» My most gullible moment

Freedom isn't free
A group of us spent an enjoyable afternoon convincing a schoolmate that he wouldn't be allowed to take GCSE art unless he applied for an Artistic Licence.

Not only did he fall for it, the poor chap then became increasingly distraught as tales of a difficult test procedure made his dreams of free creativity seem less and less attainable. We consoled him with the idea that, should he fail the full test, he could always re-apply for a pencil-only provisional licence and work his way up...
(Thu 21st Aug 2008, 23:22, More)

» Mobile phone disasters

Click, brrrr...
In my previous life as an engineer for a certain UK telco, I attended a fault on a (very old) E1 link to a mobile phone base station. Diagnosis involved lengthy discussion on my mobile with our control centre - the conversation was something like this:

"Power cycle it? OK, I'm switching it off now. Did you see the link go down? Hello?... Hello?... Bugger."
(Fri 31st Jul 2009, 18:13, More)

» DIY Surgery

Not me, a mate, but eeeuuurrgghhhh nooooo...
Now my mate Nige is prone to the odd incident here and there - there's the cat-rustproofing episode, the brake-fluid-vomiting session, the welding-explosion-and-foot-injury-plus-finger-crush-and-garage-fire combo breaker and regular smaller bouts of misfortune (gear oil bread being the latest).

So, when he recently managed to get a shard of hot metal in his thumb so deep it was stuck in the bone of his thumb, did he take himself off to the doctors to have it sorted?

Of course not - out with the iodine, razor blades and wife's eyelash tweezers and let the pus and blood flow!

As you may imagine, this did not in fact end happily and has become an ongoing saga / burden on the NHS.

I shan't cut-and-paste as quite frankly I am not a fan of stories of home or any other surgery, so I shall post the link and warn you NOT TO CLICK IF YOU ARE EATING YOUR TEA.

Full story from the man:
"my cunning plan was to have sue pull on the string, whilst I held my thumb under water to wash the blood away, and rummage with tweezers"

Yes, we are compiling a book of his exploits. No, really.
(Wed 26th Jan 2011, 0:22, More)

» Bastard Colleagues

Oh so many tales
But this is perhaps typical.
In a fanfare of shiny presentations and webcasts, the corporation's five core values, as decreed by our CEO and senior board, were unveiled to the masses - so, we are:

Straightforward
Helpful
Inspiring
Trustworthy

Oh and "Heart" but no-one can figure out how to be "Heart"...

Credit to whichever bright spark managed to bullshit senior management into picking those. God knows how much time and money they wasted on it, perhaps it's telling that they have stuck with it and either haven't noticed or don't care.

In case you're wondering, I work for a large telecommunications company based in Britain.
(Mon 28th Jan 2008, 14:29, More)

» Why should you be fired from your job?

Pretty sure my boss doesn't read b3ta...
Same company, old job:

Boss of the time had quite a sense of humour about this for some reason.

These days I'm a model employee of course...
(Mon 13th Aug 2007, 22:38, More)