That sickening feeling

Rolling mums car down the street and writing it off, running her brand new car into the rear end of another car two weeks later – felt a bit sick.

I left my classroom to speak to another teacher at break time. I was only walking 20m down the corridor, so left my room unlockd.

On returning, a student with serious social and behavioral issues was in the cupboard. I had been told by he had possibly been stealing reward stickers previously, and the reward stickers were in teh cupboard.

I instructed said student to move to the other side of the classroom while I checked the cupboard. All stickers were there.

As I walked back, I realised that there was something being projected onto the screen, and I stopped and looked for moments, I couldn’t compute what I was seeing.

And then I realised, there on the screen, was someone being double penetrated. I jumped over the desk and closed it down while shouting at the student to sit at a table where he was in plain sight of the open door.

I let the room making sure I could still see him and called for assistance from my line manager, who didn’t know what to do, so called for the head of the department.

He arrived, and told me that in the last management meeting, ICT had been told do start doing sweeps of staff pc’s to make sure everything was above board.

I needed to report this to the head of ICT and the head of the behaviour unit.

This all happened within 2-3 minutes, at which point the bell rang for break to finish, and the kids were there.

That sickening feeling magnified when I realised that if I hadn’t gone back straight away, if that chat with the other teacher had lasted longer, I would have had 20 of the wildest students in school walking into my room, to see a lady being stuffed by two cocks.

I reported it to head of ICT, and behaviour. I knew that I would receive a letter of management advice from the head.

Which I did. Before receiving the letter of management advice, I asked my head of department, if I should question them as to why PornHub was allowed on the school network, and was advised to shut up and take the warning.

The bollocking was pleasant enough, I held my hands up and said yes I should have locked my pc and door. The head of the school was appalled that nothing had been done to the boy, and would find out why not.

I got my letter, and that was that……

6 months later just as I was leaving, the boy, was caught watching porn in ICT class, in the library, on the same website…….

After I left, I bumped into the behaviour unit manager and asked him why nothing had been done about it and was told the following.

Because the school had allowed a minor access to adult material at school, the child protection issues were huge, ICT manager and the school would have been strung up, as would I.

As the student was a bit of a knacker, he didn’t want to get in any trouble, nothing more was said about the incident. Other than my warning internally.

Never did get an answer as to why Porn Hub was avaiable, possibly the head liked to fap in his office on a lunch time.

If we ever have a ‘tell us how corrupt schools are in the UK ‘ thread, I have dozens of appalling tales from one school.

taking out a frozen (apparently) fish in the freezer, uses a knife instead of a spoon to scrape it out …hit that tube thingy that has gas thingy.. freezer died

Did that to the fridge-freezeer at uni. Didn’t work out why I had constant raging shits for nearly a week until I realised it was warmer inside than out.

I may or may not have had a hand in the overheating of an engine, to destruction. To date the repairs (which are still ongoing) have cost the company I work for upwards of half a million quid. The thinking is another £8-900k will have us back in the position we were in prior to the “incident”.

Do elaborate. If it helps I temporarily immobilised one of these:

which was powering (or rather, not) this:

which, if I recall correctly was berthed, or heading to here:

That’s the Al Basrah oil terminal, at the time controlled by trigger happy US and coalition forces and was transferring about 1.5m barrels a day (one pipeline had been shut down due to a small argument amongst the locals) amounting to 80% of Iraq’s GDP when at full chat.

I was sent to stop and disengage the barring gear so we could get our pre-starts done. Stopped okay, disengaging it was a bit tricky, every one I’d used before that had been a simple hand lever to engage the gear but this one was on a screw. So yeah, still unwinding, still tricky. So I’m wondering why it’s so hard to get it out and… …why is the gear spindle bending? And why is it just about fully unwound but the teeth are still meshed???

Turns out when I stopped it the teeth were still effectively engaged, if I’d simply gave it a jag in the opposite direction it would have come out smooth as butter. Instead I was left with the drive gear half in and half out and the winding gear ruined, I’d been in the job all of 2 weeks since being declared ‘competent’ by the MCA and was very aware that companies don’t like stationary ships, never mind oil terminal bosses.

So yeah, 20 minutes and the liberal application of one gas axe later we were offski with half a barring gear engagement mechanism shacked to the support railing to prevent it re-engaging whilst we were under way. I think I only got away with it because the 2nd Engineer couldn’t believe how someone as pathetically built as myself could ruin a massive lump of solid steel to the point of immobilising the whole main engine. Never knew the difference once it was welded back together apart from the odd piece of plate seel patching it together like a still slightly bent frankensteins monster.

