knoop that it showed a certain flair. It was followed by other high-priority efforts: THE FIRST TIME I GOT LAID, WHY OUR X.O. IS QUEER, LUCKY PIERRE RUNS AMOK. By the time the Scaffold reached Naples, its first port of call, there were an even dozen, all carefully filed away by Pig under F.

But initial sin entails eventual retribution. Later, somewhere between Barcelona and Cannes, evil days fell on Pig. One night, routing the message board, he went to sleep in the doorway of the executive officer's stateroom. The ship chose that moment to roll ten degrees to port. Pig toppled onto the terrified lieutenant commander like a corpse. "Bodine," the X.O. shouted, aghast. "Were you sleeping?" Pig snored away among a litter of special-request chits. He was sent down on mess cooking. The first day he fell asleep in the serving line, rendering inedible a gunboat full of mashed potatoes. So the next meal he was stationed in front of the soup, which was made by Potamos the cook and which nobody ate anyway.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Fri 6 Sep 2013, 20:54, closed)

It's so reassuring to know that our money is in safe hands.

( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Fri 6 Sep 2013, 22:22, closed)

Hey, we were only betting *our* money on 3 legged donkeys. It was the barrow boys in front office who were betting *your* money on limping catmeat.
(m.auron, Sat 7 Sep 2013, 19:42, closed)

Thank fuck my money was all borrowed from Wonga.

( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Sun 8 Sep 2013, 0:51, closed)