You know the ones. When someone displays such an outragious level of rank stupidty that you simply have to stand back and applaud it.

I would like to nominate the branch of Costa Coffee down the road. They're a coffee shop, obviously. They sell, to the exclusion of everything else…. erm… coffee. The clue's in the name.

You'll never guess what they've run out of. Go on…. guess? Apparently they knew they were running low, but nobody thought to order some more.

I laughed at them obviously, and then left with a feeling of smugness. I'm not a complete imbecile after all. Despite my best efforts 🙂

Your nominations please…..

On holiday in Rome last October, we went to an Irish pub run by Italians (only place showing the football). The place was plastered in Guinness flags, drums, posters – the works. There were 4 Guinness pumps on the bar which was adorned with Guinness bar towels. There was a huge Guinness flag stuck to the ceiling. Think 'festooned' then add a few more Guinness branded items.

I walked up to the bar and the barman (must have been around 19, wearing a Guinness polo shirt and a Guinness apron) asked what I would like to drink.

I: "two pints of Guinness please"
He: "two pints of what, sorry?"

I nearly wet myself

I nominate the Dockle Farmhouse "real ale" pub in Swindon. One of Weatherspoons largest. A number of us turned up at 8pm one Friday night, to find out they had forgotten to order beer. Fosters, Guinness and alchopops were all they had. We migrated to the pub next door.

Used to work for a company that involved it's self in the Fuel futures market, buying and selling tanker loads of petro-chemicals. we needed fuel, it was a major part of our business, in fact we couldn't do anything without it…I was on the buying side, we would pass invoices to the acct dept to pay based on 30-90 days whatever, This was pretty much ALL our little dept did, the accts boss thought it would be a good idea, NOT to pay the fuel companies, and in fact instead rob the money from our own invoice factors to pay off badly performing sectors of our own business…Ho hum. He went to jail eventually, the ****.

The good old MOD, never lets you down when it comes to incompetence

THE Ministry of Defence's "abysmal" record in procuring new equipment has incurred cost overruns on major projects of £2.8 billion – equivalent to the cost of 15 new frigates, according to a report published today.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee, a watchdog on Government spending, said that the MoD's current performance was unacceptable and that there was no evidence that it was controlling projects any better now than in the past. The committee cited a 10-year delay in bringing Brimstone, an air-launched anti-armour weapon into service; a £1.5 billion cost overrun and 42-month slippage on the Eurofighter project; and Bowman, a tactical communications system, running six years late.

Walking home from school one day with £2 in my pocket only to discover that McDonald's are doing 6 McNuggets for 99p.

thegreatape – "12 McNuggets please"

johnny no stars – "We only do 6, 9 or 20"

thegreatape – "6 McNuggets please. And 6 more"

Another one was a lad up in court for nicking a car and disqualified driving. Being led through his fabricated version of events by his solicitor when he came out with the defence that he couldn't have been disqual driving because he'd never touched the controls of the car (having control of the car being relevant to whether you are actually driving it). Challenged by the prosecutor that as to how the car was seen by the police to be braking and steering. "But I never touched the steering wheel", "Well you must have, you steered the car", "But I never actually touched it, I had gloves on". Even the magistrates pissed themselves.

I work in IT, not sure where to start

The local chippy most times i go in there never actually has any chips – there's always a queue out of the door, orders being written down in advance and a 5 minute wait while the chips finish.

I work in supply chain management, and I realise the constraints of managing erratic forecast requirements against a short shelflife inventory with a comparatively lengthy lead time. Put bluntly, my production planning model for them would be – on a Friday evening, when the queue's out of the door and everyone (surprise surprise) wants chips, because it's a bloody chip shop, as soon as one batch comes out of the fryer and into the hot compartment, put the next batch on!

GOD

(not the Michael Angelo painting)

Binners…….I dont think your coffee from that Costa will ever taste the same again, be aware of floaties and bodily fluids in your drink in future. Have you never heard of revenge and he who laughs last?…….be careful!!