Bought some XT brake pads off a classified section on a forum. Seller suggested they’d be happier to post first and then be paid on receipt, as the condition of pads were not quite as described. Ok, I said.

Package arrived some days later, almost unnoticed amidst much post-seasonal flu and distraction and other packets. Better half put it on the pile on my desk where it remained buried and almost forgotten as I nursed manflu and crapness and whisky like a big baby.

Having happily used classifieds for nearly six years without issue, and having always paid up front (packet arrived = must have paid!) my lovely, cosy, senile fricking mind somehow wasn’t alerted to the immediacy of this pressing payment issue. I even wondered why the seller was asking me twice if I had ‘checked the pads out’ . Manana, manana. Neither somehow did I see the seller’s one critical email, the very one reminding me of due payment. Not until the hand of doom descended on the forum to remind me further.

What’s this? Am a marked man? Pitchforked and pilloried in public?

Checked back thru my inbox – THERE is the unread request email, from a week ago. Sinking feeling achieved.

I paid immediately, putting a couple more on on to say sorry. They seller was gracious and called the pitchforks off. But it was of course too late by then.

The forks that hurt the most are arguably the ones you use on yourself. I now keep revisiting that moment, like some sickening self-punishing fairground ride that endlessly repeats itself. ‘You dozytosser’, wooooosh, have another go? Of course, here we goooooo, whhheeeeeooooo, ‘down you go again, you dozytosser’.

Each time the horror-coaster reaches the bottom of its plummet I swear I may as well be 13 yrs old once more, and that I can see my father’s big angry face, appearing again and again. His floating, disembodied face as darkly disappointed as the pan he was holding up to mark my shame – the pan that I had just left on the stove and burned by my forgetfulness.

You get up, you brush yourself off. Lesson: ‘Honest’ is as honest does. Have always been certain and a bit proud of my unerring honesty. ‘Forgetful’, on the other hand is, unfortunately, inexcusable. At least until confirmed by a mental health professional…

1989. Cheltenham Borough Council drainage operative. Am the young man that cleans the gullies, fixes grates, shifts blockages, and keeps the town from flooding and disease!

Every so often we get a special order come in from an old office building in a pedestrianised sector of the High Street.

For some reason the building isn’t connected to the sewers, so has it’s own facility underground. Old Clive drives up in our Whale tanker. i jump out, open the access plate, attach the giant hose, and switch to ‘suck’.

After five minutes we have a few tonnes of shitty liquid stuff safely in the tanker. i remove the hose from the ground plate and prepare to switch to ‘off’.

The sickening feeling arrives as I hear the rushing noise emitting from the giant hose.

I had hit the ‘blow’ switch.

A dark unholy flood of poop and tampons pours forth onto Cheltenham High Street on this busy, summer, weekday lunchtime. Elegant ladies in Jimmy Choos make little skips and squeals as the dark ruinous stinksome Hellwater spreads rapidly out like a cloak towards them. I spy horrid little turd-ships surfing the wave, beaching themselves at the periphery of the torrent.

Tried to remain calm with the subsequent broom-action and the endless buckets of purple disinfectant I had to deploy. But my face was as red as could be. Will never forget that smell.

^^^ I think we have a winner^^^

“Smells like a winner?”

^^^ I think we have a winner^^^

Burn him! He may have avoided a proper pitchforking earlier, but there’s still time…

Picked up new car on Friday, reversed into bollard Saturday. Thought I was going to puke.

Working as a flour miller at the start of a 12 hour Friday shift, on the last weekend in August, me and my assistant miller head down to the warehouse to get him refilling the mix-back bin. (The flour stock for the nation in the event of a nuclear conflict was being turned over and it could be dredged back at 10% of manufactured weight/volume).
While I’m moving the first pallet into position with the forklift the fire alarm goes off. No biggie I’ll shut the plant under control and we’ll await the electrician and the big red lorries.
Upstairs I couldn’t see the roller floor for smoke and sparks. Big red stop button pressed just as the sprinklers go off.
It was a long night cleaning and checking nothing on the top floor was smouldering. Cost a fortune to get the Swiss engineers in to repair the broken/burned roller mill on a bank holiday, no production for the best part of a week.

Then there was the time I put 20 tonnes of flour into a full bin. It snowed in June. The high level probe failed on that one.

