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Discussion on: What is the stupidest thing you have done at work?

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lbonanomi profile image
lbonanomi

This is a story that I tell new engineers after they screw something up, to give them a sense of scale:

Once upon a time I worked for the NYSE as a computer operator; my job was to essentially run through a set of defined commands on a regular cycle (10-15 minutes) and check-off boxes on a paper list. One of these checks involved me arrowing-through a curses menu on very heavily loaded Unix host and hitting enter to run internal diagnostics regularly.

[  ] Start the one and only application this system ran
[  ] Order a pizza?
[  ] Run quick diagnostics
[  ] Shutdown the application
[  ] Cleanup old files

Are you old enough to remember how unresponsive a curses menu can be when the system is loaded? Do you remember how your keypresses seemed to buffer, then all happen in a burst? Can you see how I overran where I wanted the cursor to be by one position and ended up halting the NYSE Tradefloor supervision system on a Tuesday right before lunch?

Having the board of directors of the NYSE call me up and ask what the ^*#!#@$ was happening was not a great moment for me, but I kept the job.

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l04db4l4nc3r profile image
Angad Sharma

Chills just ran down my spine...