Bella Italia in Stratford in 2006. So bad it was funny.

They had forgot to order everything. Most of the menu was off and they had no beer. The only starter left was Capresse Salad. Three ingredients Tomato, Mozzerella, Basil. It turned up without the Basil. They had forgot to order that too.

They were sitting people down and taking orders, then telling them 20 minutes later that they had no stock. 40 odd really annoyed punters. At what point should they have closed the door and called it a day?

I have been to three beer festivals in my life. On two occasions they have run out (quite early in the evening) of…

Ohh, and at the Carling Music Festival one year, they ran out of…

judging from the recoiling cherub on the right and the look of horror on the one God's got his arm around, every time I see that picture I reckon that God's just done a 'pull my finger'

Actually come to think of it.

Men farting – proof of intelligent design, for the pleasure it brings?

Women farting – proof that intelligent design is a myth?

Sky.

Do I need to explain?

Ok then. I phoned them and ordered a HD Sky+ box and Multiroom.
Engineer turns up "are you doing the multiroom?" "No, that's not on the order"
Dozens of phone calls (cut off, sent to wrong dept, numpties, foreigners who can't understand me etc) and emails later, they are trying to phone me. On my home phone, during working hours. I'm asked to send proof I ordered multiroom (cos obviously I'm a lying bastard), so I send them the emails I got confirming it. I don't hear back for about 3 weeks.
Get round to phoning them a couple of days ago. I'm very polite until: "How did you send the emails? As attachments?" "Yes" "We can't accept attachments on our emails".
"So noone thought to tell me this until I phone back???!"

Unfortunately, it's not a funny, amusing anecdote, but their customer care from beginning to end (will there be an end?) is the epitomy of incompetence.

Edit: They don't even actually keep a record of the original order, so this last guy tells me! WTF!

A story years ago in the papers about two prisoners (handcuffed together) who escaped, and being chased down the road by the plod. The prisoners go either side of a lamppost, and knock themselves out. Classic!

I was once in a branch of Pizza Hut (I forget why) which had run out of pizza dough. Pizza Hut restuarants don't make pizza dough, it comes to them in a lorry from a central pizza dough manufacturing plant.

The staff responded to the sudden shortage of dough by locking the doors so that no-one could leave until the dough delivery arrived. Happily, they had not run out of bottles of piss-weak beer, and I was not in a rush.

not quite epic fail but another d'oh! moment.

In a.n.other pizza chain a couple of weeks back, my wife asked for some 'plain' butter to go with dough balls because one daughter doesn't really like the garlic butter, only to be told they didn't have any. Wife pointed out of the front window to the Sainsbury Express the other side of the road after which a look of comprehension passed over the managers face and he dispatched someone to buy some. Hmmm.

Actally I'd have quite enjoyed being told they couldn't do it and would have gone to get my own private pat.

Bloody ell thats an old pic!!! (2002?) Isnt that the singletrack of doom or something?

The burglar who broke into a house and, as well as the usual stuff, tv, stereo and video recorder, he found some money. Which was useful seen as he was skint. So he phoned a taxi to help him cart his new found wealth home. Taxi arrived and took the future McDonald's employee home, then the driver phoned the police, who turned up and lifted the toerag. The victim of the burglary arrived home just as the police turned up with his stuff.

I'm surprised no-one's nominated Gordon Brown for his "I have outlawed boom and bust" speech.

The clown who was annoyed about the roads being closed for a couple of hours because of a cycling event so scattered tacks on the road resulting the roadds being closed for EVEN LONGER.

Nearly as stupid as this burglar.

Me about 6 weeks ago riding a trial, managed to launch myself over the bars on what was to all intent and purpose a flat piece of ground, my Beta then sick of my utter incompetence launced a vicous assault which placed a footpeg into my left knee cap. 😯 Got back on the bike last night for the first time since.