Talking to one of the fitters at work the other week,he tells me about the time one of the fitters dropped the oil & filter on a MAN tractor unit.He then went for his dinner,after dinner he starts up the tractor unit,goes off site for some reason,returns later & wonders what the rattling /banging noise is coming from the workshop..£26000 for a new engine 😯

I had one more episode with keys locked in a car; me and three mates got a hire car and drove over to Wales one December for a photography trip. From the Beacons we carried on back up to Gloucester and parked up by a dual carriageway to try some long exposure shots of traffic. Get back to car, and we all stick our coats in the boot before getting in the car.
I think most people are ahead of me at this point.
So, Rick, who’d been driving, says, “right, who’s got the keys?” Everyone looks at everyone else, and we all look at Rick, and point out that, as he’d been driving, he had the keys. “No, I haven’t”, he says.
“Well, none of us had them, you must have them in your pocket” ” Oh, yes, they’re in my coat pocket”
“And where’s your coat now?”
“Oh, shit! It’s in the boot, isn’t it”
This is around 7pm on a cold, December Sunday evening, the garage back home in Chippenham is obviously closed, so no help there, and we found a phone box nearby, (80’s, no mobile phones), and tried the police, with just a verbal shrug, nothing they could do.
Crap. We adjourn to the cold car, and debate. This is a saloon, not a hatch, so the boot is sealed off, but I noticed the parcel shelf had speaker grills, with round plastic popper fittings, (I’d been doing part-time selling in a HiFi shop that did car audio, so had a clue), and started prising the cardboard trim off.
As luck would have it, there were no speakers in the steel underneath, so while the others asked what the hell I was doing, I fished around and grabbed the first bit of cloth I could feel, and started hauling it out of the 6″x4″ hole.
By sheer good luck, I’d got Rick, the hapless driver’s coat, at first go, not only that, I’d caught the corner with the keys in the pocket!
You can imagine the relief, and the ragging he got, and still gets to this day.
He paid for the drinks up at the Air Balloon shortly after. 😀

Mate of mine took delivery of a new car, engine left running by the delivery driver
He spies a key in the centre console tray and takes it back into his company reception “because the deivery driver left it and will be back for it”
Drives 145 miles, pushes the engine stop button. Reaches around the steering column for the key fob thingy to remove it from its slot. Nothing there.
How he laughed as he contemplated keyless ignition

CZ’s story was far too positive for this thread, but timba’s… Spot-on!

“You got your end mate?”
“Aye, got it”.

Smash. Cue a very broken display cabinet.

Never say you do when you don’t!

For those of you who’ve accidentally shut servers down with the command line, it could be worse: Imagine creating a $460 million loss by leaving old code around[/url].

“BTW – if there is an SEC filing about your deployment something may have gone terribly wrong”

Mushroom season – having just drank a couple of cups of particularly potent mushroom tea, and going outside to chat to the lads next door, the door shut behind me, locking me out.

Option 1 – get in the car and race 14 miles across the city to my folks, get a spare key and get back without becoming a dribbling mess, or freaking out at my folks house. Car keys were in my pocket

Option 2 – bust the window and open the door

option 3 use a hasp to reach through the letter box and turn the yale lock…thankyou handy man neighbour next door.

“not to worry mate, that would have been a shit trip knowing you are locked out”

Driving along the A14 to the coast. It is blowing a hoolie and I have my nice new shortboard and carbon mast on top of the car (sails etc inside).

Massive gust hits the car, crack! The board flies off the roof (safety rope on the front of the car snaps) and into the patch of an artic. Lots of smoke and swerving, lights flashing, horns etc. OMG someone’s going to die!!!!!! F***, F***k, F***!

In a nano second, my board and mast disappear under the lorry and are spat out onto the side of the road. I manage to retrieve them and strap the debris to the roof. Then I spot the damage to the roof of my (new) car.

It seems that when the gust hit, the clamps on the roof bars turned to cheese and straightened out. Moral of that story – never buy Paddy Hopkirk roof bars, they are (were) rubbish.

All in all a very expensive day of (not) sailing.

Seems like a lot of us geeks make a similar error.
1 month into my first IT job, root of the O/S on Portsmouth University’s mainframe:
Del *.*;*
Ulp. Quick, grab the backup tape for me!

Last week, did a partial ride to work, parking my (new) car 6 miles up the road (about 10 from home).
Get to work, time for shower.. er, where are my keys? That’s the last time I put them in the mesh side pocket of my rucksack.

Probably the worst one though, hearing the words coming out of a bloke’s mouth from downstairs: “Hellooo, I’m home early” …

It seems that when the gust hit, the clamps on the roof bars turned to cheese and straightened out. Moral of that story – never buy Paddy Hopkirk roof bars, they are (were) rubbish.

All in all a very expensive day of (not) sailing.

Are you sure you can’t speak to Mr Hopkirk about the quality of his ‘bars? I’d be round there like a shot, box in his his Mini and bellow:
“OI! HOPKIRK, NOOOOO! What are you going to do about this then?”