At least 50% of IT is a solution looking for a problem.
For what it is worth, here's thermite being used in a productive endeavor:
So as a fellow former third shift employee, I imagine it would be a lot of fun to play around with. As long as nothing important got damaged, and it was a fast clean up afterward at least.
Back in the 70's I was trying to get a fuser to stop squeaking by spraying WD-40 on the bearings of an e-stat copier (mineral spirits and coated paper), unfortunately the quartz heat lamps came on and a huge fireball came from the machine and scortched the customer's office ceiling.
Not my boo-boo (although I have had my share), but we had a cheap ass lawyer in town back in the 80's that had a Ricoh FT4085 with no contract. He calls us up and says he had diagnosed a copy quality issue himself and was sure it was in the fusing unit . He asked if he could save some $ by just bringing the unit in for service (required no tools for removal). We reluctantly agreed so he arrives bout 20 minutes later carrying the fusing unit in a cardboard box bout chest high.When he goes to set it on the counter out front it looked as if a gallon of fuser oil had soaked thru the box and completely saturated his designer suit! We were laughing so freakin' hard at him he stormed out and we never saw him again...never even came back for that fuser.
This could technically be called my boo boo. I started in the industry about 20 years ago as a warehouse/delivery/setup person in a small copier company. The office was located downtown in a mid-western town and for some reason people occasionally thought our doorways were their toilets. Being young and new to the company one of the unfortunate duties that I got stuck with was cleaning up peoples poo and other things. On the first occasion I had to clean up after someone, l sure as heck didn't want to touch anything so I just got a bucket of water to rinse it to the street and down the sewer. It took a few trips but eventually got it done.
A few weeks later, I was called upon again. Dispatch faced the main street but their door wasn't used and they had tinted windows. They told me this woman waiting for a bus came over to the doorway, squatted down, a few seconds later stood up, and got on the bus. This was 10 or 11 AM on a busy street with plenty of people around! After going out the other door and checking, sure enough there was a pile. Not wanting to go anywhere near it I got my bucket of water and started rinsing it down the sewer. I got most of it the first two trips but when I showed up with the 3rd bucket it was gone. I figured the water or wind finished rolling it down the drain and thought nothing more about it.
I figured wrong, oohh soo wrong.
It was a few months later when I was at lunch with some of the other techs I found out the rest of the story. This Sr tech as well as the rest of dispatch, had been watching my efforts from the tinted window. Apparently when I went in for the 3rd bucket they saw our sales manager (the owners son btw), service assistant manager (owners son-in-law) and service manager (I forgot relation to owner) walking back from a nearby client. Why they didn't warn them I'll never know but it happened the sales manager stepped right in it. I guess after a few steps he stopped and looked but I think everyone was laughing too hard to notice exactly what happened after that. I know we were all in tears laughing when he told us what happened.
TL;DR Inept at cleaning up street poo, sales manager stepped in it.
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