Read "The Book of Heroic Failures" if you want more of this sort of thing.

My favourite was the bloke who robbed an antique shop dressed in a suit of armour. His intention was to scare the shop owner, who lived in an upstairs flat, to death by making him think he was being visited by a ghostly knight.

It didn't work. The shop owner dropped a sideboard on him from over a landing.

DezB – I've been there with Sky. Something like (very shortened)

– I have a problem with broadband

– OK I'll have a look…. No, can't fix it, I'll put you through to 3rd line support
3rd – Sorry don't know whats wrong. We'll have a look and call you back in 3 – 5 days.

(Week later I call them) – I called last week about a problem with BB, it was passed to 3rd line support and they said they'd call back.
Sky – Errm, we don't have a 3rd line support dept. And we don't do call backs.

And repeat for 2 months before my housemate works out the problem, calls them and tells them how to fix it.

I hope never to have to deal with Sky EVER again.

The quality (and claiming to be authentic) Chinese restaurant who couldn't provide my nieces with child portions as 'the meals don't come to us in those sizes'.

The owner of a 50" Swan I helped deliver from Cardiff to the Solent many years ago with a couple of other sailing mates from University, including a Norwegian paramedic who woke up after his first experience of a feiry curry convinced he'd been sodomised.

Swan, by the way, makes very expensive boats. This was his third.

Once we'd got out into the Bristol Channel, owner tells us that one of the seacocks was broken, but it was OK, as it had been 'fixed' temporarily, and so long as no-one touched it, we'd be fine. We immediately got the liferaft out on deck and checked the panic bags were all ready to go.

We made it round to the Solent, moored up and ran like hell. Apaprently it sank at its moorings a few hours later. We later heard he'd lost at least one of the previous boats to fire.

I am me, now where do I start…

BT. Every last department of it.

I don't have to cite examples, as surely everyone already has their own?

The owner of a 50" Swan…

Swan, by the way, makes very expensive boats.
Very expensive, very small boats 😀

Half of the riders in the Mega Avalanche

And then we have Haringey Social Services.

lol@ Michael Angelo
did he do a spectacular guitar solo whilst painting that?

a little known telephony company i used to work for used a very old system inherited from BT with which to itemise their phonecalls to international destinations.

This didnt cause an issue for most people, but for some reason itemising a call to Israel as Palestine angered a few of our customers.

Our IT department insist on e-mailing account details to new employees…. 🙄

A colleague of mine was digging some trial pits for some geotechnical and soakaway testing.

After establishing that the consultant he was working for didn't understand the testing and didnt know what an invert depth was has proceeded to extend the pit to rockhead.

Upon encountering rock head and announcing that he was on rock and the test was going to be undertaken at this depth the consultant exclaimed:

"Rock? What do you mean rock, i didn't think you got rocks in the ground just in cliffs and stuff…"

From a degree educated environmental engineer working for a major environment and geo-engineering company.

I once foolishly attempted to get cable to my flat. there is cable in the building. Most of the building is commercial but there are 3 flats in the attic. I was told there were no residential properties at the address I live at despite the fact I was phoning from it.

I think so Mark. I just searched for 'Hora' and then went to images. Some guy's ride diary.

Royal Mail!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, Royal Mail takes some beating, but…

I tried to get cable once when I was living in Watford, but got told that there was no cable in the area. A month or so later, I looked out of the window and saw some guys digging up the pavement. They had NTL jackets on, had arrived in an NTL van and had NTL ID badges. So, I asked them if there was cable outside the flat.

The bloke pointed to a large cable in the ground and mentioned that it was a terminator for the cable.

Great. Run back to the flt, phone up NTL and say I want cable. "No cable in your road". "I beg to differ" says I. "I have just seen it and spoken to two of your engineers, and they pointed out the actual cable".

"Sorry sir, our records show there is no cable in your area".

Muppets.